Why did we not hear these voices as innocent civilian contractors were being beheaded for all the world to see on Islamic hate sites?
Why are they not actively protesting the hate speech being preached in Mosques right here on our own soil?
I posted this on another thread. Bears repeating here:
Please define Moderate Muslim, then.
Is it one who renounces terrorism? Lovely. But what do they have to say about their scriptures that compel a "good" Muslim to murder, lie, rape, steal, fight jihad, condones slavery, etc all?
Hugh Fitzgerald had an interesting take:
Snip:
2. The word "moderate" cannot be reasonably applied to any Muslim who continues to deny the contents -- the real contents, not the sanitized or gussied-up contents -- of Qur'an, hadith, and sira. Whether that denial is based on ignorance, or based on embarrassment, or based on filial piety (and an unwillingness to wash dirty ideological laundry before the Infidels) is irrelevant. Any Muslim who, while seeming to deplore every aspect of Muslim aggression, based on clear textual sources in Qur'an and hadith, or on the example of Muhammad as depicted in the accepted sira -- Muhammad that "model" of behavior -- is again, objectively, acting in a way that simply misleads the Infidels. And any Muslim who helps to mislead Infidels about the true nature of Islam cannot be called a "moderate." That epithet is simply handed out a bit too quickly for sensible tastes.
3. What of a Muslim who says -- there are terrible things in the sira and hadith, and that we must find a way out, so that this belief-system can focus on the rituals of individual worship, and offer some sustenance as a simple faith for simple people? This would require admitting that a great many of Muhammad's reported acts must either be denied, or given some kind of figurative interpretation, or otherwise removed as part of his "model" life. As for the hadith, somehow one would have to say that Bukhari, and Muslim, and the other respected muhaddithin had not examined those isnad-chains with quite the right meticulousness, and that many of the hadith regarded as "authentic" must be reduced to the status of "inauthentic." And, following Goldziher, doubt would have to be cast on all of the hadith, as imaginative elaborations from the Qur'an, without any necessarily independent existence.
More @ http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/2004/11/004034print.html
I wish I could believe there are "moderate" Muslims -- but I don't buy it. For their entire 1350+ yr history, Muslims have been at war w/ everyone they come in contact with.
Islam has a history of lies and deceit. Talk is cheap.
Let's see...when the MSM ignores a Conservative, it's called media bias and shows how conservative voices are stifled, but we shouldn't judge the strength of the conservative movement by the obscurity of coverage.
But when it's Muslims speaking out against terrorism--which is exactly what many have tried to do since 9/11, and what the MSM has not covered very well--we suddenly trust the MSM's coverage as a gauge of the movement?
Come on, now. Admit that there's nothing that these people could do to stop the hatred against them, even if the don't believe in the same things the terrorists do.