She was not always so "moderate" the Pakistani government provided aid to the Taliban while she was in office.

Posted by: irish_infidel at December 27, 2007 2:59 PM

A past article:

November 25, 2004

Hugh Fitzgerald:

Ten Things to Think When Thinking of Muslim "Moderates"

1. Not only Muslims, but "islamochristians" objectively promote and push the propagandistic line that disguises the Jihad (evidence of which can be found worldwide), and mislead as to both what prompts that Jihad (not "poverty" or "foreign policy" but the precepts of the belief-system of Islam) and what will sate it (not Kashmir, not Chechnya, not the absurd "two-state solution," not continued appeasement in France and Holland -- there is nothing that will sate or satisfy it, as long as part of the globe is as yet resistent to the rule of Islam). "Christians" such as Fawaz Gerges or Rami Khoury, or someone who was born a Christian, such as Edward Said, are Arabs whose views are colored by that self-perception. Their loyalty to the community and history of Arabs causes them to be as loyal to the Islamic view of things as if they had been born Muslim. They stoutly defend Islam against all of Western scholarship (in Orientalism), or divert attention away from Islam and constantly assert, in defiance of all the evidence, from Bali to Beslan to Madrid, that the "problem of Israel/Palestine" -- the latest, and most sinister formulation of the Jihad against Israel -- is the fons et origo of Muslim hostility and murderous aggression throughout the world. Save for the Copts and Maronites, who regard themselves not as Arabs but as "users" of the "Arabic language" (and reject the idea that such "users" therefore become "Arabs"), many Arab Christians have crazily embraced the Islamic agenda; the agenda, that is, of those who have made the lives of Christians in the Middle East so uncertain, difficult, and at times, imperilled. The attempt to be "plus islamiste que les islamistes" -- the approach of Rami Khoury and Hanan Ashrawi -- simply will not do, for it has not worked. It is Habib Malik and other Maronites in Lebanon who have analysed the problem of Islam in a clear-eyed fashion. Indeed, the best book on the legal status of non-Muslims under Islam is that of the Lebanese (Maronite) scholar Antoine Fattal.
Any "islamochristian" Arab who promotes the Islamic agenda, by participating in a campaign that can only mislead Infidels and put off their understanding of Jihad and its various instruments, is objectively as much part of the problem as the Muslim who knowingly practices taqiyya in order to turn aside the suspicions of non-Muslims. Whoever acts so as to keep the unwary Infidel unwary is helping the enemy.

Think, for a minute, of Oskar Schindler. A member of the Nazi Party, but hardly someone who followed the Nazi line. But what if Schindler had at some point met with Westerners -- and had continued, himself, to deny that the Nazis were engaged in genocide, even if he himself deplored it and would later act against it? Would we think of him as a "moderate"? As someone who had helped the anti-Nazi coalition to understand what it was up against?

Or for another example, think of Ilya Ehrenburg, who in 1951 or so was sent abroad by Stalin to lie about the condition of Yiddish-speaking intellectuals whom Stalin had recently massacred. Ehrenburg went to France, went to Italy. He did as he was told. "Peretz? Markish? Oh, yes, saw Peretz at his dacha last month with his grandson. Such a jovial fellow. Markish -- he was great last year in Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District -- you should see how it comes across in zhargon, Yiddish..." And so it went. Eherenburg lied, and lied. He was not a Stalinist. He hated Stalin. He of course hated the destruction of Peretz, Markish, and many others who had been killed many months before -- as Ehrenburg knew perfectly well. When he went abroad and lied to the editors of Nouvelle Revue Francaise, what was he? Objectively, he was promoting the interests of Joseph Stalin, and the Red Army, and the Politburo. We need not inquire into motives. We need only see what the results of such lying were. And the same is true of those Christian Arabs who lie on behalf of Islam -- some out of fear, some out of an ethnocentric identification so strong that they end up defending Islam, the religion of those who persecuted the Christian Arabs of the Middle East, and some out of venality (if Western diplomats and journalists can be on the Arab take, why not Arabs themselves?), some out of careerism. If you want to rise in the academic ranks, and your field is the Middle East, unless you are a real scholar -- Cook or Crone or Lewis -- better to parrot the party line, which costs you nothing and gains you friends in tenure-awarding, grant-giving, reference-writing circles. There is at least one example, too, among those mentioned, in a situation where an Arabic-speaking Christian, attempting to find refuge from Muslim persecution, needed the testimony of an "expert" -- which "expert," instead of offering a pro-bono samaritan act, demanded so much money to be involved (in a fantastic display of greed) that the very idea of solidarity among Arab Christians was called by this act permanently into question.

2. The word "moderate" cannot be reasonably applied to any Muslim who continues to deny the contents -- the real contents, not the sanitized or gussied-up contents -- of Qur'an, hadith, and sira. Whether that denial is based on ignorance, or based on embarrassment, or based on filial piety (and an unwillingness to wash dirty ideological laundry before the Infidels) is irrelevant. Any Muslim who, while seeming to deplore every aspect of Muslim aggression, based on clear textual sources in Qur'an and hadith, or on the example of Muhammad as depicted in the accepted sira -- Muhammad that "model" of behavior -- is again, objectively, acting in a way that simply misleads the Infidels. And any Muslim who helps to mislead Infidels about the true nature of Islam cannot be called a "moderate." That epithet is simply handed out a bit too quickly for sensible tastes.

3. What of a Muslim who says -- there are terrible things in the sira and hadith, and we must find a way out, so that this belief-system can focus on the rituals of individual worship, and offer some sustenance as a simple faith for simple people? This would require admitting that a great many of Muhammad's reported acts must either be denied, or given some kind of figurative interpretation, or otherwise removed as part of his "model" life. As for the hadith, somehow one would have to say that Bukhari, and Muslim, and the other respected muhaddithin had not examined those isnad-chains with quite the right meticulousness, and that many of the hadith regarded as "authentic" must be reduced to the status of "inauthentic." And, following Goldziher, doubt would have to be cast on all of the hadith, as imaginative elaborations from the Qur'an, without any necessarily independent existence.

4. This leaves the Qur'an. Any "moderate" who wishes to prevent inquiry into the origins of the Qur'an -- whether it may be the product of a Christian sect, or a Jewish sect, or of pagan Arabs who decided to construct a book, made up partly of Christian and Jewish material mixed with bits and pieces of pagan Arab lore from the time of the Jahiliya -- or to prevent philological study (of, for example, Aramaic and other loan-words) -- anyone who impedes the enterprise of subjecting the Qur'an to the kind of historical inquiry that the Christian and Jewish Bibles have undergone in the past 200 years of inquiry, is not a "moderate" but a fervent Defender of the Faith. One unwilling to encourage such study -- which can only lead to a move away from literalness for at least some of the Believers -- again is not "moderate."

5. The conclusion one must reach is that there are, in truth, very few moderates. For if one sees the full meaning of Qur'an, hadith, and sira, and sees how they have affected the behavior of Muslims both over 1400 years of conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims, and in stunting the development -- political, economic, moral, and intellectual -- of Muslims everywhere, it is impossible not to conclude that this imposing edifice is not in any sense moderate or susceptible to moderation.

What must an intelligent Muslim, living through the hell of the Islamic Republic of Iran, start to think of Islam? Or that Kuwaiti billionaire, with houses in St. James Place and Avenue Foch and Vevey, as well as the family/company headquarters in Kuwait City, who sends his children to the American School in Kuwait, and boasts that they know English better than they know Arabic, helps host Fouad Ajami when he visits Kuwait, is truly heartsick to see Kuwait's increasing islamization? Would he allow himself to say what he knows in public, or in front of half-brothers, or to friends -- knowing that at any moment, they may be scandalized by his free-thinking views, and that he may run the risk of losing his place in the family's pecking order and, what's more, in the family business?

The mere fact that Muslim numbers may grow in the Western world represents a permanent threat to Infidels. This is true even if some, or many, of those Muslims are "moderates" -- i.e. do not believe that Islam has some kind of divine right, and need, to expand until it covers the globe and swallows up dar al-harb. For if they are still to be counted in the Army of Islam, not as Deserters (Apostates) from that Army, their very existence in the Bilad al-kufr helps to swell Muslim ranks, and therefore perceived Muslim power. And even the "moderate" father may sire immoderate children or grandchildren -- that was the theme of the Hanif Kureishi film, quasi-comic but politically acute, "My Son the Fanatic." Whether through Da'wa or large families, any growth in the Muslim population will inhibit free expression (see the fates of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, and the threats made to Geert Wilders, Carl Hagen, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and many others), for politicans eager to court the Muslim vote will poohpooh Muslim outrages and strive to have the state yield to Muslim demands -- for the sake of short-term individual gain. And Muslim numbers, even with "moderates," increases the number of Muslim missionaries -- for every Muslim is a missionary -- whether conducting "Sharing Ramadan" Outreach in the schools (where a soft-voiced Pakistani woman is usually the soothing propagandist of choice), or Da'wa in a prison. The more Muslims there are, the more there will be -- and no one knows which "moderate" will end up distinctly non-moderate in his views, and then in his acts.

And this brings up the most important problem: the impermanance of "moderate" attitudes. What makes anyone think that someone who this week or month has definitely turned his back on Jihad, who will have nothing to do with those he calls the "fanatics," if he does not make a clean break with Islam, does not become a "renegade" or apostate, will at some point "revert" not to Islam, which he never left, but to a more devout form, in which he now subscribes to all of its tenets, and not merely to a few having to do with rites of individual worship?

6. The examples to the contrary are both those of individuals, and of whole societies. As for individual Muslims, some started out as mild-mannered and largely indifferent to Islam, and then underwent some kind of crisis and reverted to a much more fanatical brand of Islam. That was the case with urban planner Mohammad Atta, following his disorienting encounter with modern Western ways in Hamburg, Germany -- Reeperbahn and all. That was also the case with "Mike" Hawash, the Internet engineer earning $360,000 a year, who seemed completely integrated (American wife, Little League for the children, friends among fellow executives at Intel who would swear up and down that he was innocent) -- until one fine day, after the World Trade Center attacks, he made out his will, signed the house over to his wife, and set off to fight alongside the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan (he got as far as China) against his fellow Americans. In other words, if fanatical Muslims exist, it does not mean that they all start out as fanatics. Islam is the necessary starting place, and what sets off a "moderate" may have little to do with anything the Infidels do, any question of foreign policy -- it may simply be a crisis in an individual Muslim's life, to which he seeks an answer, not surprisingly, in ... more Islam.

7. Much the same lesson can be drawn from the experience of whole societies. In passing, one can note that the position of Infidels under the Pahlevi regime was better than it had been for centuries -- and under the regime that followed, that of the Islamic Republic of Iran, that position of Infidels became worse than it had been for centuries. "Secularism" in Islamic countries is never permanent; the weight and the threat of Islam is ever-present.

The best example of this is Turkey since 1924, when Ataturk began his reforms. He tried in every way he could -- through the Hat Act (banishing the salat-friendly fez); commissioning a Turkish translation of the Qur'an and an accompanying tafsir (commentary) in Turkish; ending the use of Arabic script for Turkish; establishing government control of the mosques (even attacking recalcitrant imams and destroying their mosques); giving women the right to vote; establishing a system that discouraged the wearing of the hijab; encouraging Western dress; and discouraging, in the army, preferment of any soldier who showed too great an interest in religion. This attempt to constrain Islam was successful, and was reinforced by the national cult of Ataturk.

But the past few decades have shown that Islam does not die; it keeps coming back. In Turkey, it never went away, despite the creation of a secular stratum of society that amounts perhaps to 25% of the population, with another 25% wavering, and 50% still definitely traditional Muslims. Meanwhile, Turks in Germany become not less, but more fervent in their faith. And Turks in Turkey, of the kind who follow Erdogan, show that they may at any moment emerge and take power -- and slowly (very slowly, as long as that EU application has not been acted on, one way or another) they can undo Ataturk. He was temporary; Islam is forever.

8. That is why even the designation of some Muslims as "moderates" in the end means almost nothing. They swell Muslim numbers and the perceived Muslim power; "moderates" may help to mislead, to be in fact even more effective practitioners of taqiyya/kitman, for their motive may simply be loyalty to ancestors or embarrassment, not a malign desire to fool Infidels in order to disarm and then ultimately to destroy them.

9. For this reason, one has to keep one's eye always on the objective situation. What will make Infidels safer from a belief-system that is inimical to art, science, and all free inquiry, that stunts the mental growth, and that is based on a cruel Manichaean division of the world between Infidel and Believer? And the answer is: limiting the power –- military, political, diplomatic, economic power -- of all Muslim polities, and Muslim peoples, and diminishing, as much as possible, the Muslim presence, however amiable and plausible and seemingly untroubling a part of that presence may appear to be, in all the Lands of the Infidels. This is done not out of any spirit of enmity, but simply as an act of minimal self-protection -- and out of loyalty and gratitude to those who produced the civilization which, however it has been recently debased by its own inheritors, would disappear altogether were Muslims to succeed in islamizing Europe -- and then, possibly, other parts of the world as well.

10. "There are Muslim moderates. Islam itself is not moderate" is Ibn Warraq's lapidary formulation. To this one must add: we Infidels have no sure way to distinguish the real from the feigning "moderate" Muslim. We cannot spend our time trying to perfect methods to make such distinctions. Furthermore, in the end such distinctions may be meaningless if even the "real" moderates hide from us what Islam is all about, not out of any deeply-felt sinister motive, but out of a humanly-understandable ignorance (especially among some second or third-generation Muslims in the West), or embarrassment, or filial piety. And finally, yesterday's "moderate" can overnight be transformed into today's fanatic -- or tomorrow's.

Shall we entrust our own safety to the dreamy consolations of the phrase "moderate Muslim" and the shapeshifting concept behind it that can be transformed into something else in a minute?

Posted by: Hugh at December 27, 2007 3:13 PM

Bhutto was a major sponsor of terrorism as Prime Minister. Under her leadership, Pakistan switched support to the Taliban, and was largely responsible for the Taliban rise to power in Afghanistan. People somehow seem to gloss over that while deluding themselves into thinking that she would have pulled Pakistan away from a Jihad-loving mindset to a more modernizing one, whatever that means. And that's not even mentioning her role in supporting terror in Kashmir - something that surely an Indian media organization like PTI shouldn't gloss over?

While I don't like assassinations, I refuse to mourn her death. What we have is one less smooth talking taquiyya artist, whom too many people in the West bought hook, line and sinker just because of her college life in the UK. That's what passes for analysis these days.

Posted by: Infidel Pride at December 27, 2007 3:14 PM

Benazir Bhutto was a Muslim moderate like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a communist "moderate". Solzhenitsyn no longer believed in "reform" and thought the ideology and the Soviet system evil by the time he was sent to the US. The Soviets would have killed him, as Bhutto was killed, if he had not been taken in by the US.

Posted by: Frank at December 27, 2007 3:18 PM

Com'on, Robert, don't be such a party pooper. Ms. Bhutto a socialist allied with the Soviets? I thought she was the Martin Luther of Islam.
And here we have all those learned people who say everything is so easy. Why, just the other day I heard Alan Colmes on Fox saying how we and Iran have common interests that needed to be explored. Just show those jihadis enough carrots and they'll walk like donkeys.

Posted by: jewdog at December 27, 2007 3:19 PM

Moderate Islam is defeated Islam.

Posted by: poetcomic1 at December 27, 2007 3:27 PM

Lets not forget that it was during Bhutto's rule that the Taliban gained prominence in Afghanistan. She viewed the Taliban as a group that could stabilize Afghanistan and enable trade access to the Central Asian republics, according to author Stephen Coll.[11] He claims that her government provided military and financial support for the Taliban, even sending a small unit of the Pakistani army into Afghanistan.

And lets not forget how she was Pakistan's Arafat who sucked millions from the Pakistanis

Lets not forget how she was very close to Tikka Khan one of the key players in the genocide in Bangladesh,which resulted in the killings of approximately three million people and raping of nearly a quarter million girls and women. Ten million Bengalis reportedly took refuge in India to avoid the massacre of the Pakistan army and thirty million people were displaced within the country

http://illustratedpig.blogspot.com/

Posted by: shiva at December 27, 2007 3:27 PM

Bhutto was a multifacted character. Her apparent will to clamp down on the Taliban, Al Qaeda and associated extremists would have been valuable had she returned to power, and her apparent desire to merge some elements of Islam with more Western values but I do not harbor the illusion that she was a reformer.

It is probably more correct to say that she was a gentler version of Saddam Hussein in that she leant toward secular government but was not afraid to invoke violent Islamic rhetoric and values when they served her political purpose.

Her role in stirring up jihad attacks in Kashmir is well known, and 300,000 Pandit refugees remember the fiery rhetoric she used when she was in the position to incite the pogroms against them that eventually drove the entire people-group from their homeland, in one of the most successful Ethnic Cleansing campaigns of the 20th Century, a crime that has not been addressed, let alone acknowledged publicly in the West. She was the lesser of evils. I fear what may come in the vacuum she leaves behind.

Posted by: Archimedes2 at December 27, 2007 3:32 PM

Apparently, if you are going to deal with Islamic countries. There are only two choices.
Lesser Evil or Greater Evil.
No room for moderate here.

Anybody know where the door is?

Posted by: Aunt Bea at December 27, 2007 3:47 PM

Just like anything else, the definition of moderate Muslim means many things to many people. What you are doing is asking us to accept YOUR definition of what a moderate Muslim is. Of course the great majority of Muslims are moderate and see Islam as traditional and peaceful. It does exist because if it didn't then it wouldn't take long for 1.5 billion people to turn this world into a raging inferno, and these online parlor discussions would be meaningless. For me, a moderate Muslim endorses the separate of church and state (and please, you literal thinkers out there, you know what I mean) along with adhering to the peaceful Islamic teachings. Other moderate Muslims would strongly disagree with this and still others would say it doesn't go far enough. So these black and white definitions that allow no shades of gray and statements that we need LESS Islam do nothing to solve these issues.

http://13martyrs.blogspot.com/

Posted by: 13 Martyrs at December 27, 2007 3:49 PM

Time to complete my transformation from unwitting dhimmi and woefully uneducated citizen regarding Islam, to a thinking defender of my country:

1. From now on, I no longer believe anything any muslim says, now that I understand the concept of taqqiya.
2. When ever I have a verbal conflict with a muslim, I will simply say to them "busy yourself with reading your koran", as I have learned this is the exact phrase used by the Taliban to close down barber shops, music shops, and internet cafes.
3. Like Mike Brady and his errant son Greg from the show "The Brady Bunch", I will be using the "Exact Words" episode as my guide for dealing with all muslims. The exact words of the koran, etc....I will finish every statement with "Now go busy yourself with your koran".
4. I will commit to memory every posting left by Hugh, to the best of my ability.

Posted by: AmericanTiger at December 27, 2007 4:10 PM

13 Martyrs,

Did you even read what Robert wrote? Your response suggests you don't get the argument at all.

Posted by: Beagle at December 27, 2007 4:13 PM

Hugh,

"10. "There are Muslim moderates. Islam itself is not moderate" is Ibn Warraq's lapidary formulation. To this one must add: we Infidels have no sure way to distinguish the real from the feigning "moderate" Muslim. We cannot spend our time trying to perfect methods to make such distinctions. Furthermore, in the end such distinctions may be meaningless if even the "real" moderates hide from us what Islam is all about, not out of any deeply-felt sinister motive, but out of a humanly-understandable ignorance (especially among some second or third-generation Muslims in the West), or embarrassment, or filial piety. And finally, yesterday's "moderate" can overnight be transformed into today's fanatic -- or tomorrow's."

Of the 10 reasons you have given, the best of the 10 is the last reason given. The sad truth is that even among those Muslims who are moderate, things could change if the same "moderate" become more devout and could end up leaning towards if not becoming violent siding with those jihadis that are.

Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at December 27, 2007 4:18 PM

5. I will not be shocked when atrocities happen...now that I know a little bit about Islam, being shocked is the WRONG response...we must begin to approach all things muslim and all muslim atrocities with a matter-of-fact attitude. ("Bhutto was killed today? No surprise here, that's Islam.")

("Suicide bomber kills 50 in Pakistani Mosque? I am not surprised, after all, that's Islam")

("No sir...you do not need private footbaths. It is not mentioned in the koran". Now, be quiet and busy yourself reading the koran!")

("Saudi rape vicitm to be lashed 200 times? Hey, that's Islam")

6. I will treat every muslim like an adolescent PCP user and hold them to the exact words of their religious texts.

Posted by: AmericanTiger at December 27, 2007 4:30 PM

Personally speaking, I've always equated the so-called "moderate Muslims" (those who, in the words of Serge Trifkovic, practice some "mysterious, authentic form of [moderate]Islam") with the hypocrites mentioned by Muhammad in the Koran and related Islamic texts. These would be the people who, for all intensive purposes, are Islamic however lax or ignorant they may be in either their understanding of or personal practice of Islam. The idea of a "moderate Muslim" is after all a Western invention, and at worst, a delusion. You can't understand Muslims or Islam by making up and attaching to them your idea of what you'd like them to be after all.

The problem with so-called "moderate" Muslims is manifold indeed. They either lack the will or the ability to denounce any of the actions of the purists who control their faith. Furthermore, they, and they alone, claim to be representative of Islam as it was meant to be practiced and understood. Worst of all, they carry the baggage (and weight) of Islam; its loyalties and obligations, its self-delusions and neuroses, not to mention its intolerance. These are some of the complaints we always see, hear, and talk about with regards to "moderate" Muslims, but being focused on Bhutto and whether or not she was moderate is irrelevant to her assassination.

If she was a moderate Muslim it was only because she was a Western-educated woman who happened to be pro-democratic and pro-American. Not exactly the qualities of a saint, not even in this day and age, and certainly not the model for what a good practicing Muslim should be (if one were adhering to the original model put forth by Muhammad). She was on the left and her record in office speaks for itself. It's almost ironic that, over six years since September 11th, we're lamenting the death of the woman who oversaw, in neighbouring Pakistan, the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1990's. Talk about lack of intelligence in intellectual and media circles; despite the direct or indirect assistance she provided at one point to the Taliban in the nineties, she was no longer part of the solution, at least as far as the Taliban was concerned, and she had to go.

And that's where this discussion belongs. In a matter of months the Taliban were able to make good their threats against Bhutto (although, to be sure, there were others involved in the hunt). What does this mean as far as the Grand Jihad is concerned? What is likely to follow in the days and weeks ahead, as far as Pakistan is concerned? And more importantly, are all the nukes in Islamabad where they should be? Kind of ironic that in truth, no nuke, at any time, should be any where near the fingers of a Pakistani.

We know well the line on the so-called "moderates" in Islam. The only thing we need to remember is that, as far as Muhammad was concerned, these people are "hypocrites", "renegades", and apostates. A western-educated, pro-American, female democrat attempting to run for President in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Sharia ain't rocket science ladies and gentlemen.

Posted by: TheDiggler at December 27, 2007 4:38 PM

On Hugh's #10:
I totally agree that trying to distinguish moderate from extremist Muslims can be a waste of time, and is generally impossible. Yet, that's precisely what Dan Pipes keeps insisting we do in our immigration policy. I find his suggestion incredibly impractical.
The government bureaucracy is so inept, even at the highest levels; does he really think that they could make such distinctions?

Posted by: jewdog at December 27, 2007 4:40 PM

The TV is showing a lot of footage of "moderates" at play. The burning and looting that is always a prelude to the killing and maiming.

When Infidels are not around to abuse, they focus on the next best thing, themselves.

Islam = the devolution of Man to Animal.

Posted by: flowerknife_us at December 27, 2007 4:42 PM

7. I will no longer say the term "terrorist attack" instead, using the phrase "Islamic Teaching moment" or "Following Muhammeds' Example event", or "Koranic event", or "Imams' Directive incident"...anything but "terrotist attack". Now I realize, these folks aren't terrorists, they are muslims!

Posted by: AmericanTiger at December 27, 2007 4:47 PM

The problem is that Bhutto in fact was a "champion of moderate face of Islam", and that nobody asks what the rest of Islam's body looks like. One should never support people or movement only because of their face.

Posted by: Osmund Bindalen at December 27, 2007 4:55 PM

As we all know, there is no such thing as "moderate Islam." The very definition of Islam is fanaticism. You can't be a Muslim without being fanatical, because your mind must be at all times on ISLAM. In order to be a Muslim, you must be obsessed with Islam, with Allah, with praying, with reading the Koran, with repressing sexuality, oppressing women, and so on down the line.

ISLAM = FANATICISM. Period. No fanaticism, no Islam. It's that simple.

The Truth About Islam

Posted by: Suziq at December 27, 2007 5:02 PM

Benazir was the daughter of important landowners,
used to feudal splendour & importance.She actually
went to a Catholic Convent & Oxford in Britain. Her marriage was ARRANGED [like a good Muslimah]. She was a photogenic Beauty [in her younger days]-West enthusiatically embracing her
as their Poster Girl of 'Moderate Islam & Modernity' with usual bull**** claims to DEMOCRACY
in a violent,unstable country with Stone Age Norms.
Whatever Benazir was or wasn't, she was BRAVE, unlike our revered leaders,Draft Dodger Bush & Tony Baloney-you remember the intrepid Duo who
sneaked into Iraq for half an hour & out again
sweating with relief...For this I salute her.

Posted by: Morgane at December 27, 2007 6:06 PM

"Less Islam" and "different Islam" amount to the same thing, and both are repugnant to the jihadists.

"a chimerical and elusive moderate Islam"
by Robert

If there is no moderate Islam anywhere in the world, then why do we bend over backwards to all the "peaceful" Muslims?

WHO are they? WHERE are they?

What brand of Islam is being practiced by those who don't call themselves jihadists?

Posted by: PMK at December 27, 2007 6:08 PM

Muslims Against Sharia condemn the murderers responsible for the assassination of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her supporters.

Our prayers are with the victims of this atrocity. We send our condolences to their loved ones.

May the homicide bomber rote in hell for eternity. May his accomplices join him soon!

http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2007/12/prime-minister-benazir-bhutto-murdered.html

Posted by: Muslims Against Sharia at December 27, 2007 6:29 PM

The tragic assassination of this hapless woman proves one thing: There is NO such thing as 'moderate' Islam. Her death also (and sadly) shows how those who attempt to practice Islam in 'moderation' are living a fantasy.

Twenty percent of evil is still evil.

Islam's ideological DNA is first degree murder (remember that al-lah is the Mesopotamian idol, Baal, which was an object of human sacrifice over centuries). Islam is therefore inherently unreformable and cannot be moderated despite the best of intentions by those who practice it in 'moderation.'

Posted by: pythagoras at December 27, 2007 6:55 PM

" Moderate Islam is defeated Islam "
poetcomic1

..............
This is the essence of wisdom boiled down to the sentence. Thank you Poetcomic1, with apology to Hugh whose treatise on the subject I also enjoy.

............................
Now, doesn't that included photo of Bhutto resemble the beautiful Eva Gardner...sort of?

Posted by: pismopal at December 27, 2007 7:50 PM

About blogger 13 Martyrs:

Doubtlessly equates the religion whose essence he DOESN'T know with the personable Westernized Muslims he DOES know. Likely thinks that a religious creed is inherently adaptable, malleable, and plastic; human beings, nominal adherents, MAY BE, but foundational texts expressing alien values and worldview as interpreted by authoritative traditions ossified for over 1000 years ARE NOT.

Failing to rigorously investigate Islam itself [start with USC/MSA Compendium of Islamic Texts],
he falls back on his own unchallenged assumptions of essential moral equivalence among competing creeds, religious ideologies, and lifestyles; or at least the notion that they are all, generally speaking, equally benign or equally malignant potentially.

He probably has not read ANY of Robert Spencer's books, and thinks Robert's primary purpose is either to excuse or whitewash Christianity, or to vilify Islam while making Christinity supreme.

Posted by: John C at December 27, 2007 10:02 PM

Yes, even 13 Martyrs time abroad is limited by his secularist viewpoint and the fact that he lived in a Western compound, a "ghetto" that helps to contain kuffar cultural corruption.

Posted by: John C at December 27, 2007 10:15 PM

A single comment to the post that Mr. Wagner, aka, "13 martyrs", made, does not a blog make.

'nuff said about this troll.

Posted by: awake at December 27, 2007 11:15 PM

Best Wishes to "MUSLIMS AGAINST SHARIA"

I wholely sympathize with "Muslims Against Sharia," and wish them all unbounded success in their admirable and heroic efforts to serve God and neighbor.

Posted by: John C at December 28, 2007 12:03 AM

I suppose any UN-covered female face within the Dar-al-Islam is moderate by comparison to Taliban, Saudi, Iranian, etc. standards.

At least she was viewable which is more than can be said of millions of other female slaves within islam (those of covered meat).

Posted by: alexon at December 28, 2007 12:52 AM

Not sure I see the problem with a proliferation and acceptance of "less Islam," even if it's not "different Islam"--as long as leaders/communities not only promote and enforce "less Islam" but are honest about what they're doing (i.e., not pretending "more Islam" is a good thing).

It's what Ataturk did, right?

Posted by: kamala at December 28, 2007 7:48 PM