Where Are the 'Moderate' Muslims?

In the wake of the monstrous beheading of a young British man in broad daylight by Muslims who cited the Qur’an to explain and justify their ritual slaughter has come the predictable reaction – blame anything except Islam’s violent teachings — from the left and their media propagandists. But where are the “moderate Muslims”?

The kneejerk reaction from Muslim spokespeople and the “leaders” of various Muslim organizations after the bloody beheading of a young British soldier and father in the streets of London, the copycat stabbing of a French soldier by a Muslim who is still at large in Paris, and the bloody bombing of women, children and families on a bright shiny Monday in Boston, has been a deflection of responsibility, as well as secondary attacks on the kuffar. We are admonished and schooled on a mythical narrative of anti-Muslim backlash and “Islamophobia.” We hear, meanwhile, no cries for reform. “Moderate Muslims” hold no protests against the jihad here or abroad.

But historically, they protest us. They protest our freedom rallies. The Daily Mail reported Monday that the jihad murderer Mujahid Adebolajo “was among hundreds of young Muslims who gathered outside Harrow Central Mosque in North-West London” on September 11, 2009, so as to “‘defend’ it against a planned joint protest by the English Defence League and Stop the Islamisation of Europe group.” The jihad murderer was protesting our group – in the company of numerous Muslim “moderates” who deplored our “Islamophobia.”

This was nothing unusual. Every time we organized a protest against the Ground Zero Mosque, for example, “moderate Muslims” were there protesting us. When we held a conference in Dearborn, Michigan, the Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference on Honor Killings, “moderate Muslims” were there protesting. Whenever and wherever I am scheduled to speak on individual rights and equality for all before the law, “moderates” are there protesting.

But where are their protests, beyond simple press statements, against how the Islamic jihadists have used the texts and teachings of Islam to justify the jihad murders in Boston and London? Where are the protests against the Qur’anic texts and teachings that command jihad?

Meanwhile, Mujahid Adebolajo was not the first jihadist to be assumed to be harmless, presumably “moderate,” before he turned to murder. The two jihadists behind the plot to bomb a VIA passenger train over Niagara Falls, Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser, were highly educated, with access to the best engineering and science intel. No one was concerned about that, thanks to the presumption of “moderation.” There are many Muslims on Esseghaier’s team at a research institute in Canada. Were any of them aware of Esseghaier’s and Jaser’s radicalism?

How do we know which of our co-workers and neighbors aren’t bloody jihadists in the making? How do we identify the “moderates”? Remember: Anwar Awlaki, the imam to the 9/11 Muslim terrorists (who assisted in the purchase of their airplane tickets), was the go-to imam the media consulted (the “moderate” imam) for all things Islam right after 9/11. And so did the 9/11 hijackers, for “spiritual guidance.”

Awlaki dined at the Pentagon for lunch. He supped there as well. Yet the devout Muslim Awlaki also provided succor and Islamic spiritual guidance to the 9/11 jihadis, the Fort Hood jihadist and the Christmas underwear bomber. Today’s “moderate” does nothing effective to fight against jihad terror, and no authorities seem to care – and every now and then, without warning, yesterday’s “moderate” becomes today’s mass murderer. What’s the difference? Good PR and a lot of propaganda served as hot as apple pie by a jihad-aligned media. What they don’t tell you is the fact that the most recent survey, conducted over a five-year period, showed over 80 percent of the mosques in America teach, advance and promote jihad.

This is an ideological war devoid of borders, countries, and nationality. And the sooner the kaffirs and infidels and “people of the book” accept that harsh reality, the sooner we will begin to stem the Islamic supremacist tide. The global jihad transcends borders, nationalities, race, creed (pre-conversion) or color. It is the ideology of supremacism, violence and hate that compels the relentless war on non-Muslims and secular Muslims (apostates). Until we face reality (and truth is the recognition of reality), we are all in great peril.

Even some of those reputed to be “moderates” admit this. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, a country that up until recently had been considered the embodiment of “moderate” Islam, declared in 2009: “The ‘moderate Islam’ concept is wrong. The word ‘Islam’ is a simple word – it is only Islam. If you say ‘moderate Islam,’ then an alternative is created, and that is ‘immoderate Islam.’ I cannot accept such a concept as a Muslim.”

Obama repeatedly again last week that the U.S. is not at war with Islam. Indeed. But Islam is at war with the West. Not all Muslims, but a critical mass. Not all Germans were Nazis, and not all members of the Nazi Party were eager for war or Holocaust. But the ideology was bankrupt. The “moderate” Muslims of today are about as effective in stemming the tide of savagery as the anti-Nazi “good Germans” were.

As Erdoğan said, there is no moderate Islam. There is no extreme Islam. Islam is Islam. The silence and inaction of the “moderates” after the jihad killings in Boston and London proves that yet again. The only folks who can save Islam are other Muslims, not Western politicians pretending to distinguish between Muslims they have never met.

Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and author of the new book Freedom or Submission: On the Dangers of Islamic Extremism & American Complacency, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here.