Leading Muslim spokesman rejects “moderate Islam” as Western imposition on Muslims

If nothing else has already done so, here is an item that effectively shatters the myth of moderate Islam. In a column in the liberal newspaper The Age, Waleed Aly, whom an Australian correspondent informs me is the leading acceptable Muslim spokesman in Victoria, rejects the “moderate Muslim” label as an imposed simplification and stereotyping of Muslims. Aly is skilled in today’s discourse, speaking the language of modern liberalism, anti-essentialism, and multi-centered perspectivism. He tells us—his non-Muslim Western readers—that we must not draw larger conclusions about Islam, we just have to understand each separate Islamic phenomenon on its own terms, we must understand the distinct psychology and motivations of each suicide bomber. Also, we shouldn’t look at Muslims from the point of view of how they affect us, but only from their own point of view.

We’d become completely helpless in the face of jihadism and terrorism if we followed his directions.

Ironically, Daniel Pipes in his response to my article, “The Search for Moderate Islam, Part I: Does It Exist?”, rejected my approach as “essentialist,” since I said that Islam has an identifiable essence or character, a notion which, Pipes said, would preclude the possibility of Islam’s evolving into moderate Islam.

But how is this moderate Islam to come into existence, if the Muslims themselves reject the label as a false and self-alienating concept imposed on them by Westerners such as Pipes himself? It would be interesting to hear Mr. Pipes explain this point.

Here are key excerpts from Aly’s article, with comments by me bolded and bracketed:

But if fundamentalism is problematic, its polar alternative, moderate, is no better. In fact, to be labelled a moderate Muslim is offensive in the way it is to be called a moderate intellect. It carries with it the connotation that one’s faith is somehow diluted. [Yes, of course, that’s the whole point! The undiluted faith is a danger to us. If this respectable Muslim spokesman rejects the understanding that undiluted Islam is a threat to non-Muslims, then what hope is there of a moderate Islam?] It implies that it is socially acceptable to be a Muslim, as long as you are not too Muslim. [He thus rejects the idea that Muslims need to adapt themselves at all to the West.] Few Muslims would seek this classification, except by rhetorical necessity. [In other words, when they come across as “moderates,” they’re simply engaging in a fraud that has been imposed on them by Western expectations. What does this say about the hope of moderate Islam?]

But the greater problem is that “moderate” is often not a theological, or even philosophical description. A moderate is often defined by his or her political attitudes. This linguistic infrastructure prevents Muslims from having a public existence beyond Western political horizons.

This has significant practical implications. Now we hear intense calls for the emergence of, and support for, “moderate Islam”. But given this term means nothing to most Muslims, what exactly is moderate Islam, and who has the mandate to define it? And how appropriate is it that the shaping of Islam will so blatantly take place in response to a charged political environment and the explicit political imperatives of the West? This is no sober evolution in Islamic thought in an organic process of scholarly insight and reflection. It has no theological integrity. [Emphasis added.] [Aly, regarded by white Australians as a leading moderate Muslim, is telling us that from a Muslim point of view, there is no such thing as moderate Islam. Moderate Islam is a fiction invented by Westerners in order to find or imagine an Islam that is not threatening to non-Muslims. But, Aly is inadvertently telling us, this non-threatening Islam does not exist.]

We relate easily and immediately to the competing images of anti-Americanism and McDonald’s, not because they are meaningful, but because they are about us. This, ultimately, is how we have come to engage with Muslim communities. Our apprehension of them is far more about us than it is about them. And more specifically, it is more about our own political horizons than it is about their own social histories and evolution. [In other words, we Westerners are not to look at Islam from our own point of view, but only from the Muslims’ point of view. This would render us voiceless and helpless.]

[And here he goes so far in his anti-essentialism as to reject the idea that any generality can be spoken of Islam. He even rejects the notion that suicide killing can be fairly described as an Islamic phenomenon:]

Similarly, suicide bombing becomes an “Islamic” phenomenon, despite the fact that Palestinian Christian priests have also praised it, and that it finds its genesis, and still the majority of its expression, in non-Muslim groups such as the Tamil Tigers. So, too, honour killing, which occurs among Hindu and Sikh families in the subcontinent, Christian families in the Middle East, and Italian and Greek migrant communities in Britain. The common thread has more to do with low socioeconomic class, feudalism and poor education than religion, but honour killings nevertheless feed into an essentialised discourse on Islamic misogyny far more often than they do a socioeconomic one.

A reader sends his reaction to the above:

Your comment on Aly’s insistence that there is no such thing as moderate Islam and Westerners have no legitimate interest in analyzing or examining Islam in any way:

“Aly, regarded by white Australians as a leading moderate Muslim, is telling us that from a Muslim point of view, there is no such thing as moderate Islam. Moderate Islam is a fiction invented by Westerners in order to find or imagine an Islam that is not threatening to non-Muslims. But, Aly is inadvertently telling us, this non-threatening Islam does not exist.”

Aly’s position is extremely aggressive. To him, Westerners have no legitimacy in analyzing or examining Islam, even if Islam has demonstrated aggressive intentions and actions against the West!

This is incredible.

However, Muslims (such OBL) apparently have every right to analyze and characterize the West as “decadent,” “satanic,” or “imperialist” without the slightest shame or hint of moderation or caution.

I view Aly’s article as aggressive in the extreme, going to the extreme of telling the West what it can think, what it can’t think, and in what categories it is permitted to think, even in situations of threat and danger.

Does not this aggressive operation, directed at the minds in the West, tell us what we need to know about Islam?

Carl Simpson writes:

Well, well, well—the caliph has no clothes, it would appear. Moderate Islam is an invention of Western liberals. If there’s no moderate Islam, how can you justify allowing Muslims to pour to the West? Liberals would be forced to admit they’re importing jihad and sharia. They would have to engage in discrimination—liberalism’s sin of no forgiveness—to prevent the imposition of jihad and sharia. The whole superstructure of lies behind PC doctrines like ‘diversity’ and multiculturalism would be exposed for the falsehood it is.

In a similar vein, that’s why liberal and leftist historians invented mythological “tolerant” Islamic empires like the early Caliphate and the near-utopian Al-Andalus of the Moors.

Thanks for posting the article! Mr. Aly inadvertently told us the truth.

Since I posted the above, Daniel Pipes has replied that Aly is not an acceptable Muslim spokesman but a figure more like Nihad Awad of CAIR, by which Mr. Pipes presumably means that Aly is a supporter of radicalism who has managed to gain a measure of mainstream respectability.

I just did a google check, and apparently Aly publishes regularly in the mainstream press and appears on television and is a recognized Muslim spokesman. I see this for example, by Andrew Bolt, on July 20th:

The genuinely charming Waleed Aly, of the Islamic Council of Victoria, goes on 3AW to tell us the radical Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj el-Din el-Hilaly, who has praised suicide bombers as “heroes” and called the September 11 attacks “God’s work against oppressors”, is not a big worry because he represents no one. Aly says he doesn’t even know who made the man a mufti, our highest ranking Islamic cleric.

But the truth, Waleed, is that your own council voted to make Hilaly the Mufti in a decision of the Federation of Islamic Councils of Australia. Why won’t you sack him?

Clearly Aly is not what we would call a moderate. But he appears to be mainstream, at least in terms of media exposure. By way of comparison, a person of my views would have great difficulty getting his articles published in mainstream papers or being invited on mainstream tv news or discussion programs, so Aly would seem to be at least more “mainstream” than I. What do we do, then, with his claim that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim? Is it just the special pleading of a small extreme faction, or does it represent established Muslim opinion?

Furthermore, the subject of Bolt’s column is that for years he had believed in moderate Islam, but now, on the basis of what the moderates are saying since the London bombings, he’s no longer sure. The context of his discussion of Aly is, “Here is a person I thought was moderate, but he’s disappointed me.”

If Aly is radical, then, it would appear, on the basis of Bolt’s column, that it is the emerging radicalism of someone previously thought to be moderate. My Australian correspondent’s description of Aly as a leading acceptable Muslim spokesman (at least prior to 7/7) is not yet proved to be incorrect.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 27, 2005 01:30 PM | Send