The Not So Moderate Majority

I hardly need explain to anyone reading this just how little regard I have for the usual specious arguments along the lines "Muslim terrorists represent only a small minority", but rarely does it occur that a Muslim community goes out of its way to show just how hollow such utterances are.

Imam Shaheed Satardien is taking a stand against those Muslims in Ireland whom he claims are too sympathetic to Osama bin Laden and the cult of the suicide bomber. At Friday prayers in the sports hall in north-west Dublin, the South African-born former anti-apartheid activist warns his multinational congregation against blaming other religions and the West in general for all Muslims' ills.

Cast out by the majority Islamic community in Dublin for his outspokenness, the 50-year-old preacher says he has received death threats. 'I am standing firm in my beliefs,' Satardien says. 'The truth is more important than being popular or living a quiet life. Extremism has infected Islam in Ireland. It's time to get back to the spiritual aspect of my religion and stop it being used as a political weapon.'

The imam from Cape Town fled his native country following death threats, he says, from Islamic extremists in South Africa. His younger brother, Ibrahim, was shot dead in 1998 following a row with Islamic radicals in the city.

You can read the rest of the article yourself. As I've repeated times without number by now, Islamic terrorists need the quiet assent of the majority of their fellow religionists in order to flourish just as surely as fish need water to swim, and there is no truth to explanations of the silence of the alleged "moderate Muslim majority" in the face of terrorist attacks as stemming from intimidation at the hands of a "tiny minority" [sic] of extremists. Few Muslims may have the guts to throw their own lives away in the name of jihad, but that does not mean that those who are stupid and reckless enough to do so are held in less than the greatest esteem by a frighteningly large number of their co-religionists, substantial percentages of whom are even brazen and/or stupid enough to admit as much in poll after poll, even in Europe.

Comments

[Matt]

"Few Muslims may have the guts to throw their own lives away in the name of jihad, but that does not mean that those who are stupid and reckless enough to do so are held in less than the greatest esteem by a frighteningly large number of their co-religionists, substantial percentages of whom are even brazen and/or stupid enough to admit as much in poll after poll, even in Europe."

I guess it is brazenness. They know Europe is not willing to do anything about them. Where is Europes 21st century Charles the Hammer?