Comment on a book: “America Alone” by Mark Steyn

There are a lot of moderate Muslims but Islam, the Muslim religion, is not moderate. Mr. Steyn cites the case of Iman Abdul Raoulf, a member of the the Afghan Ulama Council, and said to be one of Afghanistan’s leading moderate clerics. Iman Raoulf said this about Abdul Rahman, who was on trial for his life for the crime of converting from Islam to Christianity: “We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die. Cut off his head! We will call on the people to pull him into pieces.” Rahman’s life was saved, but only through international pressure applied to Afghanistan.

The US now has many mosques since Islam is growing here as well as in most of the rest of the world. Souleiman Ghalli founded a mosque in San Francisco based on “the emergence of an American Muslim identity based on compassion, respect, dignity, and love.” Then one of the imans hired by the mosque, Safwat Morsy, urged California Muslims to follow the example of Palistinian suicide bombers. When Safwat Morsy was fired for these hateful preachings that went against the spirit of the mosque, he responded by suing the mosque for wrongful dismissal and was awarded $400,000. Further, Safwat Morsy was popular at the mosque (this is someone who advocates suicide bombings), and his group forced Mr. Ghali off the board of the mosque and out of any further role in its operation. That’s what happened at one moderate mosque.
Mark Steyn says the “moderate Muslim” is not entirely fictional. But it would be more accurate to call them quiescent Muslims, analagous to the moderate Germans of the 1930s, who were also quiescent until Hitler needed them for his war effort. And if 99% of Muslims turn out to be quiescent, that still leaves 1% of over a billion Muslims, or something like ten million who are prepared to be martyrs.