The Myth of Moderate Muslims

The Myth of Moderate Muslims

Jesuit Father Samir Khalil Samir, a leading scholar of Islam and a former student under professor Joseph Ratzinger, in an August 30th interview with the National Catholic Register, said the following that aptly describes the crux of the Islamic terrorist problem in the world today. He said:

People don’t understand it. They [Muslim extremists] say: “We respect and defend freedom of religion,” but then they oblige a Muslim to remain Muslim, and he cannot convert. But I say: “But then where is the freedom of conscience?” And they say: “Yes, but not the freedom to do something wrong.” So we are speaking two different languages and living in two different worlds. Also, within Islam, you have liberal Muslims, whom the extremists laugh at or react violently towards. The liberal Muslims are only intellectuals and could be about 1 million, but that is nothing in comparison with the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims.
So the “liberal”, moderate Muslims we hear so much about from our exalted leaders comprise .1% of the Muslim population of the World. Can we really hope these intellectual Muslims will turn around the violent nature imbedded in the religion itself?

Father Samir Khalil Samir also said in the interview:

The main thing to note is that violence is an element of Islam. Violence is not an element of Christianity. When Christians were using violence in wars and so on, they were not following the Gospel, nor the life of Christ. When Muslims are using it, they are following the Quran and the sunnah and Mohammed’s model. This is a very important point.
This may very well be the only point if civilized people are ever to rid the world of the barbarism of radical terrorist Islam. The fanatical bloodshed the world is witnessing as ISIL sweeps out of Syria and across Iraq in its quest for a new caliphate is only a beginning to the slaughter and insanity the world will behold should they succeed.

Father Samir Khalil Samir lays out the case for further bloodlust in his interview:

Mohammed was somewhat tolerant towards Jews and Christians. But he was absolutely intolerant to those who were neither Jews nor Christians. The only solution for them in the Quran and in the life of Mohammed was to convert or die.

So these fanatics are following this line, with one difference: They call “unbeliever” (kāfir) anyone who is not like them, even the Shia, the Yazīdi or the Christian. In this case, the fanatics are not following the Quran and the sunnah [a Muslim way of life based on the teachings of Mohammed and the Quran]. But when they say, “We have to kill unbelievers, unless they become Muslim,” this is part of the teaching of Islam.
For the radical Islamic terrorist there is no compromise; everyone who does not believe exactly as he does must either convert or die. The question for the civilized people of the world is either to accept this ultimatum, to convert or die, or to eradicate this vermin from the face of the earth.