Someone once said that Jews can’t afford pessimism and I can see their point. If Jews succumbed to pessimism during the thousands of years of persecution and had not held on to the belief in one undivided deity and that Jews ‘will wait for the Moschiach (Messiah) even though he tarries much’, then there would be no Judaism or Jewish communities today. If pessimism had been embraced then Jews would have taken the easy route and converted out of Judaism. But Jews didn’t submit to despair and pessimism, Jews survived.
But I believe that there is a big difference between the embrace of pessimism and despair and having a realistic view of the world. You can hold on to your personal morality and not become the sort of monster that has afflicted so much of the world over so many centuries whilst still recognising that things may be bad.
Realism means looking at things as they are and trying to work out where these things will lead. I look at Europe and I see a growing conflict between Islam and the wider indigenous communities of that continent. This conflict has not been instigated by indigenous non-Muslim Europeans whether they be White or Black or whatever, but has been caused primarily by Islamic attitudes and in particular by Islamic violence aimed at non-Muslims. Whether it be Islamic car ramming attacks in Germany or France or the Islamic Rape Gangs of Britain or the Islamist street violence in places like Italy or Spain or Portugal, what many people see of Islam is entirely negative.
There appears to be a growing number of people in European nations that are starting to hate the ideology of Islam and are starting to see why their ancestors felt they had to take up arms against Islamic military and religious expansion in the Middle Ages. Societally this is starting to look like the beginnings of a major conflict.
But, just as not all Germans in the 1930’s and 1940’s were avowed Nazis, not every Muslim is a jihadist terrorist or a rapist or a welfare ponce. There are some who have managed to reconcile Islam or rather their own interpretation of it with the modern world. These particular Muslims, some of whom come from small and often persecuted sects like the Ismaili and the Ahmadiyya, are not and should not be a problem for Europeans. These Muslims work hard and contribute to the societies that they or their ancestors moved into and are not implicated in any of the horrors that Islam has become associated with in the minds of Europeans.
The question that I’m posing in this piece is how do we protect those Muslims who are not a problem if, or rather when, Europe erupts into conflict between Islam and everybody else? I know that what I’ve got to say will make me unpopular with the ‘kill ‘em all let god sort it out’ crowd but so be it. There does exist a large cohort of what I tend to call the decent, integrated, loyal ‘Joe Mohammed from the tyre shop’ types within European Muslims and I believe that it would be monstrously unjust to treat such people in the same way as we treat the more imperialist and violent followers of Islam. It’s not these types of Muslim who are pushing for mosques where they are neither needed nor wanted or committing crimes against non-Muslims or inveigling themselves into political and administrative systems primarily to advance the cause of Islam. They just want to work hard, be recognised for their hard work and raise their families just like the rest of us do.
When the conflict, which I am sadly seeing as something more or less inevitable now, finally breaks out I don’t want to see the decent Muslims being treated the same as the more problematic ones. To do this would be counter to the Biblical advice to judge everyone fairly and as an individual and not give preference or adverse judgement to one side or another.
If Europe succumbs to the rule of ‘King Mob’ then I fear that both the indecent and the decent among Europe’s Muslims will be rolled up together. As I’ve said on many an occasion on here ‘King Mob’ makes a terrible, capricious and unjust ruler and one who is constitutionally incapable of separating the guilty from the innocent and the jihadist from the ‘Joe Mohammed from the tyre shop’ types. We could end up with truly innocent people lumped in with the sort of Muslim who wants to destroy European societies with both the jihadist and the ‘Joe Mohammed’ being pushed onto the same metaphorical cattle truck to who knows where and what.
Maybe European societies need to work out how to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to Muslims and Islam? It’s quite possible that if Europeans learn to recognise the differences between the decent individuals and peaceful minority paths within Islam then the sort of future horrors that our grandchildren and great grandchildren will feel properly ashamed of might be averted.
How such sorting out and discrimination between the good and the bad can be achieved practically I do not know but as I’ve said many times on here I don’t want to see the good punished for the actions of the bad. The Biblical book of Deuteronomy says in chapter 16 verse 11 that humanity should take the view that ‘justice, justice is all that you should pursue’. Treating decent people who happen to be from a Muslim background or who have managed to take as far as they can the sows ear of Islam and turn it into a simulacrum of a silk purse, should not be treated the same as those Muslims whose only interest is destroying Western society in order to advance their interpretation of Islam. I believe that Europe’s future does include conflict between the less assimilable forms of Islam and Europeans but it would be wrong for that conflict to treat the innocent and the guilty as both being wrong’uns. ‘Never Again’ must be for all humanity not just some.
I think all reasonable people would not wish to see the “good decent” Muslims who are, according to Islamic teaching “bad Muslims”, rolled up with the orthodox, but as you say “How such sorting out and discrimination between the good and the bad [in Western terms] can be achieved practically I do not know”. Neither do I, and therein lies the rub.
I’ve personally witnessed the process of ‘radicalisation’ amongst “good Muslims” and the progressive inversion of their characters is truly scary and the explosion of hatred terrifying.
Unless a way to so separate “the wheat from the chaff” can be found, and lets recall that many a “Joe Jihadist” was described in positive terms by his friends, then I fear that numbers of the innocent may indeed be swept up in whatever comes.
I am also reminded that many orthodox Muslims (“Islamists” as many call them) are also “quietists”, that is they believe that sword-Jihad in the West is at present counter-productive or unneccessary (something I would agree with, given how well and quickly Islamisation is progressing), but how will they react when it all “kicks off”? Will Joe Mohammed down the tyre shop suddenly decide that now is the time to take a tyre lever to the Kafir? And to be frank, he may have a point if he and his are being attacked.
The problem as I see it is ultimately related to the fact that Islam teaches the notion of the “holy lie” (Taqiyya) not just as a “life preserver” (which was its original Shia form) but as an acceptable way of advancing Islamic interests, thus the level of trust that can be reposed in what Muslims say, or even do, is inevitably eroded, especially so for those who are aware of how the same Muslim will say one thing to a bunch of Kafirs and another to a Muslim audience. At least the open “islamists” are honest!
I also recall a lesson from Syria and Iraq where, when ISIL swept in to mixed religion villages, the massacre of (mostly) Christians was carried out, not be the ISIL Jihadists, but by the Christians’ “nice” Muslim neighbours whom they had lived pdeaceably alongside sometimes (some said) for “centuries”. Thus I cannot help but feel that in most Muslims there is a religious “trigger” that can swiftly change “Joe Mohammed” into Jihadist Joe. And that is enough to generate a degree of despair.
Yes, well, I have some suggestions if you want to protect ‘innocent Muslims’, first be honest about how you define them. I’m venturing a definition of only semi practising and secularist whether or not expicitly stated. This ignores the section of Muslims who religiously practise their faith in a conservative devout way to the best of their abilities and are not politically ‘Islamist’.
If you only define a good Muslim as someone who has rejected some tenets of the faith in favour of Western liberalism there is a real problem as the same kind of tinkering with the faith produces Jihadists at the other extreme.
Unlike Judaism and some other religions both Islam and Christianity are missionary religions, adherents are required to preach their faiths, giving Dawah in Islam and sharing the Gospel message in Christianity. This is supposed to presented as an option rather than a point scoring on conversions.
To go off topic slightly I find it difficult to ignore a double standard, mainly from activists on the political and populist Right. Namely that Muslims are expected to become more liberal around LGB issues for instance whereas when the CofE does it they accused by similar groups of becoming ‘Woke’ and to be opposed.
There are a lot of Muslims out there are clearly decent individuals and that can be discerned from their daily conduct in work, business, social relations and in their family life. These people are decent not because of Islam but in spite of it. There have been Islamic societies that have embraced learning and tolerance and all manner of things that we would say are good, but the sad fact is that these societies got destroyed or trampled by Islamic fundamentalists.