How the likes of Tarek Fatah, in the guise of so-called secular and moderate Muslims, are hell-bent on hiding Islam's historical facts in order to advance Islam in the West, while discrediting, even endangering the lives, of the true critics of Islam...
I have always maintained that “moderate Muslim” is an oxymoron. We have two kinds of Muslims: Terrorist Muslims and ignorant Muslims. The former are those who know Islam well and live by its dictums. The latter have no clue about their religion and have an idealized image of Islam that has no bases in facts.
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Mr. Tarek Fatah’s editorial published in National Post on March 12, 2010 confirms my view. Fatah attended a debate between Dr. Wafa Sultan, the courageous ex-Muslim woman that shook the Arab world when in an Aljazeera televised debate she pointed out that the problem with the Muslim world is Islam, and Dr. Daniel Pipes, a scholar of Islamic history and the director of the Middle East Forum.
In this debate Pipes argued that Islam is not essentially an intolerant religion and that there have been instances when Jews who were persecuted in Christian countries had sought refuge in Muslim lands. Sultan disagreed and reminded her audience that Muhammad had raided several Jewish tribes who lived in Arabia, massacred their unarmed men and allowed his marauding band to rape their women, while always reserving the prettiest for himself.
Upon hearing these comments, Fatah was "traumatized". "Even a hardened secular Muslim such as myself was deeply hurt by what I heard that evening," wrote Fatah.
While acknowledging the validity of Sultan’s criticism of Islam, Fatah repined that “instead of using her newfound fame to challenge the established theocracies and corrupt kingdoms of the Middle East, Sultan veered off the deep end and could not resist the temptation of becoming the poster child of Islam haters, joining their ranks with the fervour of a convert.”
Why should Sultan challenge the established theocracies and corrupt kingdoms when these are the rotten fruits of the poisonous tree of Islam? As a medical psychiatrist, she is trained to look at the cause of the disease and not the symptoms.
Fatah accused Sultan of fear mongering and telling to a predominantly Jewish audience, that Muhammad was a Jew-killer. He wrote “Wafa Sultan delivered an astonishing account of how the Prophet had slaughtered Jews and then raped the wife of the defeated Jewish tribe.”
Astonishing account? These accounts were reported by early Muslim historians. If Fatah is astonished, it is because he, like most Muslims, has not read the history of Islam. Few Muslims care to investigate their religion. The references to Muhammad’s raids, rapes and lootings can also be found in the Quran. Muslims chant the Quran for thawab (reward), but they don’t study it, and often don’t understand what they read.
The hatred of the Jews is in the Quran. The first sura of this book is a prayer where Muslims supplicate to Allah "Show us the straight path. The path of those whom Thou hast favored; not the (path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray."
Muslims agree that "those whom Allah has favored" are Muslims, and "those who earn Allah's anger" and "those who go astray" are Jews and Christians, respectively.
Jews are stereotyped as greedy in all Muslim countries. This is due to quranic verse that says Jews “cling to life more eagerly than any other people. …every one of them would love to live a thousand years”, but they will burn I hell. (2:96)
Many verses of the Quran portray the Jews as evil-doers, wicked, transgressors, prophet-killers, and despised by God. Because Muhammad hated the Jews, Muslims will always hate the Jews. This hatred is inseparable from Islam.
Fatah continued, “I left the synagogue deeply disturbed. In the fight against Islamofascism, Wafa Sultan’s hatred of Islam was cultivating the very forces she claims to be exposing. When a questioner asked her ‘What is the solution?’ she just shrugged her shoulders. Perhaps the answer she had in mind was too outrageous even by her own standards: Force Muslims to convert or die.”
Sultan has all the reasons to hate Islam. Former Muslims hate Islam because we hate discrimination against women, violence against non-Muslims, dictatorship and imposition of faith that characterizes the true Islam, and because we know the damage that his overgrown cult has done to our people, our culture and our countries. We don’t shrug our shoulders when asked for the solution. Obviously this “hardened secular Muslim” was so traumatized that he could no longer hear what Wafa Sultan was saying.
Former Muslims propose telling the truth as the solution. We believe that truth can set us free. Former Muslims do not advocate violence and hate against our own kin, brothers, sisters, parents, and loved ones. We strive for their freedom and their right to know the truth. We oppose censorship and political correctness that have enslaved the truth. Truth can hurt our feelings, but lies will kill us.
I do not disagree with Dr. Pipes’ historic account that sometimes Jews, who were persecuted by Christians, sought refuge among Muslims. However, I respectfully disagree with him when he presents this as evidence of Islam’s tolerant nature.
Islam is not tolerant because Muhammad was not tolerant. This does not mean all Muslims are intolerant. There have been many Islamic rulers who were tolerant, but they went against the canons of Islam, as many do today. That is why the jihadists, who follow the true Islam, are attacking these Muslim rulers.
Unlike the crusaders, who wanted to convert everyone to Christianity, the jihadists don’t want to convert everyone to Islam. They want to establish the Caliphate and dominate the world. In an Islamic state, ruled under the Sharia, non-Muslims, particularly the people of Book (Jews and Christians), are protected, as long as “they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (Q: 9:29). This is no different from Nazism. Hitler did not want to convert everyone to Arians, nor did he want to exterminate all mankind. He wanted to dominate the world.
By drawing a distinction between Islamic terrorists and “moderate” Muslims, Pipes is threading a dangerous path. One is either a Muslim, therefore emulates Muhammad and is a terrorist, or he is not a Muslim. Moderate Muslim makes as much sense as moderate Nazi.
Lies always come back to haunt us. A Muslim, who does not practice Islam or believes Islam means peace, may be called a ‘moderate Muslim’, but, in fact, he is a wishy-washy or ignorant Muslim.
It is this myth that allows Glenn Beck to malign Geert Wilders, and call him a “fascist”, or Jacqui Smith and other British officials to bar him from entering the U.K. There are countless good people who are harassed, prosecuted and called racists because of this myth.
I respectfully urge Pipes to stop promoting the myth of moderate Islam. I also cordially invite him to a written debate on this topic. Getting to the bottom of this matter goes beyond academic interest. This myth is endangering the lives of the critics of Islam and is violating their right to free speech. Good people are called islamophobe, bigot, racist and fascist, because the world prefers politically-correct untruths to the inconvenient truth. It is thanks to this myth that telling the truth has become the new hate speech.
Tarek Fatah proves my point that there is no such thing as moderate Muslim. He calls himself hardened secular, but cannot stand to hear a historic truth about his prophet. When he says, “Wafa Sultan’s hatred of Islam was cultivating the very forces she claims to be exposing”, he is talking about himself. Many honest Muslims prefer not to hide their heads in the sand; they face the truth and deal with it in a rational way.
I would like to remind the reader that many Muslim terrorists come from a secular background. At one point they were just as “liberal” as Mr. Fatah is today until something happened in their lives and they turned to their faith.
Every Muslim, moderate or otherwise, is a potential terrorist. The belief in Islam is like a tank of gasoline. It looks innocuous like water, until it meets the fire. For a “moderate” Muslim to become a murderous jihadist, all it takes is a spark of faith.
It is time to put an end to the charade of “moderate Islam”. There is no such thing as moderate Muslim. Muslims are either jihadists or dormant jihadists; moderate, they are not.
P.S. A copy of this article was sent to National Post. Since they published Mr. Fatah's attack on Dr. Sultan, I hope they would publish this response to him. However, if they refuse to publish it I won't be offended. Most westerners have no problem shadowboxing the "political Islam", as if dealing with an entity different from Islam, but shun the real critics of Muhammad and Islam itself. This mighty task is left on the shoulders of former Muslims and a few heroic souls like Geert Wilders.
