Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Moderate Muslims
Former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote an op-ed for the New York Times called “Islam’s Silent Moderates.” In it she takes a closer look at the ’silent majority.’ Better, she wonders where these moderates who are supposed to form the majority are.
She starts off by recalling some horrible things that happened in the name of Islam / in the Islamic world in recent weeks: the woman who was punished for being raped, the British schoolteacher who was sentenced to 15 days in jail because she allowed students to call a teddy bear “Mohammed,” a Bangladeshi woman who has been forced to leave both Bangladesh and India because fundamentalists / extremists don’t appreciate her defending women’s rights.
She then writes:
It is often said that Islam has been “hijacked” by a small extremist group of radical fundamentalists. The vast majority of Muslims are said to be moderates.
But where are the moderates? Where are the Muslim voices raised over the terrible injustice of incidents like these? How many Muslims are willing to stand up and say, in the case of the girl from Qatif, that this manner of justice is appalling, brutal and bigoted — and that no matter who said it was the right thing to do, and how long ago it was said, this should no longer be done?
Usually, Muslim groups like the Organization of the Islamic Conference are quick to defend any affront to the image of Islam. The organization, which represents 57 Muslim states, sent four ambassadors to the leader of my political party in the Netherlands asking him to expel me from Parliament after I gave a newspaper interview in 2003 noting that by Western standards some of the Prophet Muhammad’s behavior would be unconscionable. A few years later, Muslim ambassadors to Denmark protested the cartoons of Muhammad and demanded that their perpetrators be prosecuted.
But while the incidents in Saudi Arabia, Sudan and India have done more to damage the image of Islamic justice than a dozen cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, the organizations that lined up to protest the hideous Danish offense to Islam are quiet now.
And then:
Islamic justice is a proud institution, one to which more than a billion people subscribe, at least in theory, and in the heart of the Islamic world it is the law of the land. But take a look at the verse above: more compelling even than the order to flog adulterers is the command that the believer show no compassion. It is this order to choose Allah above his sense of conscience and compassion that imprisons the Muslim in a mindset that is archaic and extreme.
When a “moderate” Muslim’s sense of compassion and conscience collides with matters prescribed by Allah, he should choose compassion. Unless that happens much more widely, a moderate Islam will remain wishful thinking.
And that’s indeed one of the major problems of the ‘Ummah.’ Many people assume that most Muslims disagree with the extremists but they don’t know for sure because this so-called majority doesn’t speak out when someone commits a terrible crime in the name of Islam.
My girlfriend / fiancée, her relatives and most of her friends are all Muslims and I can assure you that they disagree strongly with extremists, with the woman being punished in Saudi Arabia because she was raped (and said so publicly), with the teacher who had to run for her life after her students called a stuffed animal “Mohammed” and so on, but they too remain silent, mostly, when all these things are going on. I’ve spoken about this issue with several ‘moderate’ Muslims and I get the impression most of them simply don’t understand why they should speak out against it – the idea seems to be that the extremists aren’t (good) Muslims at all, and that it’s therefore silly to hold them, moderate Muslims, responsible for what those extremists do.
What’s more, the Muslims I interact with – most of them at least – are Turkish Muslims. In the West we often think that all Muslims are the same, but Turkish Muslims don’t think too highly of their Arabic co-religionists. Especially Saudi Arabia and Iran aren’t exactly popular countries and peoples in Turkey. Atatürk himself referred to Arabs as backwards. Many Kemalists today agree. In other words, they don’t consider the practices in the countries mentioned by Ayaan to be ‘Islamic,’ they consider them to be backwards.
And why, they argue, do people ask them to organize protests against something they don’t associate with in any way whatsoever?
Does that mean that ‘moderate Muslims’ are right not to speak out? In my opinion not. If for nothing else, then they should speak out against violence committed in name of their religion, for their religion. Islam has a bad name because of what extremists do and because moderate Muslims don’t speak out en masse against it.
Indeed, where are the moderates? Ayaan has found herself to be on the receiving end of the Islamists who seek her death because she dares to question the treatment of women in the Islamic world. She’s in need of constant security to protect her against jihadis who wish to murder her because of her apostasy (anyone who doesn’t strictly adhere to the precepts of Sharia are considered apostate and subject to death). Highlighting the misogyny that is institutionalized in Islam is a crime worthy of a fatwa – death.
A “fatwa” is a religious decree which could be about anything. Having said that, there may indeed be Imams out there who have issued a fatwa declaring that it’s perfectly alright for Muslims to kill Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Of course, there are also many Muslims who disagree with that – and for those who wonder, I know some of them such as my girlfriend, her sisters, her mother, her father, her brothers-in-law, her nieces, her nephews, frankly every single Muslim I consider to be a friend or relative – and one always has to wonder which Imam decrees what. What’s the impact? What’s the support for it, etc. Any fool can issue a fatwa. That doesn’t mean that all Muslims should do what this person says nor that all or most Muslims take it seriously. The far majority of, at least, Turkish Muslims for instance ignores fatwas coming out of – say – Saudi Arabia or Pakistan with the idea ‘they’re Arabs.’
More from Charles Johnson.
I think they simply have to state "We don’t think that deserves to be called congruous with Islam".
I think part of the disconnect comes from groups like "Organization of the Islamic Conference" mentioned in the text. The problem is that they are quick to bristle at any westerner suggesting Islam is violent because they don’t wish to damage the image of Islam, but they ignore the people who are REALLY damaging the image of Islam, other Muslims. The Muslims in the West who protest (peacefully) every time a westerner denigrates Islam do not protest in proportion every time a Muslim denigrates Islam by his actions.
I can appreciate the situation of your fiancé’s family and friends. Islam has a billion followers, it’s not really fair to hold them responsible for the actions of all of them. In addition, Islam in many places punishes those who do not punish, so that if you speak out against something unfair, you too could become a victim. Christians in the west can speak out as much as they like against Christian fundamentalists, they almost certainly will not be hurt, partly because Christian fundamentalists are nowhere near as violent, and because the countries they inhabit, being secular, would never tolerate it. The same is not true of Muslims. Ayaan herself, and others who speak out, are testaments to how brave you must be to go against such forces.
On the other hand, moderate Muslims have an inevitable and nasty choice. They can either risk it and start to speak out, or they can be quiet and allow the extremists to be their only voice, the only face of Islam most non-Muslims ever see and therefore base their ideas on. It’s not a fair choice, but that doesn’t make it less real.
The biggest problem is that most Western policy elite are on the Saudi payroll. i.e: they have consulted, done business worth millions. State Dept, EU, Law Firms fighting US Govt, Judges etc Albright, James Baker, ……CIA Staffers, Ivy League campuses etc on this endless list So it is always one step forward and two step back on tackling the Jihadist problem. The so call moderates you talk about stay quite because they to a large degree believe Islam should be supreme on Earth even-though they might not agree with the lashing of the raped girl. These Armani Islamist are the most dangerous, the true snakes amongst us. Saudi Prince Bin Talal who owns chunks of Apple, and Four Seasons also funds suicide bombers. With moderates like that nothing will ever change.
All of this violence has more to do with a rise in Leftist co-operation with Muslim fanatics than it does with a real, fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. Deliberately extreme and provocative stances are being taken, in part to impress anti-West Leftists (so as to get more aid and weapons), in part to force a response from the US and Israel. Meanwhile new Muslim insurgent groups keep on appearing, replete with arms and support from Russia and the PRC, and from states like Iran which are trying to court their approval.
All this has more to do with contemporary ideology and politics – in particular, Marxian politics and ideology – than it does with any religious extremism.
Although I agree that something needs to be done with regards to Saudi Arabia, I think you’re wrong to call these people ‘moderates.’ They’re not. They’re willing to do whatever is necessary to make millions each year and to remain in power. No, the real moderate Muslims are people like my fiancée and her family.
As I said, they don’t speak out – unless asked about a specific case – because they think they don’t have to. As I also wrote, I disagree with that: I think they should.
I can agree with that to a degree at least. It seems to me that even someone like Bin Laden is quite influenced by especially European leftist radicals. Read some of the anti-American propaganda spread by Bin Laden, it comes right out of the anti-American European playbook.
How can these Turkish people remain Muslim if they despise the Arabs — Wasn’t Mohammad an Arab?
You’d have to ask them that, but my guess is that they believe that Mohammed was pretty modern in his day in age – which is correct – while the Arabs of today are anything but.
Turkey, ‘moderate’ Turkey, or ‘liberal/secular’ Turkey, it doesn’t exist. Ataturks attempt to bring Turkey out of the Islamic mess lasted merely 70 years and now the 500 pound gorilla called Islam is taking it back. Can anybody explain why this moderate Turkey is now 99% Islamic, when just hundred years ago it was (still) almost to% Christian? What do we know about the Armenians and the Greeks who used to live there?We better start learning (and teaching) history without blinkers instead of political correctness.
Correction: was supposed to read "50% Christian" 100 years ago.
Actually, I know a lot about Turkish history, and Ottoman history, including why many Greek left. For instance: Greece and Turkey traded citizens after the first World War. Muslims went to Turkey, Christians went to Greece.
O, and you never visited Turkey I am sure, because if you had you wouldn’t say something that’s utterly ridiculous such as this: "Turkey, ‘moderate’ Turkey, or ‘liberal/secular’ Turkey, it doesn’t exist."
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
<blockquote>Islam has a bad name because of what extremists do and because moderate Muslims don’t speak out en masse against it.</blockquote>
That’s exactly right. The more the saner Muslims keep quiet, the more they allow their religion to be defined by the nutjobs and the more *that* perception, especially amongst non-Muslims, becomes reality. It’s not fair, but then neither is life.
Islam and violence have a long history. That history didn’t start when Jews started returning to Israel. It started with Mohammad.
Christianity spread for the first three hundred years in spite of the oppression of the Roman Empire. In contrast, Islam specifically spread from the beginning through war. North Africa and the rest of the Mediterranean were once Christian communities.
Muslims occupied Spain for hundreds of years, overran Greece, went to France and the gates of Vienna before the founding of the United States, which itself was the victim of Muslim aggression at its birth.
With centuries of violence, hatred and resentment at its core, is it any wonder that Islam has killed civilians since 9-11 in England, Indonesia, Sudan, France, India, Spain, Pakistan, Egypt, America, Iraq, Israel, Thailand, Jordan, Holland, and so many other countries?
There are moderates in Islam: the mothers, sisters and daughters who are terrified of being stoned to death for being raped. Sadly, they have no voice without the unflinching courage of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
As an apostate Muslim, I think it’s necessary to clear something up. Anyone reasonable person who reads the Qu’ran (in the order of its "revelation") and the Hadith (the life stories of Mohammed) must come away with a few conclusions: 1. the teachings of Mohammed are geared toward war and violence; 2. the teachings of Mohammed are misogynistic; 3. the teachings of Mohammed promote polygamy, slavery, and pedophilia. Islam is only a "religion of peace" to the extent that it teaches that ONCE ISLAM TAKES OVER THE WORLD and all is for Allah, then there will be "peace."
All Muslims (and non-Muslims) need to understand that the "extremists" are simply living their lives according to the teachings of Mohammed. There’s no "context" that can save what Mohammed wrote – if you’re a Muslim, then you believe the Qu’ran is the word of Allah, and it is immutable. DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT! Read the Qu’ran and the Hadith – and do NOT simply believe what your imam and your friends are telling you – go to the source and make up your OWN minds! (Non-Muslims should do this too!) I am a reasonable person who grew up with somewhat strict Muslim parents, but (like many Muslims) I never took the time to read the Qu’ran and the Hadith cover to cover IN ENGLISH – once I did, the only reasonable thing that I could do was to immediately, and publicly, become an apostate. (Note that I fully understand that the punishment for becoming an apostate, according to the rules set down by Mohammed, is death – I don’t care. I’m an American first – and I fully recognize that the teachings of Islam as laid down by Mohammed can not co-exist with being an American citizen. I do not want to see Sharia law replace the Constitution – if I truly believe what Mohammed taught, then I should be doing what I can to see Sharia law become the law of the land in the U.S. – and that is insane.)
The "extremists" are killing people not in their name alone – they think they’re doing it on YOUR behalf as well! They think they’re saving the Ummah and spreading Islam so that all is for Allah. Muslims – wake up! If we want to end this insanity, Muslims around the world need to publicly, and loudly, proclaim that they are apostates.
a Bangladeshi woman who has been forced to leave both Bangladesh and India because fundamentalists / extremists don’t appreciate her defending women’s rights.
I am Sorry, but you have an error in your sentence.
Taslima is still in India and under the protection of the Union Government. She has made it clear that she prefers to live in Kolkata (Calcutta) and make India her home and we are most glad to welcome her and protect here. Of course Islamic fundamentalists will try hard to dislodge her.
Hirsi Ali is an atheist. Her comments are highly insulting & she likes to lump every muslim as bad. I think I read in an interview that muslims need "to be defeated & after that they can mutate into something more peaceful" Not the terrorist mind you, but all muslims…
She said she wants to become a voice for women an Islam? How come? She’s not a muslim, & you shouldn’t start by insulting the people of which you want to be "voice"
As for peninsular arabs, well, Indonesians don’t think highly of them too. Especially since we send a lot of workers over there (mainly women) & all we hear are they getting raped, beaten, pretty much enslaved, salary not being paid & MURDERED…
No, we don’t have good impression of them either…
Most of the American Muslim establishment is comprised of Islamist groups claiming to be moderates. True moderate Muslims reject Islamic supremacy and Sharia; embrace religious equality and democracy.
Poll: <a href="http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2008/01/poll-who-is-moderate-muslim.html">Who is a moderate Muslim</a>?
Michael – good observations. I think part of the self-imposed silence of Muslims such as those you know derives from a culture (I speak broadly of Muslim, not Turkish, culture) that does not recognize, empower, or encourage the individual voice, as does much of Western culture. The entire context of expression for any reason, let alone to affect or effect political change, is rooted in aspects of Western culture that have no analogs in Muslim culture. Unless that changes – unless a multitude of Ayaan Hirsi Alis arise to speak out from within Islam – then ‘moderate’ Muslims will stand by as extremists carry on the work of culling infidels from the earth.
Edited by MvdG: I have a lot of patience with people with psychological problems, but they too can cross the line. Comment deleted due to insults and misinformation.
There can be no terror acts if these terrorists are not supported by local so-called moderate muslims. These Muslims are not
moderate but silent supporters of radical Islam.
http://globeonline.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/making-of-an-unbeliever/