"I want to be more optimistic. I believe Pipes is correct. In the long run the present day fanatics will “die off” eventually burning out for at least one or two hundreds years, before they reappear."

What is this guy smoking?

Posted by: ConorMacNessa at January 9, 2008 8:50 AM

In the long run the present day fanatics will “die off” eventually burning out for at least one or two hundreds years, before they reappear.

So? In the long run we'll all be dead. How many peaceful people (Muslims as well as non-Muslims) must die before their time, waiting for the fanatics to burn themselves out? How many generations must be destroyed? How much learning must be obliterated in the name of Allah? How many great minds will never be nurtured because of the fear of the unknown that is generated in Islam?

Why should we be able to count on no more than one or two centuries before they show themselves again? Doesn't humanity deserve better?

Posted by: PMK at January 9, 2008 9:20 AM

I want to be more optimistic. I believe Pipes is correct.

This seems to be the root thought (optimism )of the majority of those that BELIEVE that islam is no threat. I WANT to be more optimistic..... So I BELIEVE the bad guys don't exist. Kind of like covering your ears, closing your eyes and going, Lah, lah, lah............

Posted by: Abrog8 at January 9, 2008 9:31 AM

I want to be more optimistic too. But I also don't need some jerk named "Mohammed" pointing a gun at my head or holding a sword against my neck before I see the threat. By all means be optimistic, but deal with the threat as it is now. I optimistically believe the West will prevail eventually, but it's gonna be a bit bloody in the process.

Posted by: Kevin at January 9, 2008 9:36 AM

There is a difference between moderate advocacy, which is a positive embrace of pluralism and coexistance, and passivity. Passivity is simply a reluctance to publicly assert beliefs whether they are moderate or extremist. You can be active or passive, regardless of whether your underlying creed is moderate or extreme.

In the UK, I think most muslims are passive, and yet very few are moderate. Passive muslims will not declare open support for the jihad, but neither will they condemn it. Their underlying aims and ambitions coincide with those of the active jihadist.

Roberts late friend was a true moderate advocate, and a humane man. That sets him apart from many muslims who profess, but do not embrace, his philosophy.

Posted by: Monty at January 9, 2008 9:43 AM

There may very-well be the "moderate" Muslim, but there are few who choose to self-identify as such. It is a term that many Muslims consider demeaning.

That being said, there is certainly no "moderate" Islam, at least not as it exists currently in the divine text and as is interpreted and taught by the mainstream Islamic authorities.

Pipes formulates a working solution dealing with the existing foundation of Islam, whereas Spencer focuses on the foundation itself and identifies that focus as vital for any meaningful reform to occur.

Steel, on the otherhand, is simply clueless as is evident by:

"I want to be more optimistic. I believe Pipes is correct. In the long run the present day fanatics will “die off” eventually burning out for at least one or two hundreds years, before they reappear."

I want a lot of things. Wanting things do make them feasible or even tangible. By his own admission, Steel sees the ebb and flow of Islamic influence as a constant historical cycle.

By that logic, we should see parallel historical periods of "fanaticism" in other faiths as well, that is, if Steel's claim that Islam has no specific inherent quality that differentiates it from other ideologies....No?

Posted by: awake at January 9, 2008 9:45 AM

"If there is a moderate Muslim philosophy we need to support it." Steel

If frogs had glass butts, they would never jump.

If I could sing.

If I win the lotto.

If I were, taller, slimmer, smarter, richer........

Shoe us where it is and we'll look at it.

Posted by: Aunt Bea at January 9, 2008 9:55 AM

At one point I might have believed: " that it is possible for a devout Muslim could both be pro-American and anti-Islamist, if he is unaware of or ignores or denies the jihad imperative.

It is entirely possible for a Muslim to be unaware of it or to ignore it, or even to believe that it is Islamically illegitimate, given that in various areas of the Islamic world that imperative had been deemphasized and even forgotten for centuries until the contemporary Salafist movement has revived it. A Muslim can pray five times a day and even recite the Qur'an without ever confronting the necessity to make war against and subjugate the infidels -- particularly if Arabic is not his first language. And for the less devout, this is even easier." (Robert's words)

However, knowing what the Holy Land Foundation trial revealed...that there has been a 20 year effort to insinuate islam into our country, knowing that a number of years ago moslems were protesting that the Saudis were placing wahabbi imams in mosques (80 % was the number being bandied about), knowing that I am seeing women and even middle school age girls wearing head scarves that I know I never saw pre 9/11, being aware of the islamic compounds in the US and of the number of plots that have been carried our (mall shootings, and the DC snipers among them) and the number of plots that have been discovered and thwarted......

I'm guessing that the teaching on the imperative nature of jihad in islam is being taught as well in the mosques.

Posted by: eve_anne_gelical at January 9, 2008 9:59 AM

Ibn Warraq in his recent FPM interview that there indeed may be moderate muslims but that in no way is there such as thing as moderate islam.

Posted by: j_not_a at January 9, 2008 10:09 AM

If, literally, Islamic doctrine were miraculously somehow transformed overnight into a benign philosophy of life, there are still many millions of hitlerian "fanatics" in the pipeline who have already been indoctrinated from birth--in the tens of thousands of madrassas, mosques, and "Islamic centers" across the globe--in the core Mohammedan doctrines of hate, intolerance, and death worship.

All of us "infidels" alive today are already condemned to suffer countless vicious attacks, throughout remainder of our lives, from this Islamic pipeline of fanatics who will dedicate their lives and souls to violent death, abject slavery, and wanton cultural destruction.

In reality it will take centuries for the Islamic ideology to change for the better, if indeed, it ever does go in that direction (which I seriously doubt).

To get any kind of reformation process going, Islamic ideology must be openly confronted by the infidels every day in every way. That confrontation begins by always telling the truth about it and about the Mohammedan depredations throughout history. That confrontation includes demanding accountability from Islamic leaders and thinkers and imams. That confrontation includes publicly ridiculing and exposing the apologists and liars. That confrontation means keeping eternal vigilance on the current Islamic empire. That confrontation means unapologetically keeping the Mohammedan barbarians, as best we can, outside our gates. That confrontation means keeping the outside Islamic world under overwhelming technological and military domination.

This defensive confrontational effort is sad, but essential. It is a tragic waste of human energy, resources, and intellectual capital. By the pirate Mohammed's design, such waste is the natural and inevitable legacy of the parasitic political cult called Islam.

Posted by: Stendec at January 9, 2008 10:12 AM

Further to the above, I got the sense that Ibn Warraq, like Tarek Fatah, still hope somehow that islam can moderated. I am stridently against that line of thought. Almost all the koran would have to be drasticallty rewritten or or comppleted deleted. What would islam be with a completely deeply-pared, ground-down, hollowed out, sand-blasted bleached scrubbed interpretative rewrite? There'd be nothing left to be recognized as the islamic koran. It's supposed to be allah's irrefutable unchangeable word for all time. If the book can't be changed, neither can the "faith" that it's based on.

Quite the opposite of Christianity. The reason it got into such disarray is because so many people drifted or were led astray by selfish or evil apostates or their own selfish or eveil ambitions(which Jesus warned before his death, would happen after his disappearance from the earthly scene). The Bible's core teachings stand the test of time and apply in principle then and now and forever.

"These are the two greatest commandements. To love Jehovah your God with your whole heart, mind and soul. And you must love your neighbor as yourself." Incredibly, lovely and simple. If everyone lived by these two commands, what a vastly improved world we would live in.

Nothing I've read about reforming Christianity was written about changing the or adding the original Bible scriptures. It was more about the eclesiastical organizational structure and how that should change being main impetus.

Some may disagree with my point and that's okay. But I won't back down from why I believe islamic reformation is impossible. True muslims believe the koranic commands and exhortations to kill all infidels and jews and take over their lands and resources and bring about a world wide islamic caliphate ruled by sharia law by any and all means necessary. That, my friends, is the ugly truth.

Posted by: j_not_a at January 9, 2008 10:30 AM

If Pipes has claimed that there are no differences between him and Spencer, as is written above, one wonders how he can reconcile that claim with his insistence over so long a period that "Islam can be whatever Muslims want to be" and that "moderate Muslims are the solution" with what Spencer and others have written at this website and elsewhere. For that view does not overlap with, but disagrees with, the views encapsulated in those two phrasees ("moderate Muslims are the solution" and "Islam can be whatever Muslims want it to be").

At the edges of Islam there may be a few minor groups that out of highly idiosyncratic histories have managed to de-emphasize all the dangerous (for Infidels) parts of Islam. Spencer mentions the Ahmadis. I would add the Ismaili sect, whom many will know through their worth-his-weight-in-diamonds weigh-ins of their leader the Aga Khan, and know of the Aga Khan through his support of the study of Islamic architecture and for the preservation of Islamic monuments.

At this website, and a few others, the notion that Islam is a kind of playdough, malleable, has not been accepted but criticized. It has been criticizied as not only wrong, but as deceptive, and dangerous as the basis for Western, or other Infidel, policy. It keeps the emphasis on the search for, promotion of, a factitious and shape-shifting "Moderate Muslim" (see "Ten Thinks to Think When Thinking Of Moderate Muslims"). All that has come out of the dreamy belief that there are plenty of permanently "moderate" Muslims on whom we can rely, if only we assume the Infidel Man's (Permanent) Burden, and bring them, those moderates-in-waiting, to the broad smiling uplands of "prosperity" (sometimes mistakenly identified with free market fundamentalism), and "unity" and so on. That way the madness of Tarbaby Iraq lies, with the endless effort, and the ever-receding mirage of a stable state at the end, after how many conceivable trillions of dollars, and how much damage to our military and to our treasury. And meanwhile, the failure to grasp the essential meaning, and menace of Islam (not merely "Wahhabi" Islam, or "extremist" Islam), delays the day when Americans come to realize that in Iraq the only thing that makes sense is to steadily focus on a result that will weaken the Camp of Islam, and that can be achieved not by keeping Iraq together under some "moderate" and "one-nation-building" regime in Baghadad (in any case, that goal is unattainable), and the only way to achieve that result is to stop dwelling on the "moderate Muslims" who supposedly can inherit Iraq, or at least take heart from its example, and instead, having a grimmer view of Islam, to regard the pre-existing fissures in Iraq as an an opportunity to be exploited, and not as an obstacle to be overcome.

If for the United States the Iraq folly has been based partly on the notion that "moderate Muslims are the solution," the European folly has been based on the notion that "Islam can be whatever Muslims want it to be." The belief by some (in France, in the Netherlands, in Great Britain, in Germany) that if they get rid of the baleful effect of Saudi ("Wahhabi") money, and if the government pays for mosques, and hires (and chooses) the imams, that this will somehow lead to a transformation of Islam. But how can it? In the end, as water seeks its own level, Muslims, or a great many of them, will seek the real Islam, contained in the texts -- Qur'an, Hadith, Sira. They will, for as long as possible, those government-sponsored imams, pocket Infidel funds. The government-mosques will either be ignored, or if attended, they will require constant government monitoring, at great expense, to make sure there is no "backsliding" into Islam, the real Islam, the Islam that will continue to be taught, continue to be availalbe in bookstores in Muslim neighborhoods, on audiocassettes, videocassettes, on the Internet, on satellite television. How do those who make these plans for the "integration," say, of French Muslims into French society propose to hermetically seal off French Muslims from the real Islam? Even assuming that a certain percentage of Muslims can be wooed and won -- most likely wooed and won to drop Islam altogether -- how large is that percentage? Is it to be 5%, 15%, 20%, 80% of the rapidly-increasing Muslim population?

And just as one might ask, how long will the Americans squander resources in Iraq, ignoring the threats presented world-wide to Infidels, a threat not in the slightest diminished by what the Americans now would call "winning in Iraq" (the "winning" at this point means preventing the very things we should be welcoming, and doing nothing to discourage -- ethnic and sectarian fissures that can only cause great problems for Iraq and Iraq's Muslim neighbors, which should rightly be seen as a Good Thing), one must ask how long the European governments will continue to delay their own recognition of a permanent, and growing, internal threat -- through use of the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest -- as they vainly put their hopes on government-financed programs of "integration" that, in turn, are based on a subliminal acceptance of the notion that "Islam can be whatever Muslims want it to be" and because those Muslims are on the soil of Europe, they will no doubt be overwhelmed by obvious European civilizational superiority (would that it were so, but they won't) and will, en masse, embrace what Tariq Ramadan slyly calls a "European Islam" -- as if there were a "Euroopean" version of the Qur'an, the Hadith, the Sira.

No inquiry or discussion ensues as to how bowlderized the texts of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira would have to be for the adherents of Islam to pose no threat. And no one answers the question, no one even raises the question, as to how the authentic, unbowdlerized, 1300-year-old (Qur'an), or 1200-year-old (Sira), or 1100-year old (Hadith, as winnowed by the muhaddithin), texts of Islam would somehow be hermetically sealed off from the Muslim masses (for the masses are what count) in Europe, in order for Muslims to be able to permanently "integarate" into French, British (your European country here) societies, without transforming, or endangering, the politial and legal institutions, and social arrangements and understandings, of those countries.

The statement of Pipes to Spencer, that they "do not disagree," may reflect his recognition that Jihad Watch was presenting a view that in its coherence and sense, was unassailable, and perhaps a behind-the-scenes appeal might lessen the criticism here of the views that Pipes, and many others (Gordon England is a believer, obviously, in the view that we should locate, and then rely, on the good-hearted "moderate Muslims" who assure us that Muslims such as themselves can "make Islam whatever they want it to be") have expressed.

Those who would have us believe that "Islam can be whatever Muslims want it to be" and those who find this view wrong and dangerous, and who argue that the texts and tenets have proven themselves not to be flexible or to be interpreted-away, cannot both be right. One is, and one isn't. There are those who may misstate their own views for other reasons. They may find that this makes them more acceptable in the corridors of power, or keeps those rewarding lecture-tour calendars booked up. And perhaps they tell themselves that that is what matters most. And one might be inclined to agree, and to admire (or envy) such an entrepreneurial spirit, if such views did not have real consequences, right now, at a time when the Western world still reels in confusion.

For me, the deciding vote has already been cast. It has been cast by those articulate defectors from Islam, those who were born into it and managed, mentally and emotionally (the tug of family, and filial piety, can be strong), in the advanced and free West, to find their way out. Neither Ibn Warraq, nor Ayaan Hirsi Ali, nor Wafa Sultan, not any of those apostates with that level of intelligence, has publicly agreed with Pipes. Publicly, and privately, they have disagreed completely with his expressed views. Who do you think knows more about Islam and what goes on inside families, societies, states suffused with Islam? Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan -- or those who hold out hope that the "moderate Muslims" can "make Islam anything they want"?

As for Tashbih Sayyed, even if he called himself a Muslim, I don't believe he was. I think he found it convenient to continue to call himself that for various reasons; others, in the views they express publicly, may be prompted by similar considerations.

As for Steel, the statement he makes deserves dissection:

"I want to be more optimistic. I believe Pipes is correct. In the long run the present day fanatics will “die off” eventually burning out for at least one or two hundreds years, before they reappear.

He begins with a statement not about facts, and logic, but about desire, about his desire. "I want to be optimistic." Oh, he does, does he? But what if the situation does not warrant such optimism? And so, wanting to be "more optimistic," which explains everything, he tells us that "I believe Pipes is correct." Why? Because he wants to be optimistic, that's why. That's why he believes. Credo quia absurdum.

And then he provides his astonishing time-line:

"In the long run the present day fanatics will “die off” eventually burning out for at least one or two hundreds [sic] years, before they reappear."

Really? So we have a good one hundred, two hundred years, while those "fanatics" will "die off" ("burning out")? Why? Why will they "burn out"? What will cause them to do so? And by the way, since you have dared to predict the duration of their "burning out" -- it will last "for at least one hundred or two hundreds [sic] years" -- perhaps he could tell us two things.

The first thing is: what will cause those "fanatics" to "die off" (for at least 100-200 years, mind you, before they come back with a vengeance? And when will those "present day fanatics" start to "die off"? Will it be in a hundred years? In fifty years? In twenty years? Is it perhaps happening right now, so that we needn't worry a bit about what is happening in France, in Germany, in Great Britain?

Has there ever been,in the history of the West, such confusion and misunderstanding, only some of it the product of native imbecility?

Posted by: Hugh at January 9, 2008 10:53 AM

Hmmmm. "I want to be optimistic ..." If you are an analyst, why not let yourself be ruled by the available evidence? It would appear that the evidence would lead a rational observer to conclude that moderate muslims are either a tiny minority of muslims or largely without influence in the muslim world.

"Wanting", "wishing", "hoping", ... have no place among serious people. After all, many of us want to be taller, more handsome, prettier, richer, etc. But, serious people don't expend much energy upon such pointless exercises.

Who said, "We must sit, as children, before fact ..."? The facts available about islam do not lead a serious person to optimism. "Want to be optimistic ..."? Please. You are wasting my time.

Posted by: Havoc at January 9, 2008 11:08 AM

Steel wrote:

Giants such Tashbih Sayyed [recently deceased editor of Muslim World Today] is proof that a devout Muslim could both be pro-American and anti-Islamist.

Spencer wrote:

His thought did not reflect the positions of an established sect -- and that is just one reason why he was not "proof that a devout Muslim could both be pro-American and anti-Islamist."

Followed by:

But it undercuts Steel's assumption that Tashbih Sayyed somehow proved that "a devout Muslim could both be pro-American and anti-Islamist" -- at least if by "devout" Steel means representing a mainstream, orthodox position.

It seems to me there is nothing wrong with Steel's original statement above. The word "devout" is typically defined simply as "devoted to religion." It makes no implications about orthodoxy, and could well reflect nothing but a personal attitude toward a religion. I wish we had many more "devout" Muslims who were as willing as Sayyed to reinterpret and innovate...

Posted by: kamala at January 9, 2008 11:49 AM

Tariq Ramadan is a peaceful muslim isn't he? He's a prime example of a moderate Muslim isn't he? Same with those other Muslims Mr. Spencer debates with, the one's that are denying reality, or lying through there teeth. They are moderate Muslims right?

I can't call those that deny reality at the kafurs expense moderate in any way. Lying or denying reality, spinning things, ommitting things is what I see from so called moderate muslims who are everywhere. Making absurd comparisons, as if it even excuses Islam for it's menace.

Someone posted a link up regarding Paltalk. Those moderate muslims that people want to rest their hopes on are gathering a million signatures to close down talk rooms that talk about Islam in a negative light. Those are the moderate muslims doing that....and we need to rely on them to save us?

Sure, most Muslims in teh world today dont' pick up guns wanting to shoot people, but that doesnt' make them moderate. There is no moderate Islam, so how can one rest one's hopes, in order to be optimistic, on something that doesn't exist?

An article was just posted here a few days ago, about what constitutes a true moderate Muslim. If those questions were asked in the Muslim world....how many would come out from the examine as moderates?

If you asked a moderate Muslim...what do you think of Mohammad robbing caravans, killing the merchants, kidnapping and ransoms of......the mass murders, tortures, banishing Jews, assassination of anyone who was a political rival, or wrote poems that offended the Prophet?

Do these moderate Muslims see this as religous or as good? Do they look the other way and say well, it was the Meccans who started things when their own scriptures clearly say otherwise, thereby lying and denying? Would they continue to support Islam? How can they disrespect, or question the acts of the Prophet of Islam and continue being a devout Muslim, continue following a faith where the founder was doing ungodly things? They can keep the faith while denouncing the founder of that faith?

There isn't a moderate Islam because the founder wasn't moderate and I don't have any optimism at all in that the majority of the worlds muslims would denounce their Prophets (der fuhrer) actions, denounce Islamic supremacism, fighting for Allahs cause (Jihad), denounce the non muslim status of dhimmitude....denounce the wests right to self defense.

How many Muslims would, after all this, still be classified as moderates? I think a minority, a tiny minority of moderates.

Avoiding the problem won't help solve it. Pretending that there are a majority of moderate muslims just because the majority don't pick up weapons and kill is dangerous logic. Pretending that Islam can be reformed is dangerous logic. Pretending that Islams Jihad will just go away is again, dangerous. Lets be honest here, Islam was formed off a lie, a pagan scam of Qusays that Mohammad ripped off, mixed in with some stolen scriptures, some ripped off hanif poetry and voila, Islam as we have it. The Prophet was a sex crazed, demonic warlord, and the first Muslims were mercenaries working only for booty.

The reformation of Islam already happened, and it was a bloody campaign. If they try and reform Islam, they would have to rip out the Medinan period, in which case, Islam would cease to exist.

Moderate Muslims? Pfft ! I've spoken too often with "moderate muslims". I've read too often about these "moderate" Muslims. No way I rest my hopes with them.

Posted by: Sneakyzionistcrusader at January 9, 2008 12:27 PM

Robert,

I like the wording 'peaceful Muslims' instead of 'moderate'. Although the word peace and peaceful has taken on barnacles of revision. Maybe another word could be found like 'basic' to describe the most numerous type of Muslim.

Actually I was looking for an antonym for the word radical and realized that the use of that word is the cause of the problem. As has been stated before "Islam is Islam" it is the west that has characterized it with the miss defined adjectives. I am not fond of the wording 'fundamental Muslim' (although that IMO is the most accurate description) because in our society 'fundamental Christian' is quickly linked as both being bad. Were the two are as opposite as can be as far as threat is concerned.

I posted yesterday on another thread. "To call a Muslim moderate is like saying the color red is sour." So, the use and miss use of words in these discussions is all important and maybe a careful defining of words is needed at the beginning.

Posted by: Im.mad.as.HELL! at January 9, 2008 12:37 PM

"In the long run the present day fanatics will “die off” eventually burning out for at least one or two hundreds years, before they reappear."

There seems to be a suggestion here that there is something inherently regressive in Islam, that it can't maintain a steady course of progressive to a more a more peaceful, enlightened Islamic future. Why assume that the fanatics will appear at all, and will continue to do so, periodically, every century or so, unless there is some scriptural bases for doing so?

With Christianity, so long as Christians continue following the teachings of Jesus Christ, we can assume that we have forever left the dark ages behind us, and there's no reason to believe we'll be slipping backwards into a less enlightened past.

With Islam, the slippage factor is always present in Islamic teaching. There is always a baises for Fanatics to raise their ugly heads. It just takes a close reading the Koran and Hadieth to insure that.

Posted by: rational at January 9, 2008 1:16 PM

Surah 9.5: "And when the forbidden months have passed, slay the unbelievers everywhere they are found; besiege them, capture them, torture them, prepare every stratagem of warfare against them; levy the tax upon their conversion to the ways of al-lah..."

So rages the homicidal Muhammad in the Kuran against ALL "unbelieving" souls (and this guy did not just mean Conservative unbelieving ones either)!!! Why is the evil contained in this and other such Kuranic passages so tough to make out? From where I sit, a child could see this better than any limosine liberal apparently does.

Why do people who know absolutely ZERO about Islam and what it teaches INSIST that those who take a critical viewpoint of this ideology are automatically wrong or pathological (I mean, how would they know?). But more importantly how do we expose this hardcore denial and antagonism as a pathological and dangerous mentality that threatens the future of all citizens of the United States of America?

Only until this knee-jerk mentality is effectively dismantled and exposed for what it is nationwide will Americans have a chance at a more secure future.

Until then it is an uphill battle.

Posted by: pythagoras at January 9, 2008 2:57 PM

1. 'Moderate Muslims' are as rare as Big Foot, the Yeti and the Tasmanian tiger.

2. 'Moderate Muslims' are equal to 'moderate Nazi's' or the girl that is just 'a little bit' pregnant'.

3. 'Moderate Muslims' are in some peoples opinion the nominal Muslims who don't pray or go to the mosques, but do nothing to warn us against what Islam is or what Islam does. They are not with us but more likely with them.

4. 'Moderate Muslims' always turn out to be very immoderate when taken to the cleaners: see Tariq Ramadan

Terrorism works: after every terror attack the dhimmi's are more inclined to make concessions. To me only the apostate is acceptable, because Islam is not moderate, and the 'radicals'-, the true believers, always have the upper hand. And the numbers!

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at January 9, 2008 3:12 PM

"But such a "philosophy" is never going to emerge or prevail by pretending that the content of existing Islamic theology is other than what it is -- as so many people today are so eager to do."

May I add as the re-writing of Islamic history is going unchallenged.

I found this article at the Westminster Journal, titled "Al Qaeda Lambasted By Al Oadah", a particularly good example of the right intentions, but using revisionist history and picking texts out of context, simply the emporer parading around naked.

For example -
"The Prophet (peace be upon him) brought all of Arabia under his sway without a single slaughter, despite all of the battles that were waged against him. The number of people who were killed during the twenty-three years of his mission were less than two hundred people. The Muslims who were killed during that time by their enemies were many times in excess of that number."

http://www.westminsterjournal.com/content/view/63/1

I'm sure bin laden will have his epiphany.

Posted by: chrisse at January 9, 2008 3:17 PM

Does anyone know who sponsors the Web Site and Blog entitled "Muslims Against Sharia." This site is so "moderate" that it gives the impression of being scripted by a pro-western non-Muslim. What am I missing about that site? http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/

Posted by: Moochie at January 9, 2008 3:42 PM

The one who does not have a fatwa on his head, among Steel, Pipes and Spencer, has got it wrong.

Posted by: Tom Peters at January 9, 2008 4:20 PM

Moochie

Whoever sponsors http://muslimsagainstsharia. it seems interesting and worth watching..thanks

Posted by: pismopal at January 9, 2008 6:36 PM

Moochie,

Muslims Against Sharia is run by pro-Western Muslims. What did you see on the site than made you doubt its Islamic nature?

Posted by: Muslims Against Sharia at January 9, 2008 6:46 PM

"Defined strictly as people who identify themselves as Muslims but will never participate in jihad warfare against the West, and who live peaceful lives, moderate Muslims are an overwhelming majority."

How can we define these people moderate Muslims?

If people who identify themselves as Muslims but will never participate in jihad warfare against the West, yet sympathize with (or perhaps support) those that do participate in jihad warfare, how can we define these moderates?

Posted by: monk at January 10, 2008 7:29 AM