“Tell me what a “moderate Muslim” is”

You and I have been there before; there isn’t one.

“…those that refute Islam and seek to distort its laws in order to change it so that they can commit sin. These people are not moderates, they are those that may be weak in faith and hypocritcal towards Islam.”

Exactly Jamal, if they don’t want to commit Jihad on the infidels, follow the law of Shari’a, and issue Fatwas against every Tom Dick and Harry who disagrees with them, they are bad Muslims aren’t they?

But we know who a good Muslim is for you Jamal, your friend the Qur’an bashing Abu Hamza. Aren’t you happy the idiotically naive Brits are still building you the biggest Mosque in the Europe?
How about you build us the biggest church in…let me think… Dubai. Ah, I forgot we are illegal there aren’t we. Well that’s an easy solution for you isn’t it.

Why are you constantly talking about some warped idea of equality when the entire Muslim world calls us pigs, monkeys and hates our guts as infidels, banning us from every single participation in any dignified life in any of your countries. Why do you demand equality when you give none in return? Why is it your divine right to receive and yet you give nothing in return.

Personally I think we should boycott Islam until it recognizes the infidels right to exist side-by-side with Muslims as equals. Until then there is nothing to talk about.

“No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianit…

Rushdie et al are clearly saying that we need to be fundamentalist about our secular western values and beliefs if we want to keep them. This is unusual for secular people to say. These values embody the right to say and think things which are potentially abominable to other people. They do not embody the right to burn down your neighbour’s house because according to your belief system and entire metaphysics he is WRONG, unpleasant, stupid or dangerous.
A moderate – any religious kind – Christian, Muslim or Buddhist does not have to believe only moderately, but he has to acknowledge that the neighbour who is unpleasant, stupid and WRONG has the right to be so as long as he is not in opposition with secular law, that is if he is not eating his children or selling his wife or whatever else there’s a law against. The law in the western world is of course based on secularised Christian values and most of the people living in Denmark are secularized Christians (carrying Christian cultural values but no explicit religious belief) which makes it relatively easy for them to refrain from religious fundamentalist reactions.
If you are a moderate Muslim/Christian in the west however, you have chosen to live in a place where it is relatively safe to have any kind of view you like as long as you follow the rules of this secularised place. It can be annoying at times, sure, at times even infuriating. I know because *my* personal metaphysical beliefs clashes with established secular society in many cases, but it beats the hell out of not being able to believe what you want for fear of persecution, torture and death.
So you could say that I aim to be “a moderate spiritual person”, which doesn’t mean that my metaphysical and ethical beliefs are half-hearted, (I’m quite fundamentalist about my metaphysics otherwise why would I believe in them?) Au Contraire it means that although I do not agree with my atheist neighbour I choose to live in his kind of world because it has freedom which is an utmost value for me. If my values were different I might chose to live in a country in which everybody were religious, and perhaps get my head chopped off – As it is however, I vote for fundamentalist freedom and religious moderation.

To be Muslims we can be moderate and we can be extreme, however, we remain Muslims, and the last thing we need is these people speaking for us that make their names by leaving turning away from Islam.

Every time a dispute or conflict occurs between East and West, Muslims and Christians, a new term is coined to label Muslims. If you have a beard and complain about anything fundamentally Western you’re an ‘Fanatic’. If you complain with reference to Islam you’re an ‘Extremist’. If you hang with Muslims, pray 5 times a day and refer to the Shariah in public you’re a ‘Fundamentalist’. If you protest against the Iraq war or the occupation of Palestine you’re an ‘Islamist’. If you attended a Mosque and unknowingly prayed next to anybody that had links to fighters from Palestine, Iraq or Afghanistan you’re ‘Al-Qaeda’.

There is now a new kid on the block, a ‘Moderate Muslim’. If you accept the war on terror but condemn Muslim retaliation you’re a ‘Moderate’. If you pledge support for Bush and Blair you’re a ‘Moderate’. If you support distorters of Islam you’re a ‘Moderate’. If you sympathise with Salman Rushdie you’re a ‘Moderate’. If you tolerate cartoons slandering Islam but are intolerate to reactionary boycotts/protests you’re a ‘Moderate’. If you think the cartoons were correct you’re a ‘Moderate’. If you acknowledge those that claim to be Muslim and Gay you’re a ‘Moderate’.

Some say Sheikh Yussef al-Qaradawi and Ayatollah Ali Sistani are ‘Moderates, others say only those that condemn 9/11 are ‘Moderates’, in conjunction with those that apologise for the cartoon protest. Then I learn that ‘none of the above’ is relevant as a ‘Moderate’ is the opposite of a Salafist, while others consider them to be gutless Muslims that are ineffective against ‘Islamists’.

Those most rational explanation I’ve read is that “Wahhabis and Islamists need to be called ‘extremist Muslims’ or ‘violent Muslims’ and the moderate Muslims need to be called Muslim”. But please can somebody tell me who makes up these terms? As I said earlier, Muslims differ from generation to generation, culture to culture, some are more devout, others Muslim by name only. Nevertheless, most of us condemn violence, terror, injustice and oppression, and we are just called Muslims.

We are all follow the fundamentals, there is nothing extreme about what we do nor do we take anything to an extreme. We are all ‘Islamists’: a believer or follower of Islam (dictionary definition) and most of all - we are all moderate because Islam is a moderate way of life, balanced to make life easier for us by doing that which is right.

No it wasn’t, they’ve always freaked out over depictions of Muhammad. Nearly 30 years ago some Muslim fanatics kidnapped dozens of innocent people in Washington DC and killed a few of them, in order to protest the making of the film “The Message” which did not even depict Muhammad as a person, and which was in fact very respectful of Islam. There have been many other similar incidents over the years. A few years ago an illustration of Muhammad in the Asian version of “TIME” magazine caused widespread rioting and hysteria in India and Malaysia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad%2C_Messenger_of_God

References to the Washington siege in 1977 are contained in this Wikipedia entry FYI.

The authors of this manifesto are just playing the same old game of blaming “the West” for atrocities that are really mainly due to Islam’s many pathologies.