Remember, the "Better Cop" Muslims depend on the Useful Idiocy not of Leftists, or of liberals, or of the Politically Correct Multi-Culturalists -- but of those in the Counter-Jihad. The Better Cops are infiltrating the Counter-Jihad, to reinforce the inhibition, the semi-conscious fear prevalent in the Counter-Jihad, of progressing to a Zero Tolerance against All Muslims.
And, if a Better Cop Muslim may not always enjoy the Usefully Idiotic trust handed to them on a silver platter (as, for example, Jamie Glazov does in his recent interviews we will discuss below with two of them, and granted a prominent platform on Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch), they can at least count on a general muddle of incoherence in the Counter Jihad civilian population -- where various Counter-Jihadists may balk at the notion of a "free thinking Muslim" and of the notion of "Islamic reform", and may scratch their heads in puzzlement at why these Muslims seem so wonderfully on our side; but they won't go further in their logical conclusion to realize that an Asra Nomani or a Shireen Qudosi (two of the Better Cops we feature today) embody the impossibility of the Square Circle.
There's no need, really, to examine the words of any Better Cop Muslim -- whether of an Asra Nomani or a Shireen Qudosi or Joe Schmoehammed -- if, that is, we have graduated to the Zero Tolerance. For the fruit of such a graduation is the realization that nothing a Muslim could possibly say could demonstrate they have earned our trust. In fact, the Good Cop Muslim and even more so, the Better Cop Muslim (my terms for two flavors of the "Moderate Muslim" -- the former good enough to fool the broader Western Mainstream, the latter more cleverly calculated to fool the growing Counter-Jihad) demonstrate by their affront to logic a more vivid example of the impossibility of Islamic "reform". This should be the nodus upon which the Counter-Jihadist focuses, as he reminds himself that under no circumstances can he trust an Asra Nomani or a Shireen Qudosi -- or a Zuhdi Jasser or a Maajid Nawaz or an Irshad Manji or a Tawfik Hamid or a Tarek Fatah or an Abdessamad Belhaj or an Islam Buheiry or a Hamel Abdel-Samad... et al. (qaeda).
So let's see how that representative sampling of the Counter-Jihad Mainstream (CJM), the civilians who comment on Jihad Watch (that bastion of the CJM), fare, shall we...?
Two articles posted on Jihad Watch, from Robert Spencer's Counter-Jihad friend Jamie Glazov, himself prominently featured on the Counter-Jihad site of Spencer's other Counter-Jihad friend, David Horowitz, offer up a revealing selection, in two separate video interviews with two different Better Cops -- Shireen Qudosi and Asra Nomani. As we said, the fact that Glazov trusts these two and it apparently never occurs to him to ask them probing, tough questions about the giant Camel in the Room (why they remain Muslim and, as such, we reasonably suppose, still revere Muhammad and the Koran), is not our focus today, since it's a given (see this Google page of my previous essays on Glazov).
Nor are we concerned today to call analytical attention to why David Horowitz and Robert Spencer, two luminaries in the Counter-Jihad Mainstream Leadership (and I've written plenty on Spencer over the years), see fit to endow Glazov with such a platform through which these Better Cops can better propagandize their Taqiyya Dawa to lull the Counter-Jihad Mainstream and reinforce its tendency to anxiously avoid progressing to a Zero Tolerance of All Muslims. We are here today only looking at the civilians of that Counter-Jihad Mainstream, and seeing how they handle these Better Cops.
Shireen Qudosi
The first article, titled Glazov Gang: Muslim Free Thinker Calls Out Linda Sarsour and the Women's March, is a video interview with Muslima Shireen Qudosi. She came on my radar before this, when I noted her potential qualification as a "Better Cop" from her Twitter page, positively glittering with tweets against all manner of "Islamist extremism". She finds in Zuhdi Jasser a mentor and ally in this movement of Islamic "reform", provocatively couched in terms of "We are fighting not a war with Islam, but a war within Islam" -- echoing Jasser's book, melodramatically titled: A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot's Fight to Save His Faith. Among her tweets is one titled: "It is our responsibility as American Muslims to speak out for the silent majority who aren't represented by theocracies & dictatorships." That's a silent majority of, evidently, Muslims Who Just Wanna Have a Falafel Sandwich and Apple Pie -- and who are all aghast, just as Shireen affects to be, at the minority of "Islamists" causing so many problems around the world.
The first thing to note is the small number of comments on these two articles, below the average on Jihad Watch. For a topic that cuts right to the heart of the problem of Muslims (that problem which the Counter-Jihad Mainstream studiously avoids tackling head-on), such an apparent disinterest is disheartening -- but not surprising.
Secondly, we note that among the measly 23 comments there, perhaps most of them express at least an appropriate degree of skepticism about the possibility of Glazov's titular phrase, a "Muslim free thinker". Thus, the first commenter's salvo right out of the box:
There is no such thing as a “Muslim free-thinker”. You believe the whole heap of shit or your reject the whole heap of shit,
The next commenter agrees:
I concur. The muslim mind is confined in a box with xyz dimensions sharia x sharia x sharia. The fourth dimension is 1400yrs. This mindset is not amenable to any kind of recognizable organic evolution. The immutable text imposes strictures that preclude free-thinking.
In the same vein, but now moving on to Shireen's chimerical hope for Islamic "reform", the third commenter notes aptly:
Shireen talks about reform that she can do in the USA but not in sharia countries. It sounds good but is not possible. Reform is still NEVER EVER POSSIBLE.
The temperature rises with the fourth comment:
This implies, at best, an uncertainty about whether Shireen is sincere or not -- leaning toward generously assuming she is, even if she's pursuing a pipe dream. Her avowal of Islamic "free thinking" and her calls for Islamic "reform", thus, are sincere, but confused attempts to "put lipstick on a pig". The commenter elaborates on that, making pretty clear his generous gift to Shireen of the Benefit of the Doubt:
Just because you were born into it, doesn’t mean you need to stay a Muslim. It’s not a racial ethnic group. You confuse what Islam IS or COULD BE by trying to invent your own fantasy version of Islam which would never, ever resemble anything invented or intended by the IslamoNazi Mohammad.
The commenter is assuming that Shireen doesn't know that her dream of reform is, in fact, trying to square the circle of an Islam impossible to reform. The commenter never bothers, apparently, to ponder how it could be that an intelligent 30-something Muslima who has been a Muslim all her life, and who spends most of her time studying the issue of Islamic reform, doesn't know something we all in the Counter-Jihad know, something exceedingly readily available to know (especially with the Internet). As Judge Judy (PBUHer) says, "If it doesn't make sense, it's probably not true." The only explanation for a Shireen Qudosi -- as for her mentor, Zuhdi Jasser (and all the other Better Cop Muslims) -- is either that they suffer a strangely severe brain damage; or, they are lying to us. The Counter-Jihad has to assume that there is no third alternative explanation that makes sense. And yet, as we shall see below, the Counter-Jihad Mainstream keeps pretending there could be a third alternative, which they never get around to articulating coherently.
The first article, titled Glazov Gang: Muslim Free Thinker Calls Out Linda Sarsour and the Women's March, is a video interview with Muslima Shireen Qudosi. She came on my radar before this, when I noted her potential qualification as a "Better Cop" from her Twitter page, positively glittering with tweets against all manner of "Islamist extremism". She finds in Zuhdi Jasser a mentor and ally in this movement of Islamic "reform", provocatively couched in terms of "We are fighting not a war with Islam, but a war within Islam" -- echoing Jasser's book, melodramatically titled: A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot's Fight to Save His Faith. Among her tweets is one titled: "It is our responsibility as American Muslims to speak out for the silent majority who aren't represented by theocracies & dictatorships." That's a silent majority of, evidently, Muslims Who Just Wanna Have a Falafel Sandwich and Apple Pie -- and who are all aghast, just as Shireen affects to be, at the minority of "Islamists" causing so many problems around the world.
The first thing to note is the small number of comments on these two articles, below the average on Jihad Watch. For a topic that cuts right to the heart of the problem of Muslims (that problem which the Counter-Jihad Mainstream studiously avoids tackling head-on), such an apparent disinterest is disheartening -- but not surprising.
Secondly, we note that among the measly 23 comments there, perhaps most of them express at least an appropriate degree of skepticism about the possibility of Glazov's titular phrase, a "Muslim free thinker". Thus, the first commenter's salvo right out of the box:
There is no such thing as a “Muslim free-thinker”. You believe the whole heap of shit or your reject the whole heap of shit,
The next commenter agrees:
I concur. The muslim mind is confined in a box with xyz dimensions sharia x sharia x sharia. The fourth dimension is 1400yrs. This mindset is not amenable to any kind of recognizable organic evolution. The immutable text imposes strictures that preclude free-thinking.
In the same vein, but now moving on to Shireen's chimerical hope for Islamic "reform", the third commenter notes aptly:
Shireen talks about reform that she can do in the USA but not in sharia countries. It sounds good but is not possible. Reform is still NEVER EVER POSSIBLE.
The temperature rises with the fourth comment:
This implies, at best, an uncertainty about whether Shireen is sincere or not -- leaning toward generously assuming she is, even if she's pursuing a pipe dream. Her avowal of Islamic "free thinking" and her calls for Islamic "reform", thus, are sincere, but confused attempts to "put lipstick on a pig". The commenter elaborates on that, making pretty clear his generous gift to Shireen of the Benefit of the Doubt:
Just because you were born into it, doesn’t mean you need to stay a Muslim. It’s not a racial ethnic group. You confuse what Islam IS or COULD BE by trying to invent your own fantasy version of Islam which would never, ever resemble anything invented or intended by the IslamoNazi Mohammad.
The commenter is assuming that Shireen doesn't know that her dream of reform is, in fact, trying to square the circle of an Islam impossible to reform. The commenter never bothers, apparently, to ponder how it could be that an intelligent 30-something Muslima who has been a Muslim all her life, and who spends most of her time studying the issue of Islamic reform, doesn't know something we all in the Counter-Jihad know, something exceedingly readily available to know (especially with the Internet). As Judge Judy (PBUHer) says, "If it doesn't make sense, it's probably not true." The only explanation for a Shireen Qudosi -- as for her mentor, Zuhdi Jasser (and all the other Better Cop Muslims) -- is either that they suffer a strangely severe brain damage; or, they are lying to us. The Counter-Jihad has to assume that there is no third alternative explanation that makes sense. And yet, as we shall see below, the Counter-Jihad Mainstream keeps pretending there could be a third alternative, which they never get around to articulating coherently.
One of the commenter's remarks, however, is searingly apposite.
I except [sic -- should be "expect" ] MORE from Jamie in questioning her self-identification of being a “free thinking” Muslim.
Meanwhile, as we move down the comments, we see a few repetitions of the theme:
How can you be a Muslim and free thinker at the same time. Surely these two are mutually exclusive. Please explain!
Note how this commenter ably gets to the first stage of thinking the matter through, but then suspends himself before taking the next logical step.
A couple of commenters down, we have someone who's getting warm:
How can you be a Muslim and free thinker at the same time?
Maybe Shireen Qudosi know that when she call herself “Muslim” instead of “ex-Muslim”, she could infiltrate the retard liberal. I should call myself Muslim now.
Maybe Shireen Qudosi know that when she call herself “Muslim” instead of “ex-Muslim”, she could infiltrate the retard liberal. I should call myself Muslim now.
This commenter is correct that by presenting herself as a "Muslim", Shireen makes her presentation (of selling the lemon of the used car of Islamic Reform) more appealing -- but he's wrong about the target audience. It is not so much directed at the "retarded liberal" -- that's the job of the standard-issue, garden-variety, bargain-basement Good Cop Muslim who just goes through the motions of "Islam is a religion of peace" and "we hate terrorism just like you do" etc.. The target audience of the Better Cops, like Shireen and others, is in fact the Counter-Jihad. And what is their goal? To reinforce the semi-consciously anxious inhibition prevalent among members of the Counter-Jihad Mainstream, to go all the way to a Zero Tolerance of All Muslims based on a Rational Prejudice Against All Muslims.
Next, we have a visit from "Mirren", our old Jihad Watch veteran commenter and member of the "Rabbit Pack" -- that high-school-clique-cum-lynch-mob of hall monitors who, as informally deputized by Robert Spencer's tech genius, "Marc", police the comments fields to make sure the Soft approach to the problem of Islam is enforced.
Mirren gets closer to the nub of the issue, but leaves the logical conclusion suspended in incoherence:
This woman, like Asra Nomani and Irshan Manjid (?) are either extremely subtle taqiyya artists, proficient in jihad of speech and pen, or are determined to espouse an islam that has no existence outside their own brains and emotions. [That bolded "or" is my added emphasis]
The Counter-Jihad (or better yet, the Anti-Islam Movement) should stop wondering whether or not any Muslims are sincerely "secular" or "reformist" or whatever. We should reasonably assume they are not, and stand by our rational prejudice against them. The stakes are too high in the next century to continue cultivate a waffling on this most essential point, which only tends to reinforce, as I said above, our anxious disinclination to suspect all Muslims equally.
Mirren goes on to thrash in her confusion on this point, achieving the rhetorical feat of muddling the glimmer she had so ephemerally grasped in her previous sentence quoted above:
Which I am totally at a loss to understand; if one is determined to ignore the hatefulness and violence *inherent* in islam, and cling to what can at most be described as morally neutral, why on earth not go the whole hog, and dump the entire putrescent mess, instead of trying to pretend there is something morally worthwhile in it ?
Another veteran Jihad Watcher, responding to Mirren, feels her incoherent pain:
I’ve been wondering the same thing for over a decade.
Will the Counter-Jihad Mainstream civilians be still scratching their heads about this when it's 2027, or 2037, or 2057...? After another thousand plus terror attacks have occurred, showing signs of further escalation world-wide (and increasingly in the West)...? Auguring the destruction of our precious West, made possible only by virtue of the fact that the West had not cultivated, in time, a zero tolerance against all Muslims, but allowed enough to dwell in the West who in later generations proved to be the agents of terror attacks too numerous and destabilizing to prevent a general breakdown of our technical and social infrastructures...? The grimly bleak answer, given how stuck the Counter-Jihad Mainstream remains in its rut, is: probably so.
Yet another Jihad Watch veteran chimes in, alluding to one of the Better Cop Muslims mentioned by Mirren, Irshad Manji, and accents the incoherent nonsense of this ridiculous indecision that seems to afflict the Counter-Jihad Mainstream:
I’m familiar with some of Irshad Manji’s earlier writings and web
page. Ali Sina once judged her to have her heart in the right place but
to be insufficiently familiar with the contents of the Quoran and I’d
concur with that appraisal.
I didn't know that about Ali Sina. If that's true, that makes Ali Sina himself suspect, since he's an ex-Muslim, and as such (and as an intelligent activist who has been studying and thinking about this issue for years) he should know better. That phrase, that Ali Sina "judged her to have her heart in the right place" reminds me of Robert Spencer, concerning that prominent Better Cop Muslim, Zuhdi Jasser (see my essay on this).
Another commenter appropriately rejects the message of Shireen --
What a load of utter drivel.
The notion that islam has any aspect whatsoever viable to be given the tag “moderate” or that there could ever exist a “free thinking muslim” is just complete nonsense.
Islam is thoroughly and wholly Evil.
Any consideration to the contrary is just impossible.
This commenter has aptly expressed one half of the problem. However, he (or she) doesn't put two and two together, leaving in suspense whether or not we must assume Shireen is sincere.
The notion that islam has any aspect whatsoever viable to be given the tag “moderate” or that there could ever exist a “free thinking muslim” is just complete nonsense.
Islam is thoroughly and wholly Evil.
Any consideration to the contrary is just impossible.
This commenter has aptly expressed one half of the problem. However, he (or she) doesn't put two and two together, leaving in suspense whether or not we must assume Shireen is sincere.
Then the same commenter who had responded approvingly to Mirren's confusion, reveals the soft nougat inside most every Counter-Jihad Mainstreamer:
Good luck, Shireen. You’re going to need it. Jasser has been espousing this idiocy for years now, but I don’t think he has a whole lot of muslim converts to his fantasy view of islam.
Echoed by another veteran Jihad Watch Softy:
Shireen is fighting the good fight. Whatever we non-Muslims say Islam is doesn’t matter. If enough Muslims believe in free thought, that becomes a significant sect within Islam. Good luck Shireen.
Some other guy, whose name I don't recognize to be a long-time commenter on Jihad Watch, weighs in by going even preposterously further:
I agree with you. I think she’s sincerely trying to reform Islam.
That is probably not possible, but she’s literally risking her life.
She is not the villain here, she’s heroic.
Meanwhile, more muddle from another apparently newbie commenter:
I have not heard Shireen before but I am greatly impressed by her views and her positive outlook. So don’t misunderstand me when I say I have the same question as other commentators here, viz. how is it possible to be a Muslim and a Freethinker? I truly would like to know... I really would l like to support Shireen Qudosi but the term “Muslim Freethinker” really has me puzzled.
(Note that none of the Jihad Watch veterans -- much less the members of the Rabbit Pack -- bother to move in to correct these eructations of muddled, starry-eyed nonsense.)
Given all the relatively intelligent confusion and incoherence exhibited by these Jihad Watchers quoted above, one welcomes an uncouth rant in all caps from one "Barbara" capturing incisively, if crudely, the gist of the whole thing.
"WHY IN THE HELL WOULD I WANT TO JOIN THIS MISFITS OF MUSLIM
GANG——IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MY COUNTRY THAT THEY ARE INFILTRATING
AND TRYING TO BRING DOWN BY COUNTRY AND GOV. I WOULD RATHER THEM GET
OUT OF HERE AND GO BACK TO WHAT EVER COUNTRY THEY BELONG. THEIR WAYS
ARE NOT MY COUNTRIES WAYS AND NEVER WILL BE.!!!!!!"
Asra Nomani
The number of comments for the "Glazov Gang" feature on Asra Nomani (a slightly more well-known Better Cop Muslim) is even paltrier: a mere 14 comments. And wouldn't you know it, our old friend and nemesis, "Angemon" -- the veritable "Energizer Bunny" of the "Rabbit Pack" who pestered me hundreds of times over the years for my tougher stance against Muslims when I was actively commenting on Jihad Watch -- sees fit to register his soft nougat on this:
I don’t know how influential the Muslim Reform Movement can actually be, but I wish them the best of luck.
Meanwhile, several comments are effusively offensive in their idiotic praise of Asra Nomani:
Asra Nomani,
Thanks for all you do. However, it is in the DNA of Islam that it can not be reformed. How can you change or reform something supposedly came directly from the mouth of ALLAH?
Another commenter ramps it up:
Thanks for all you do. However, it is in the DNA of Islam that it can not be reformed. How can you change or reform something supposedly came directly from the mouth of ALLAH?
Another commenter ramps it up:
Asra Nomani! That was one of the best interview I’v seen so far,
and you gave me a lot of belief and hope white your agenda; it’s worth
to fight for it. You are a brave, visionary and a genuine person, and
I’d like to help you spread it as far and wide as possible. I live in
Australia Any way I can help With the local community hear? I did – by
the way – Shard your interview with my fb friends. Stay strong. [this commenter even appended an emoticon of a rose at the end, just to rub in his useful idiocy...]
And, sounding that same note that seems to be thematic among the Counter-Jihad Softies, every time they encounter a seemingly sincere Muslim (particularly charismatic ones, like Shireen and Asra):
Asra Nomani is a brave woman but I doubt that Islam can be reformed.
And this:
Only one comment even approximated the mark:
Islam and the Left just lie about everything, they have no problem with lying to advance their agenda’s and in fact Muslims are commanded to do so. Go learn what taqiyya is and then you will know why we infidels can never trust what a Muslim says. When any Muslim says they want to reform Islam they are either practicing taqiyya or they have no idea what the Quran says, because in order to “reform” Islam you would have to get rid of Muhammad and the Quran – so what’s the point.
This commenter's fixation on "the Left" aside (since the problem is that so many non-Leftists -- including in the Counter-Freaking-Jihad, also are fooled by Muslims), it's a welcome change from the prevailing view on Jihad Watch.
And this:
Trying to reform Islam is like spitting in the wind. It is so
fundamentally corrupt starting with a prophet that married/raped a six
yr. old girl named Aisha. Asra Nomani is fighting a loosing battle
Or, we should say, that Asra Nomani is doing her part to fight a winning jihad: the Long Jihad against us, which will require many different modes of fighting over several decades of time, of the sword and of the pen, and of fooling different types of Infidel, from Leftists to conservatives, and including the Counter-Jihad (and dispiritingly, I've been demonstrating how that is working all too well).
Or, we should say, that Asra Nomani is doing her part to fight a winning jihad: the Long Jihad against us, which will require many different modes of fighting over several decades of time, of the sword and of the pen, and of fooling different types of Infidel, from Leftists to conservatives, and including the Counter-Jihad (and dispiritingly, I've been demonstrating how that is working all too well).
Only one comment even approximated the mark:
Islam and the Left just lie about everything, they have no problem with lying to advance their agenda’s and in fact Muslims are commanded to do so. Go learn what taqiyya is and then you will know why we infidels can never trust what a Muslim says. When any Muslim says they want to reform Islam they are either practicing taqiyya or they have no idea what the Quran says, because in order to “reform” Islam you would have to get rid of Muhammad and the Quran – so what’s the point.
This commenter's fixation on "the Left" aside (since the problem is that so many non-Leftists -- including in the Counter-Freaking-Jihad, also are fooled by Muslims), it's a welcome change from the prevailing view on Jihad Watch.
Zuhdi Jasser is a much more prominent Better Cop Muslim than the two featured today, in the league of a Maajid Nawaz -- and indeed, both Shireen Qudosi and Asra Nomani are partnered up with Zuhdi Jasser with his ostentatious "MRM" (Muslim Reform Movement). And, naturally, the comments attached to that story at Jihad Watch are similarly disappointing, though the number of comments is unusually high, at 144. Many of them are off-topic (including the aforementioned Angemon and other members of the "Rabbit Pack" going after a commenter they don't like, "Christianblood" about off-topic issues).
I'm not going to plow through these as I did for Qudosi and Nomani; perhaps I will revisit this for a later date. What I will say in brief, for now, is that of the comments that are on-topic, they contain versions of the same muddled thinking we saw above for the other two Better Cops.
Example:
Zuhdi Jasser is a great hero. A rather tragic one.
I keep asking myself how and why he still thinks he is a Muslim.
One variation was notable, a commenter named "Dave" who characterizes the Better Cop Muslims as a "...bunch of dumb lunatics (unintentional stealth jihadists)..." I keep asking myself how and why he still thinks he is a Muslim.
That phrase, "unintentional stealth jihadists", represents rather exquisitely the furthest reach of the incoherent anxiety of the Counter-Jihad Softy in trying to grapple with these Better Cop Muslims.
And, par for the course, we get occasional, maddeningly close-but-no-cigar (what I used to call "asymptotic") glimpses just a hairsbreadth short of the logical conclusion:
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser is dangerous, and I wish Fox would stop paying attention to him.
He’s a charismatic guy, well-spoken, and seemingly harmless.
Either he’s a master Taqiyya-artist, or he’s sincere.
It's that "Either...or" that gets the Counter-Jihad Softy every time. There's no "either or" -- nor "ifs, ands or buts" -- about it. And, in yet another Jihad Watch article about yet another Better Cop Muslim -- Tarek Fatah -- one Jihad Watcher commented:
Lets be honest guys. If someone says he is a muslim. He is totally ignorant or Evil.
How likely is it that a Muslim (like Tarek Fatah) who is nearly 70 years old now, has been a Muslim all his life, and has been studying Islam and the problem of Islam for most of his life -- is "totally ignorant"? Why even pose that as an alternative explanation at all? This is the wedge into which creeps the air pocket of the anxiety about a zero tolerance against all Muslims.
If the West doesn't adopt a stern, firm, rational PREJUDICE against all Muslims, it will surely, albeit eventually (oh, say, in a hundred years, give or take a few Mohammedan atrocities), die. Perhaps the Counter-Jihad Softies have no children, or grandchildren to worry over their futures about...
At any rate, I've written a few times about Jasser, most fully this analysis of a Frank Gaffney interview with him. The blogger Logan's Warning also has some good stuff on Jasser (it seems that Logan and I are the only people in the universe who reasonably assume Jasser is lying about his "moderation").He’s a charismatic guy, well-spoken, and seemingly harmless.
Either he’s a master Taqiyya-artist, or he’s sincere.
It's that "Either...or" that gets the Counter-Jihad Softy every time. There's no "either or" -- nor "ifs, ands or buts" -- about it. And, in yet another Jihad Watch article about yet another Better Cop Muslim -- Tarek Fatah -- one Jihad Watcher commented:
Lets be honest guys. If someone says he is a muslim. He is totally ignorant or Evil.
How likely is it that a Muslim (like Tarek Fatah) who is nearly 70 years old now, has been a Muslim all his life, and has been studying Islam and the problem of Islam for most of his life -- is "totally ignorant"? Why even pose that as an alternative explanation at all? This is the wedge into which creeps the air pocket of the anxiety about a zero tolerance against all Muslims.
If the West doesn't adopt a stern, firm, rational PREJUDICE against all Muslims, it will surely, albeit eventually (oh, say, in a hundred years, give or take a few Mohammedan atrocities), die. Perhaps the Counter-Jihad Softies have no children, or grandchildren to worry over their futures about...
This commenter also alludes to one of Shireen's tropes (also a Jasser and Nawaz trope), distinguishing Muslim from "Islamist" --
There is NO difference between a “MUSLIM” (follower of Islam invented by the psychotic pedophile prophet) vs. an “ISLAMIST” (follower of Islam invented by the psychotic pedophile prophet).
However, with the next sentence in the comment, we begin to see the fault line in the CJM Mainstream view:
Stop the nonsense and become an APOSTATE already.