Where are the moderates?

John

I think you miss a fourth component which is the ghetto-isation of muslim immigrants. Places like Bradford, Oldham, Luton, Tower Hamlets, Dewsbury incubate newcomers. In effect, though they have a UK postcode, they are still living in a Pakistani trabal system. Moderate islam will struggle to find expression in this setting. What to do about that after so many years raises painful questions...

Austin Barry

Ultimately, as Steyn asserts, demography is destiny, and moderate Islam just has to wait, inert and culpable by silence, until the muslim community achieves a critical mass, and then all bets are off. The prospect of an imminent Caliphate will, I suspect, cause many current "moderates" to become more assertive to that end rather than trying to restrain their activist co-religionists. We should remember in all our dealings with the Ummah, that we are infidels: we must submit as dhimmis or die. Stark and ugly, yes, irreconciliable with everything a democracy stands for, yes, amenable to Jonathan Powell-discussion groups, no, but this is the hand we've been dealt. Meanwhile, with little Hazel Blears in charge of community cohesion (i.e. don't upset, at any cost, the Islamists) we can all sleep easy in our beds, pillows over our heads to shut out the early morning call to prayer which will become ever more persistent and shrill.

Scary Biscuis

One idea might be to invite Mark Styne back to write again for the new, boring, never-in-the-news, post-Boris Spectator. He might pull off the same magic he's currently doing for Maclean's in Canada. For other reader's missing his wit and insight, he can still be read at www.steynonline.com.

Martin Adamson

But moderate muslims are easy to recognise! They are the ones with bodyguards.

Jonathan

Isn't that joke at the beginning originally from that film from the mid 90s "Chasing Amy" and about lesbians?

Tiberius

There are two possible ways to avoid the violent outcome that John alludes to. Either Islam (at least in Britain) undergoes a Reformation, or the British state rediscovers its self-worth and self-respect (quickly) and makes those qualities "required reading" for all British residents. Mark Steyn would offer tasty odds on either coming about and would probably be only too happy to have to shell out.

Augustus

How large, and how angry, your group of moderates would prove to be can only be measured by their own consciences. Remember, Osama bin Laden, holed up in Warziristan may already be afraid to dismount the tiger he's been riding for fear of ending up inside. So while we're waiting for that to happen we should heed Churchill when he said that virtuous motives are no match for armed and resolute wickedness.

ACT

Typically trite, sub-racist balls from Steyn, and, I'm afraid crudely amplified. For, here and in majority Muslim societies alike, Steyn of course has it *completely* the wrong way round - the Islamicists are small to tiny minorities in every instance. Even in Iran, the sole state even approaching being meaningfully described as Islamicist-run, who doubts for one moment that popular opinion would throw off the Mullahs if they could? A gross slur - 'there are no moderate Muslims', when most of them in fact are - and terribly, terribly revealing about those who decide to smear whole populations in this fashion.

If you don't understand that the monsters who three years ago in July bombed the tube were exactly that - exceptional, monstrous - and in no sense indicative, still less representative of their 'moderate' majority Muslim peers, it's very depressing. And depressing about you, not Muslims.

CG

ACT - the problem is that the monsters did not act in isolation. they belong to a community who, to a frighteningly large extent, don't believe that they did it, think that 9/11 was an inside job, and qualify all their condemnations with a 'but', while dragging in Israel and the Crusades somewhere along the way.

C Powell

One step would be to stop all foreign funding of Muslim charities, schools, mosques etc since that seems to be one way extremist (e.g Wahabi) interpretations of Islam spread through the Muslim community here. Another would be to stop immigration from certain Muslim countries (e.g. Pakistan, Algeria, Somalia, Sudan etc) and reintroduce the primary purpose rule for marriages. Monitor mosques and deport all those preachers who preach extremism and sedition; take similar action in relation to Islamic charities and schools. Stop the creation of any more Islamic faith schools until we can be certain - as we cannot be now - that they are not being used to inculcate values which are hostile to the West. We should not be funding Muslim groups at all: this is part of the failed multicultural agenda. On the contrary, every time we get so-called spokesmen speaking about something or other we should be much more robust in our responses by saying that we will not listen to criticism from people until they have taken action to address the problems within their own community e.g. the anti-semitic/anti-Christian views which are all too prevalent, their denial that there is a violent and, frankly, treasonous minority amongst their midst, their appalling treatment of women, apostates etc. We have been far too fearful of not giving offence and should be more robust in making the criticisms which Muslims themselves seem unable or unwilling to make; we have to hope that this will encourage moderate Muslims to speak up. If they don't, then far more serious measures may be needed but we have to hope that Muslims realise that this will affect all of them - even those who adamantly reject violence and extremism - and take advantage of the space offered to provide real leadership. At present, we are only responding and providing a platform to the extremists so it's hardly surprisig that we don't hear from any moderates. We need to ignore the extremists and their apologists (the ghastly Ken, for instance) and hope that a 1000 moderates bloom instead.

Nick Kaplan

ACT; you seem to have misunderstood the point of this entire blog, it is not that anyone is saying that there are no Muslims who are comparatively moderate (the joke about their no existence was exactly that, a joke!), the point is that those who are comparatively moderate are not doing enough to prevent the indoctrination and actions of those who are not. The problem is that there are simply not enough leading Muslims who utterly condemn terrorist action (if any). Those on the MCB are too inclined to say ‘we condemn such and such an action, but...’ and the ‘but’ is where the problem lies. There needs to be a more vocal outright condemnation of such action under whatever circumstances, and those that feel this way need to make it clearer to those that do not, that there is no ‘but’ in regards to terrorism. The message that these ‘moderates’ put out, alibi unintentionally is “well, it’s not a perfect way to behave (walking onto a bus strapped with c4 and blowing yourself up) but you can understand why they did it, not really the terrorists fault is it, its Israel’s or the west or whoever for interfering with Islam.” What needs to be done is to stop the pretence that a terrorist act might have noble motives, we must condemn such actions outright and encourage the real moderates to take control of the Muslim community so that they may voice more clearly to their youth that terrorism is wrong full stop, no ifs no buts. (I however remain sceptical of how achievable this is)

TrevorH

Correct - you don't hear from moderate muslims, they are keeping quite hoping the militant muslims will do their job for them.

A bit like the relationship between the Irish government and the IRA

Unaligned

You should study deeply about islam. The face of islam is not that shown in the "film". This is a spiteful lie to stimulation muslims