A chewy, sweet, nougaty center to Islam?

A day after I wrote my essay about “false moderates”, I notice today that frontpagemagazine.com trots out yet another in a long line of nice, decent, intelligent “moderate” Muslims who are supposed to represent an important part of the solution to the hoary and formidable problem of Islam.

Over the years, frontpagemagazine.com has had many interviews, guest columns and round-table discussions with such alleged “moderates” , including Fouad Ajami, Thomas Haidon, and Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, among others. The position of Jamie Glazov, its main editor, seems to conform roughly to (if not more strongly than) the Pipes Dream: I.e., that our salvation from the horrible menace pullulating out of the Muslim world will come from moderate Muslims.

The latest “moderate” featured on frontpagemagazine.com is Raheel Raza, according to Glazov a “leading Muslim reformer”.

Essentially what we get from Ms. Raza is what we get from all the other so-called “moderates” and “reformers” who choose to continue to call themselves Muslims: the message that the core, the heart of Islam is a good, harmless, sweet, chewy nougaty center, and that the mountain of bad stuff we see oozing and gushing out of Islam—not only now, not only throughout 1400 years of history, but also through the writings of its foundings texts—is all just an “extremist misunderstanding” and “hijacking” of that good, nougaty center.

Now, a woman like Ms. Raza cannot plead ignorance about Islam: she is intelligent, obviously well-read in the subject of Islam, and she grew up in the world of Islam and has known many Muslims throughout her life. She cannot plead ignorance. So what’s going on here? There are only two explanations for an intelligent Muslim telling us that there is a wonderful, harmless, chewy nougaty center to Islam: She either suffers from some serious mental delusion, or she is lying to us. There is no third alternative.

Bottom line: seemingly “moderate” Muslims like Ms. Raza cannot be trusted.

Even worse, the message she is working for is positively dangerous, for it reinforces the notion that there exist innumerable good and harmless Muslims out there, and this notion when believed by a majority (as it is now throughout the PC West) causes us to lower our guard and admit into the fabric of our societies innumerable Muslims, an indeterminate and indefinable number among them without a doubt who will set up terrorist cells to begin planning elaborate, horrific attacks against us that take years of careful planning and require the kind of deep penetration into our societies that we allow when we are gullible enough to believe such apparently sweet “moderates” as Ms. Raheel Raza.

Interestingly, I have noticed a growing healthy skepticism about these putative “moderates” among the “civilians” of the still inchoate anti-Islam movement—i.e., ordinary folk who just post comments or, like me, just have little blogs that hardly anybody reads. This trend seems to be growing among the “civilians” at a faster pace than among the “elites” of the still inchoate anti-Islam movement—i.e., those in the movement who enjoy a degree of fame, such as Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, Jamie Glazov, Robert Spencer, etc.

It seems that we “civilians”—at least an increasing number among us—are ahead of the learning curve, surpassing our teachers. Increasingly, it is we “civilians”, having learned about Islam at the feet of some of the aforementioned analysts, who are coming more and more to the screamingly obvious conclusion that there is nothing in Islam worthy of respect, and everything worthy of repulsion: All of Islam, from its beginnings with Mohammed through 1400 years of history to the present is a malignant mass of throbbingly evil, unjust and dangerous tissues, organs and limbs. This conclusion is evident from even a passing familiarity with the history of Islam, with its founding texts, with its laws, with its culture, and with the behaviors of its peoples.

Thus, when a so-called “moderate” Muslim come along—even when they look nice and harmless like the subject of today’s interview, Ms. Raza—we are compelled to conclude that he or she is either mentally delusional, or is lying to us: there is no third alternative. And if we conclude that about these so-called “moderates” , what are we to conclude about those persons in our own movement who show themselves to be so gullible as to fall for the sweet nothings of the “moderates” ?

There is no chewy, harmlessly sweet, nougaty center to Islam: at the heart of Islam there is only a venomous scorpion, and throughout its entire body of members course the dangerous toxins from that malignant heart.