"But what about the moderates?"

[Mister Agenda]

Since the public rant of noted Islamic scholar and mediocre actor Ben Affleck, there has been a divide among progressives between the dewey-eyed "coexist" faction who bristle at public criticism of religion and the so-called "militant" atheists who understand being a progressive must include opposing oppressive and backward ideologies, be they called "religions" or no.

And apparently it must include liberating and progressive ideologies, if they have the label 'Islam' attached to them. Ever hear of an Ahmadi terrorist? An Ismaili terrorist? A Universial Sufi terrorist? The one thing you must NEVER do if you understand being a progressive is use terms like 'Islamism', 'Islamic fundamentalism', 'Islamic extremism', 'Islamic militancy', 'Salafism', or 'Wahabbism' when you can say 'Islam' so you can be sure you don't miss any of the 1.6 billion of them, who are all equally at fault. If you do that, you're a dewey-eyed 'coexister' who bristles at criticism of religion, and apparently hold the dewey eyed notion that coexistence with a quarter of the world's population might be a better way to go than NOT coexisting with them.

"What about the moderates?" we are asked, accompanying the bare assertion that the hardcore fundamentalists, theocrats and terrorists of religions are a tiny minority, who are motivated by non-religious factors such as politics, historical wrongs or economic issues anyway.

However small the minority, it's not small enough. However many they are, how that is supposed to justify ignoring the moderates is pretty mysterious.

"Moderates" within a faith, I would argue, are those who have watered down their religion with foreign elements such as science or personal conscience.

That's a good thing.

These accommodations to modernity and compassion are difficult if not impossible to square with scripture or, in some cases, with the very tenets of the faith.

Hard for YOU to square, because apparently, you agree with fundamentalist Muslims on that point. Millions of Muslims manage it. Q.E.D.

They have few, if any, theological bone fides and sustain their beliefs either by ignoring the inconvenient parts of their religion or by inventing obtuse rationalizations that both non-believers and fundamentalists find laughably ridiculous.

Just like Jews and Christians. Why do you give a fuck if they can satisfy their conformity to modernity with theological soundness to your specifications? What's the problem with that? You remind me of pro-lifers who are against birth control. The best way to prevent abortions is birth control, but promoting birth control gets in the way of the true goal of marginalizing people who choose to get abortions. So shit on them for getting abortions, and if they get birth control, shit on them for that.

They are more "failed fundamentalists" than a truer representation of their faith, unwilling to follow their religion to its logical conclusions.

If the logical conclusions are a problem for you, why criticize them for avoiding reaching them? They've got mullahs for that.

For example, a Christian might accept evolution but then he/she must explain what the story of Eden was all about. If it was just a metaphor, then what is Jesus dying to save us from, since the "fall" must also be metaphoric. If Eve was a real person, produced by evolution, then how can we square this with the Christian tenet that death entered the world by sin, which happened by Eve. If Eve brought sin and therefore death into the world, how did evolution produce her without death (a key component in the process of evolution). And what are we to make of passages of the Gospels where Jesus expressed a literal belief in a literal Adam and a literal Noah's Ark?

If they're not trying to get it into our public school system and not bothering US about it, it's THEIR problem, not ours.

Either the Bible IS the Word of God or it is NOT the Word of God.
Either the Koran IS the Word of God or it is NOT the Word of God.
There is no "sorta kinda" option with divine revelation.

But there IS interpretation. We WANT them to interpret their scriptures in a way that allows them to tell themselves they don't have to stone adultresses, don't we? The more back flips they have to go through, the better. I don't think it's a coincidence that reconciliation to modernity is followed by a drop in religiosity. Why do you want to throw sand in the gears of that process?

Sorry "coexist" liberals but the "moderate" loses, hands down, no contest.

Loses how, and to whom?

The other implicit assumption by the "coexist" liberal is that the "moderate" is any better behaved than the fundamentalist when it comes to political matters.

How moderates behave is an empirically matter. If you're not satisfied with their behavior, you may be defining the wrong people as 'moderates'.

Anyone who depends on the moderates as a bulwark against fundamentalism and theocracy might have also depended on the Iraqi army for protection against ISIL.

You were attacked by ISIL?

This kind of barrier can melt away in an instant as moderates will often toss their lot in with the fundamentalists whenever they're not in the cross-hairs of the fundamentalist's agenda.

This is different from typical human behavior how? I'd toss in with the fundamentalists if my life or the lives of my loved ones was on the line: and I should. And I don't see how increasing the number of moderates would protect me less than convincing them that they're not fundamentalist enough on theological grounds.

I've personally known many "moderate" Christians who accept evolution who will support a "one man, one woman" definition of marriage, vote against women's rights or support a fundamentalist candidate.

Why do you call them moderates? If you do call them moderates, maybe we should be talking about liberals instead.

If the moderate doesn't aid and abet the fundamentalist directly, then they arguably do indirectly by holding up their scripture as divinely inspired. The fundamentalist starts from this point and then adds, "...and here's what it says."

Fundamentalism is a reaction to modernity. It's recent, historically speaking, in both the Christian and Islamic camps, which were trending towards more liberal interpretations until some charismatic figures started digging in their heels and trying to go backwards. Fundamentalism is failing in the USA and it will fail in the Middle East. How will it profit us in the short or long term to diffuse our focus from countering the extremists? You influence groups of people by treating the ones behaving most like you'd want them to well and the ones behaving least like you'd want them to poorly, and the middle will trend accordingly. Our current policy of overthrowing secular regimes and supporting the main exporter of Wahabbism with our military might seems geared to promoting Islamism. We're getting what we paid for.

Put bluntly, the "coexist" liberal is also enabling the fundamentalist and all their abuses, from acts of violence to intrusive legislation to cruel traditions such as genital mutilations.

I've heard such assertions many times, but it's never backed up with any evidence. The most liberal denominations of Christianity in America are on the typical atheist's side on every issue except agreeing with them about God. They are a force for social change in the direction of modernity, and the resulting demographic shifts are going to be very obvious in about five years. We're winning, not because we're successful at evangelizing atheism, but because we're on the same side as religious liberals, who outnumber us in America by at least an order of magnitude.

All of these things are possible only by magical thinking and credence to beliefs about sky daddies. It seems an odd form of "progressive" thinking to not oppose repressive ideologies.

It seems an odd form of 'progressive' thinking to embrace blanket generalization of entire demographics, too, but there you are.

You don't like Islam. I get it. I'm not fond of it, either. But I do like people, and people deserve to be treated fairly, even when they disagree with me. It's clear that our criticism of Christianity is much more nuanced than our criticism of Islam tends to be, and it's clear that the reason for that is our greater familiarity with Christianity and our greater ignorance of Islam. There's also the fact that where we are in the world, Muslims are a despised minority and most of them are here because they largely agree with us that a democratic republic is a better place to live than a theocratic dictatorship. When you 'go after' Islam in a place where they're relatively powerless and disliked and good citizens (comparable to the rates of good citizenship of other demographics, anyway), it can easily morph into oppression, and often has. And it's not unreasonable for a progressive Muslim to be offended at the presumption of someone claiming she's not 'doing it right' because she's not a fundamentalist.

A religion is not just its scriptures. A religon is, more than anything else, the sum of its followers. Do you have a plan to 'deal with' Islam?

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When these so-called islamic "moderates" stand up to the mullahs I'll believe they exist. Just like any fucking god needs evidence before I believe they exist. But if they sit there like sheep just watching then they and their bullshit religion can go fuck themselves.

Did you consider Googling 'moderates stand up to mullahs' before you typed that? Your ignorance of the existence and efforts of reformers and activists doesn't mean they don't exist, and we live in an age where it's extremely easy to become informed.

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When these so-called islamic "moderates" stand up to the mullahs I'll believe they exist. Just like any fucking god needs evidence before I believe they exist. But if they sit there like sheep just watching then they and their bullshit religion can go fuck themselves.

There were certainly some Muslims who denounced the recent attacks on Canadian soldiers. I heard them on the news. Of course, I have no idea what percentage they form of the Canadian Muslim community.

For what it's worth, this might give you a broad outline:

http://www.macdonaldlaurier.ca/files/pdf...1-2011.pdf

The short version: Muslims in Canada are very diverse and complex in their opinons, averaging between 'confrontational' and 'assimilationist'.

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I'm not terribly certain where this idea came from that, unless every member of a group is a murdering cunt that the group cannot be criticized? Not every Nazi was at Auschwitz. They still get tarred with the same brush.

More like 'not every German was a Nazi. The problem isn't your condemnation of terrorists. It's your condemnation of people who agree with you about them for an accident of demographics.