The Paris atrocity should show the emptiness of demanding that moderate Muslims speak out against Muslim terrorists. They have been speaking out, and they have been making YouTube videos and holding marches, and it hasn’t mattered. It probably does no harm, except for giving non-Muslims a self-deluding warm feeling. It might even give moderates some immunity against demagoguing politicians, though that’s unlikely given that we’re talking about demagoguing politicians. But for terrorism, moderate Muslims have nothing to offer. I’ve written similarly before, but it bears revisiting now that moderates are being held up like a shield everywhere and on every medium.
First, not all moderates are equal. Daesh, at heart, is the Sunni remnant of the Iraqi army that the Bush administration disbanded, an act that branded us, in the region, as pro-Shia. Having Shia moderates line up against Daesh would be like protestant moderates lining up against the Provisional IRA during The Troubles (lest Christians start feeling superior).
Second, the Abrahamic religions have canons that promote, celebrate, and demand Iron Age tribalism, with all its violence, ignorance, hate, slavery, armed aggression, rape, murder, infanticide, and misogyny. In Islam, as in Christianity and Judaism, it is the fundamentalists who have the backing of their sacred texts, texts that even the moderates believe are the word of their god. Radicals need only preach their own texts, and they will prevail over the apostate moderates with some sizable fraction of the young. We cannot fight the radical narrative with a watered down one.
Third, and more basic, Religion has no objective reality. As I’ve written elsewhere, once you decide that worshiping some supernatural, creator being for which there is no evidence is a reasonable thing, you give up your right to criticize someone for deciding to worship a different supernatural, creator being for which there is no evidence. No religion, no sect, no faction has more credibility than any other, whether moderate, reformed, orthodox, fanatic, or psychotic. Moderates have nothing.
Outside of reason and logic lies absurdity. The worshiping of absurdity got us into this mess. More of it is not going to get us out.
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