The answer to that question is depressingly obvious, they get death threats from the more pious and violent members of the Islamic community.
A Dutch member of a mosque management committee who spoke to a Parliamentary committee in the Netherlands about the problems of money from ‘conservative’ Islamic states being funnelled into Dutch mosques has found out just what happens to those moderate Muslims who speak out against extremism. A report in a Dutch outlet (h/t ROP) showed the world exactly what happens when moderate Muslims challenge the nutcases.
The Dutch news outlet NL Times said:
Hajer Harzi, a board member of the Al Houda mosque in Geleen, received serious threats after she spoke to a parliamentary committee investigating the possible influence of extremist ideology from abroad on Dutch mosques. “You wouldn’t wish that on anyone,” Harzi said on talk show Op 1. She reported the threats to the police.
Her daughter started receiving threatening videos shortly after she spoke to the parliamentary committee, Harzi said. In the videos, Harzi was called a heretic, Jew and all kinds of “terrible things”, she said. “My daughter is angry and says she can’t take it anymore. I had to convince her that it was directed against me and not against her.”
Harzi was also insulted on social media due to her testimony.
The Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, launched this investigation after NRC and Nieuwsuur reported that at least 30 Islamic organizations in the Netherlands receive funding from conservative Gulf states like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Ms Harzi was right to call out the influence of hardliners in Dutch mosques but by doing so she has showed the utter powerlessness that moderates have within Islam. There might be a lot of moderates in Islam, their hearts may be in the right place and they may be saying the right things, but they have no power to change things. The power in Islamic communities is held by the extremists. Just as in other dictatorships and in other authoritarian ideologies, the moderate majority don’t seem to matter at all, not only do they not have any power they are also likely to be, as happened throughout Islamic history, crushed by the forces of reaction.
