Barry Rubin On Where Are the Muslim Anti-Islamists? They’re the People Battling and Being Murdered by the Islamists

         Where Are the Muslim Anti-Islamists? They’re the People Battling and Being Murdered by the Islamists

by Barry Rubin

A reader asks: where are all these tens and even hundreds of millions of Muslim anti-Islamists.

I wrote an entire book about the liberals and moderates called The Long War for Freedom. There are a number of scholars who have written such books as well as analogies of moderate Muslim writings. Oh, yes, and then there is every book and article written by non- and anti-Islamist Muslims over decades.

The problem today is that we are caught between two lies. The mainstream Western lie is that Islam is a religion of peace full stop. There is nothing at all militant in its texts. A small fringe of extremists have misinterpreted it or are even heretics. So all Muslims are moderates pretty much, either moderate moderates or moderate Islamists. And anyone who says otherwise is an Islamophobic racist.

That is a lie.

But then there are those—far smaller in number and lacking power in the mainstream media or universities but present in other places—who say Islam is the problem full stop. It is inevitably militant, extremist, and violence. There is no such thing as political Islamism because all Muslims want Sharia dictatorships. So the radicals are proper representatives and there are few or no moderates at all. And anyone who says otherwise is a wimpy apologist sell-out.

And that’s a lie.

Let me once again define the difference between two moderate groups:

Continue reading Where Are the Muslim Anti-Islamists? They’re the People Battling and Being Murdered by the Islamists

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, was published by Yale University Press in January 2012. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and  Rubin Reports, on Pajamas Media

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