Do those mythical beasts, moderate Muslims, exist? Or are they more like unicorns?
I say they exist, and this video is evidence of how they are overshadowed by the more vocal, influential, powerful, violent, and perhaps more numerous, radical Muslims (hat tip: J.J.):
So there are plenty of moderate Muslims, people who are sincere in their “live and let live” attitude and are not practicing some sort of taqiyya about it to fool us. For the most part, they are frightened and repelled by their Muslim brethren who think otherwise.
But their (and our) problem is that, although these moderate Muslims consider themselves to be Muslims, the more extreme Muslims (shall we call them immoderate Muslims, or just plain Muslims?) consider the moderates to be no Muslims at all but apostates instead, perhaps even worthy of being murdered—and these immoderate Muslims constitute the mainstream of the Muslim religion rather than a fringe group. The moderate Muslims do not constitute a bona fide wing of the religion, they merely are people who don’t practice their religion very strictly and don’t follow all its tenets and precepts. They are lapsed or lax Muslims.
This differs from Christianity or Judaism in a profound way. Yes, there are some orthodox or fundamentalist Christians and Jews who also believe that those following the more moderate wings of their religions are not real Christians or Jews, are not following the true faith. But moderate sects and movements most definitely exist in both religions—as opposed to people who just are not very observant in their beliefs—and for the most part are an accepted part of the mainstream.
There is no official moderate Muslim wing, unlike the many intermediate choices a Christian or a Jew can make and still be a Christian or a Jew in the official, approved sense, although Islam doesn’t lack for disputes between wings (bitter ones, at that). There may be moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam.
As the video reports, when the moderates try to speak up, the fanatics try to silence and intimidate them. They are often very successful. It would take a lot of courage to not be intimidated, given the violence of so many of the Islamist fundamentalists, and their determination to wipe out the opposition and to dominate a West that has welcomed them into its fold.
Islam is both a religion and a totalitarian political movement, and the religious part has masked the political aims for long enough to allow Islam to get a toehold in Europe, a grip it has then expanded through reproduction and more emigration, until it now threatens to overwhelm countries such as Belgium. This is exceedingly worrisome, and not for racist reasons. I don’t care whether these people are black, brown, or purple (in fact, I resemble them physically far more than I resemble a native Belgian). It is their belief system and their actions and their goals that threaten the West and the Enlightenment. And they are not even shy about saying so.
