Saturday, March 13, 2010

Setting the 'Moderate' Bar Dangerously Low

Edward Standing explains how the British Government defines a "moderate" Muslim:

Having decreed that Islam is a 'religion of peace' and that violent acts in the name of Islam are an aberration (thereby giving an official stamp of approval to a theological and exegetical standpoint), the Labour Government then went on to seek religious groups and leaders who would authenticate this liberal understanding of Islam. In its quest for British Muslim 'moderates', the Government has made a number of extremely ill-advised alliances with groups that promote a dubious commitment to moderation. In the search for the Holy Grail of 'moderate Islam', the bar was set very low for what this actually is. At its most basic, it seems, the Government definition of a 'moderate Muslim' is simply an individual who self-identifies as Muslim and claims that he or she is opposed to terrorism of the sort carried out on 9/11 and 7/7. Individuals who issue weasel worded condemnations of terrorism that mention 'legitimate grievances' in the same breath, or who condemn terrorism in the West while at the same time referring to insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq as 'resistance' fighters, or who condemn jihad in the West while supporting jihad against Israel, are still presented as 'moderates'. Take the grandly titled 'Muslim Council of Britain' (MCB), for example, a group with a long-running relationship with British Government. While the Council is supposedly a 'moderate' body (indeed, it was the MCB Blair turned to after 9/11 and 7/7), the fact is that a number of its Central Working Committee members hold views on society and the nature of terrorism that are far from what the average British citizen would consider moderate.
To say the least. See, all you have to do to keep the clueless, craven dhimmis happy is tell them you're agin "terrorism". Works every time. 

No comments: