"Moderate" Muslims ineffective against Islamicists.

From an American Muslims originally from Pakistan:

Many pundits, both inside and outside the community of immigrant American Islam, have rested their hopes upon us muted ones. They expect us to free global Islam from the Tazirs and Bin Ladens of the religion. Somehow we cows, chewing on the cud of our paranoia-stricken life, have been labeled “moderate” as if we offer a counterweight to the extremists. We don't.

If anything, in the world after 9/11, most of us American Muslims are more concerned with hanging onto our jobs and our passports, and not being caught under the heavy hoofs of Ashcroft's ghost-horses than on challenging the oligarchy of our imams. Immigrant Muslims are not rebels or revolutionaries; no world-changing reformation will miraculously tumble forth from behind the veil of our silence. Any one immigrant American Muslim is just another congregant from [the harsh existence of the Pakistani village] Dera Ghazi Khan, another Bushara [the writer's fatalistic aunt], tolerant of everything, including injustice -- because Allah wills it.

"Because Allah Wills It. On the fundamentalism of fatalism and the myth of moderate Islam." By Ali Eteraz , Killing the Buddha, undated (emphasis added).

Over at Gates of Vienna, where we found out about Mr. Eteraz, he there modifies his views and states that people like him are the best hope for Islam.

He also makes the excellent point that the Wahhabis and Islamists "need to be called 'extremist Muslims' or 'violent Muslims' and the moderate Muslims who need to be called "Muslim.'"

We disagree with him in his belief that the fight between moderates and Salafists is about who "are the better and correct representatives of the era of Muhammad’s life" not who is the most progressive and modern.

This cedes the debate to the crazies because the debate is then within the context of Mohammed's era and the text of the Koran and the ahadith. Those are the problem because they are such flawed authorities. Mohammed was a dissolute man who took many, many wives and set the course for the disastrous Muslim conquests and the several types of slavery and oppression, etc., that characterized Muslim governance. The horrendous penalty for apostasy stems from the Prophet and is a hellacious curse on the Muslim world now, giving license to any fool to take it upon himself to murder whom he thinks is or has become a heretic, infidel, malcontent, or critic.

No. The debate is between those who see the need to interpret or ignore the Koran and ahadith where it is necessary to bring Islam into line with humane, rational concepts of law, commerce, science, and society.

Nor do we see the irony that Mr. Eteraz says he intended in his essay. We see only a simple statement that the fatalism in his world view makes it unlikely that he and people like him will be an effective counterpoise to the Salafists.

He appears to have changed his mind and now to think that he can make a difference but that was not a thought evident anywhere in his essay.