Simple question: was Mohammed an exponent of Islam or Islamism? Did he slaughter those who opposed him or even spoke against him? Did he wage wars of conquest and force his enemies into conversion or submission?
You can interpret it in many ways. For example, Muhammad never conquered anything out of Arabia (he never even fully unite it), and his idea was to unite clans and tribes. Also, Mecca Quran is different from Medina Quran, and Jews in Medina for example coexisted with Muslims (in fact, a majority of Medinans were Jews I believe).
Also, reformist and liberal Muslims see Muhammad as comparatively progressive *for his time*, limiting but not banning practices that were widely accepted in society then, and believe that it is that progressive example itself that modern day Muslims should follow, by being more progressive and limiting the accepted injustices of *their* time. Plus like I mentioned before in another comment, the Crown Prince of Saudi basically downgraded the validity of most Hadith and blamed them for a lot of the violence in the Muslim world, so there are clear disagreements even within Muslims over what it means to follow the perfect example of their Prophet. Some see it as living exactly as he did in the 7th century and others see it as an example of limiting unjust practices relative to one’s own time in a progressive movement against oppression. Not to mention, a lot of things were permitted to the Prophet that ordinary Muslims weren’t ever allowed to do, much as the number of wives he had. So, Muslims disagree both over (1) whether Muhammad practiced Islam or Islamism as defined by today’s standards, and (2)over the extent to which any random Muslim has the authority to just do the same things he did in his lifetime.
To be clear, I am an apostate and don’t find the reformist case persuasive. I also don’t find the claims of Muhammad as a divine prophet or perfect man persuasive. Nevertheless, I recognise there is huge differences in opinion amongst Muslims themselves and between schools of thought even within a classically Islamic education and framework. Although I don’t believe Islam is true, I’d like those who believe that Islam over Islamism is its true nature to win out over the rest and I am happy to support them in that endeavour.
Thank you for sharing, I really appreciate it. If more people like you can share their experiences (as in, people who know Islam from inside), that would be helpful!
And thank you for your article. I’ve tried to put together my thoughts along similar lines before but never managed to finish it and you have written it in a much more articulate way. You may also be interested to follow the writer Asmy on Substack here - https://asmium.substack.com - who is writing a series on Islam from an actual Muslim perspective (rather than a filthy apostate one!) while also being frank about the appalling ways many Muslims themselves have behaved ie he is doing exactly what you’d like from Muslims as per your article. Muslims like that are in such a lonely position, hated equally by the Islamists, anti Islam activists and the progressives alike so I deeply admire their courage and try to support their work where possible.
I was interested to check out this writers work since, as you said, he’s sharing his views from the “inside” so to speak.
I only read two of his articles, both about misconceptions of Islam, and I have to say, I’m disappointed. He started off with the usual anti American rhetoric that we are used to hearing from the more extreme segments of the Muslim community (sometimes for good reason), only to move on to specific issues that people have voiced regarding some Islamic teachings/ideas (I.e. taqiyya, nifaq, polygamy etc.) all of which are reasonably troubling to “outsiders”. However, as pointed out in the comments of his article, those aren’t really the core issues that people have a problem with when it comes to Islamic extremism.
So in his next piece he pivots and tries to completely remove Islam from the picture and instead blames the problem almost entirely on bad/stupid/uneducated/poor/“gypsy people”. Not only does this smack of racism, I also think it incorrectly removes the teachings of Islam from the equation entirely. He claims educated Muslims in the USA cause zero problems exactly because they are not the same as the “garbage” Muslims who immigrate to Europe.
I appreciate the attempt he makes to have this difficult conversation, but I think it shows that he is an insider, and he is (understandably so) wanting to defend his faith/beliefs from people who might be misunderstanding it. However, I don’t think it’s intellectually honest to pretend like Islam is problem free and it’s just bad people who happen to be Muslim, or bad people purposefully twisting the message of Islam doing terrible and intolerant things.
Anyways, thank you for sharing. I’ll do another plug for the conversation between Majid Nawaz and Sam Harris here, because it think it is the best conversation regarding this issue that I have heard.
Hey, thanks for reading the pieces and for the well thought out response. The points on Taqiyah etc I thought were worth mentioning because a lot of people do seem to default to it whenever any Muslim opposes Islam.
With respect to your second point, I wouldn’t put it in the way he did but what I think is clear is that the USA and Europe received different waves of migration and you can see how these vary. Even within the UK, frankly, a lot of the initial Pakistani Muslim waves of migrants themselves talk about how shocked they are that the country let in large numbers of eg Mirpuri Pakistani waves, and I do think they’re treated in similar ways to gypsies in terms of being a clannish group who even others that share their religion and ethnicity often don’t want to live near. I’m as critical of Islam as any person, having left it and having been at threat from Islamists for apostasy, but none of my years of classical Islamic study has led me to conclude that things like the brutal Rotherham mass rapes or random beheading attacks are sanctioned even by the most violent Islamic clauses. Most of those perpetrators themselves were petty criminals too and engage in a lot of other haram or forbidden behaviour so I really don’t think it’s Islamic scripture that drives them, they care little for being holy men. If anything , more religiosity could have stopped them if they truly feared Hell. And a lot of people who spoke out against them who were Muslim did so out of a deep religious conviction. That’s why I do suspect he’s right that they are the product of clannish societies that would be doing this without Islam. I actually know some women from very minority Christian families eg in Syria that share a similar type of culture and there is a lot of overlap there. And along the same vein, I don’t think those men would behave differently if they converted to Christianity or became atheists. So this is why I was more sympathetic to his initial two articles. This doesn’t mean other phenomena are not directly related to Islam such as the phenomena of men going around threatening to behead anyone who depicts of offends their Prophet based on their interpretation of Islamic law (which i still think is the incorrect one but i can see the link).
But you’re right that that’s all beside the point- the reason I pointed to his series is that he is planning to write about Islam specifically. The first two articles were laying out some of these initial points because he says that in later instalments he wants to focus on Islam itself and people’s issues with it because elsewhere he’s already conceded that it’s a lot of Muslim behaviour which causes justifiable anger in return. He has already written about some things referred to in the comments on his previous posts. He said in that post that the next series of articles will in fact refer to the issues people take with Islam itself including its rulings on things like slavery and apostasy. So I don’t think he’s attempting to remove Islam from the picture or shy away from these things. He’s also pointed to the 3 centuries of crisis in Islamic intellectual thought which I’ve noticed too, and he has said in comments that the slavery articles probably won’t be favoured by some Muslim readers, so that’s why I am curious what he has to say on all this “from the inside.”
I do find his style of writing re racial meme jokes personally off putting but I regularly see it amongst other Gen Z internet minded writers so for my sins, I just don’t pay much heed to it and focus on the main points lol.
The Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz and similar talks were also good, but I haven’t kept up with Maajid recently. Last I checked he seemed to have fallen down some strange rabbit holes. I suppose not much is stranger than the Tommy Robinson - Maajid Nawaz alliance though, which to me actually showed that the fiercest critics of Islam are just desperate for some honesty. Oh if only the rosy honeymoon period lasted!
PS re your “sometimes with good reason” qualifier, yes I’m not anti American or any Western, rather the opposite but yes I do think some of these points are valid (as explanatory forces and not excusing behaviour in terms of why specific rulers and interpretations became dominant). Does it get overstated by the nutters? Yes - Maajid refers to them as half truths.
Overall I think the writer is writing in good faith and I’m interested to see what he has to say when he comes to the specific questions about Islamic doctrines themselves that he has promised in the next instalments
Those were other times. Christians were also murdering each other and non-christians in drove, in the name of religion. So were muslims. Christians are doing better these days, and Muslims also.
Tomas, this article changed my perspective. Drawing the distinction between Islam (a personal religion) and Islamism (a coercive political ideology) is a powerful light that clarifies the entire debate. It helps defend moderate Muslims and fight extremism without falling into the trap of Islamophobia. Thank you so much for this very important work.
"Like in most religions, most adherents of Islam are kind, welcoming, peaceful, and productive." Those first few words are important. It's important not to judge people by the extremists of their faith, whether that's Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Sikh, pagan or anything else, and calling out extremism is not the same as being prejudiced against a religion.
A great article, thank you Tomas. Respect for having courage to write on such a sensitive topic! I disagree only on the Preacher Calls: I think demanding to have Preacher Calls in a Western Non-Muslim country is a sign of Islamism, not Islam, because it expands the private religion into public space and "conquers" it. Of course you could argue that church bells are "conquering" public space too, but my counter argument would be that we can give church bells an exception for historical/cultural reasons (since they have been part of the European culture for 15 centuries or so).
Maybe you're right. There are some honest grey areas there—some of which I'd like to explore—and this is one of them. Other examples include the hijab and public prayers.
Ha! I have joked with my family when we are in Muslim countries that the source of Islamic terrorism is the 5AM call to prayer. That makes anyone and everyone wake up angry and ready to fight. I have read that the Bilal ibn Rabah, the first muezzin, had a beautiful singing voice that was a joy to hear. By contrast, when I hear the call to prayer it is a loud, screechy, scratchy, awful sound from a cruddy speaker that does not in any way inspire peace and love. Call to prayer in the modern way is obnoxious and disruptive. Modern Muslims can use one of many apps that give them call to prayer at the right time for their location, and also help them point to Mecca. (Church bells are rarely unpleasant to hear, even in the early morning. They have evolved over time to sound good.)
Agreed. But church bells early in the morning are not universally loved; where I live, the vast majority of people are non-religious and have coerced the churches to ring their bells at 11:00 on Sunday mornings, not earlier. By 11, even those with hangovers are mostly awake.
Holy books of all major religions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - have advocated for violence to spread the ideas of that religion. However, Judaism and Christianity have mellowed down and a majority of their followers have stopped interpreting their religious books literally. There are hard core followers of these two religions who still want to follow their books , but they are insignificantly small or in case of Judaism too weak and are contained in Israel.
In case of Islam the religion has not been able to mellow down because of following reasons:
1. Their book uses much harsher language to scare anyone who wants to not interpret it literally.
2. Significantly a larger % of followers - still a minority of all followers but much more than other two religions - still believes in interpreting their religious books literally. The ones who don't want to follow literally are scared and dare not condemn/criticize openly.
3. Thus Islam is not a religion of peace. Most politicians refrain from saying this loud and clear.
As mentioned in the article a majority of followers of Islam are good , peace loving people but they are scared to criticize the actions of their co-religionists who advocate for violence.
Yes there are many reasons why it has a stronger share of radicals.
I think most people miss a crucial one: oil.
An inordinate share of oil reserves are in Muslim countries, and oil doesn't require human capital to produce wealth. As such, many Muslim countries haven't had as much pressure to improve human capital, which in turn requires commerce, collaboration with others.
We see it time and time again: Some of the countries that historically supported Islamism the most were the biggest oil and gas producers (Saudi Arabia and its Wahhabism, Qatar, Iran). They went on to fund a lot of the growth of Islamism abroad.
Countries or areas that didn't have oil, yet developed, are consistently more moderate, like Dubai, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey (with a slide back in this last case).
That's why I have the hope that the end of oil will bring a serious renaissance in Islam in the coming 2 decades
Interesting hypothesis. A variant of the resource curse. That makes a lot of sense. Societies that don't have to "work" for their income can tolerate all kinds of non-productive practices.
Nowhere in the Bible advocates for violence to spread the ideas of Christianity.
Yes, violence has sometimes been used to spread the ideas of Christianity. But unlike Islam, it wasn't baked into the religion from the beginning. The decline of Christianist violence is not, as you claim, the result of an originally violent religion mellowing out and not being taken literally anymore.
An interesting and important point to note imo. Many modern Christian’s view the “Old Testament” as something for followers of Judaism and less for modern Christians. It’s full of interesting stories with lessons to be learned, and there is some important foreshadowing of Jesus’ coming, but otherwise it is a “rulebook” for a certain people (Jews), in a certain period of time. Jesus explicitly says that the old laws (the laws of the Old Testament) are no longer to be followed by his new followers. Therefore, I think one could very easily argue that Christianity does not in fact condone violence, and that it is distinctly different from Islam in that way.
Yeah that’s what a moderate Christian would say indeed. And he’d be right. Just as a moderate Muslim would be right in his more lenient interpretation of Islam.
Fair point. I would argue that that would be a much more difficult argument to believe coming from a Muslim than it would be from a Christian. The layout of these two holy books is different. The message of Jesus and the message of Muhammad are different. As is the outcome in our modern world.
I think Sam Harris made a valid point in his discussion with Majid Nawaz. If in some future world a person picked up these two books (the Bible and the Quran) and read them cover to cover and then acted on that reading (as if it was the literal word of god), we would have a problem. Any honest reading of the Quran is very hard to square with our western ideals of human rights, liberalism, and democracy. You have to purposely leave out or (in my opinion) misread certain parts in order to be a moderate Muslim. This is the same for the Christian Bible. However, for whatever reason, the west has been able to move away from the worst parts of the Bible.
The first ones are about Judaism, not Christianity.
The Matthew text is said in the context of bolstering his followers to remain faithful in the face of persecution by the sword - not to use the sword themselves.
True enough for Christianity. But Judaism is a non-evangelizing religion one is born into, or goes through substantial effort to convert into. It is not and has not been spread through coercive violence.
Thank you for writing this article Tomas. It takes a hefty dose of courage and self reflection to put out an article like this one.
Since my own catastrophic, first hand experience with Islamism during my time in Afghanistan I have struggled with these very ideas you discussed in the article. How do you appose the ideas of Islamism while not trampling on the religious freedom/freedom of speech of moderate Muslims? It becomes increasingly difficult when you are trying to have this conversation in the context of a liberal, progressive, left leaning society that immediately shuts down any discussion of problems within Islam (and I refer to Islam specifically rather than organized religion more generally, because progressives have no problem calling out problematic behavior within Christianity or Judaism).
If folks have not listened to the conversation between Majid Nawaz and Sam Harris regarding these same ideas, I would recommend giving it a listen. This is arguably one of the most important issues of our time, along with climate change. I am very grateful for your attempt to shine a light on the darker corners of our shared human experience.
Honestly, the solution to the progressive liberal tendency to just shut down discussion about Islam is to simply continue to insist on having it - on sound liberal, progressive grounds. It doesn’t make me popular always but I think it’s too important to concede, and leaving the issue to the right is a spectacular own goal on the part of the liberal left.
Sarah Haider’s speech on his from over a decade ago is excellent. It is called “Islam and the Necessity of Liberal Critique” and is on YouTube.
Helen Pluckrose also writes about opposing illiberal Muslims and supporting liberal ones from a liberal perspective on her Substack and in her other work.
Excellent summary, absolutely top notch. But my real world take-away is that there is a blurry line between the two, and one of the two is extremely dangerous to society. The safest course would be to minimize the numbers of Muslims from the start to avoid the risks.
I hate to say this, but I kept thinking this article almost reads like how it is our duty to separate the good from the bad Nazis. To paraphrase Trump, I am sure there are good ones on every team. But perhaps the best course is just keep them all out.
I predict some parts of Europe will collapse from this tension in the next few decades.
Not following. Modern Nazis aren’t necessarily united, and I am not sure how it would matter to the discussion if they were. I am really not trying to be too argumentative on your great article, I just need to point out my fear…
In a world where there is a porous and changing division between good and bad members of an organization, the safest bet may be to just keep out anyone belonging to the organization. This puts the burden in the only sustainable place — on those within the organization — to police themselves.
I hope this distinction gains currency to afford Muslims their constitutional rights in the US, and to clear up the Zionism accusations rampant in current political discussions. Although Israel was established as a Jewish political state, Israel is not anti-Muslim. Israel was established as a country with freedom of religion, and bears no ill will towards peaceful neighbors like UAE. As a Cuban refugee to this capitalist US, I cannot help but think that eventually the principles of capitalist self-interest will bring Peace to the Middle East and the whole world. I think the descendants of the people who preserved European Liberal values during the Dark Ages would now profit from cooperating with Israel as a way of moving towards peace and prosperity.
I don't think Muslim women have any free will to " want" to wear a hijab because they are indoctrinated since early childhood. I witnessed young Muslim women in Germany " deciding " to start wearing it " to be a good Muslim " although no line in Quran says they must cover their body. Mostly they do it because of family obligations. The husband rules and he dresses as he pleases (generally Western like) while women must be covered like Catholic nuns in black even under the hot summer sun while their husbands wear shorts and T shirts. On the other hand I don't quite see the difference between Islam and Islamism because Muslin countries (none of them is a democracy) couldn't yet separate the church from the state. And take Saudi Arabia for instance: they are still influenced by Salafistm/Wahhabism a most extreme Islamic tendency that even forbids music. Of course they are more "open" nowadays, you can enjoy even international music there and it's true that MBS' government has enabled women to drive cars but the socially fighting women that promoted this are still in jail and I don't think their human rights are being respected. And MBS (Mohamed Bin Salman) murdered Jamal Khashoggi the Washington Post Saudi journalist; and Qatar supports economically Hamas, and if you are a raped woman in the Emirates better don´t go to the police because they will put you in jail for fornicating. So I think there is a lot of hypocrisy in their politicians and other communicators you quote.
Read "The evolution of God" ( by Robert Wright) or better "God is not great" by Christopher Hitchens and you will understand better.
Well, ever so briefly, you've defined things so that Islam is acceptable to a Western liberal, ie someone using an inherited Christian standard of right and wrong. The trouble with that is that Mohammed himself doesn't meet those standards - he had different standards - which means that in any internal Islam debate, the position closer to Mohammed is stronger. This is the Medinan vs Meccan question, ie the harsher verses abrogate the (earlier) more moderate verses. Yes you can construct a version of Islam that looks a lot like other faiths; what is more difficult (and where I disagree with you) is saying that that version of Islam is the 'true' version. I don't think Islam has the internal theological resources to justify your claim - as it would mean accepting that Mohammed was flawed, and I don't think that's possible within Islam as such.
Islamism is a western concept. In the islamic world, there is only islam. Islam is political and intolerant by its very nature. Some muslims follow it to the letter, and some decide to ignore the worst parts. That's not down to the principles of the religion, which are clearly defined in the koran and hadiths as I've read them, but down to other factors such as culture, local laws and personal choice. There is no blurry line, there is a gradient of how much one decides to uphold and how much to ignore. The most extreme version is what is written down.
Islam is exclusionary by its very nature. The scriptures are only considered valid in old arabic, and considered quite literally the word of God. They have ingrained prejudices against non-believers, women, dogs, pork and a host of other arbitrary rules. The mentality is extremely closed, islam has to ignore any semblance of historical accuracy because otherwise the principles on which it's founded fall apart.
'Moderate' islam is just the tool of violent islam. The non-violent people don't monitor the violent ones because they in fact agree with the principle but not with the means. Take for instance the UK's rape gangs, they were all shielded by the community. It's a tribal mentality, the ummah, that forbids a muslim from accusing another, combined with taqiyya, the permission to deceive non-believers. However why is any of this surprising? Mohammed was a terrible person by almost any standard we subject him to; he waged war and executed entire communities, he stole other people's wives, he married a young child, he assassinated political opponents, and he was fine with slavery. For a universally accepted figure, he falls short on basically any metric.
All the countries you mention that want to be open to other religions, where are they? Where are the churches and the synagogues in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, all the beautiful, open, democratic muslim countries? It's just lip service for the gullible.
I've often heard the expression Abrahamic religions, because of the supposed things they have in common. (Just as a by the by, even the story of Abraham is different in islam, as the sacrificed is not Isaac but Ismael) This is another tool to confuse people of the nature of the belief system, as if they are somehow equivalent. This couldn't be further from the truth. I once heard the following: "radicalize a Christian, get a saint; radicalize a muslim, get a t". The more I learn about islam, the more true I believe it to be. If this is islamophobic (another made up insult to discredit criticism) so be it. A lot of these magic words like racism have stopped having the effect they used to. It's gone, as it should have ever been.
A lot of people in Europe are extremely scared of the growing number of muslims, and they are right to be. The reaction to the encroaching of islam on the West could be brutal if muslims don't return back to their own countries of their own volition. We haven't benefitted at all from the immigration from the Middle East and African countries and it is increasingly obvious that multiculturalism is a failed experiment.
I used to be a lukewarm "it'll be fine, we'll get along" kind of person, naively thinking things would sort themselved out. There is basically nothing that can convince me that anything short of total remigration is a solution at this point.
I don't believe there is a moderate version of islam, for example, just that some people decide to ignore certain ideas, so perhaps you call those moderate. The reason I see them as complicit in what you call islamists is that they don't police, monitor, or condem their actions, even in the West.
Sharia: it is the law of the land in about ~40 majority muslim country. Places that weren't muslim become islamified. There is very little evidence to think this cannot happen in Europe. The moderates won't mind. They might not participate in the establishment of such a system, but they won't complain
Leaving Islam: the penalty for muslims leaving the religion varies, a lot of moderate muslims are ostracized and even in the West live in hiding, but in many supposedly modern, moderate, muslim countries (Qatar, UAE) there are death penalty laws for apostasy
Blasphemy: we had someone attack another man with a knife for burning the koran in the UK, and another man (Salwan Momika) killed by muslims in Sweden for blasphemy. I never read any outrage from the moderates
Prayer: images of muslims praying in the streets, and mosques blaring the call to prayer are now commonplace in many places in Europe. Moderates don't seem to mind, I never see anyone wanting to reduce that or condemning it. That's because it is a political domination tool that benefits all muslims
Education: Public schools are bending over backwards to provide halal-only meat, taking kids on trips to mosques, disallowing even valid criticism (a teacher had to go into hiding for presenting an image of mohammed). No outrage from the moderates
Women/Hijab/Dress Code: draping women in black in summer in the streets, on the beach, cannot shake a man's hand, forced hijab, etc. All of this is accepted by moderate muslims, this constant demeaning
Child marriage: several countries have legal child marriage (Afghanistan? Nigeria?), maybe we should consider the country as islamist. Again, I don't think they see themselves that way
Israel/Palestine: muslims are the most biased people on this subject. It's only natural, the koran literally starts by mentioning them in the first pages, it's an age old religious struggle since mohammed got annoyed by them. Moderate or not, the negative opinion of jews by a muslim is almost a statistical certainty
So yes, some muslims don't engage in violence, mysogyny, etc. but they are happy to look the other way and be complicit. Eventually, with muslims no longer a minority, things become bleaker. Hopefully that addresses that particular point
The flaw in your reasoning is that I gave you examples of moderates and Islamists.
You are saying: moderates don’t exist, because look at all the examples of Islamists I can find.
This is poor thinking. For you to prove that moderates don’t exist, you need, among other things, to explain how I was able to get so many quotes of moderates. Did I lie? Are they lying? Why would so many of these countries ban the Muslim brotherhood? What about the abrahamif house in Abu Dhabi? You need to be able to explain away all the examples of moderate Muslims with an alternative hypothesis.
Note how I never said there aren't moderate muslims, I'm saying there is no moderate islam. Moderates existing or not is relatively irrelevant because they either tacitly support what the islamists do, or their indifference does not fix the problems caused by them. You say they ban the Muslim Brotherhood and you know what? Good for them, but that's just what we should have done ages ago, our weak governments don't do it to appease. I do find it a bit hypocritical though that Qatar houses the leaders of Hamas. And islamists make up a huge percentage of muslims, it's not like this minute proportion.
"I hope the difference is clear: Islam whispers to the soul; Islamism shouts on the street. Islam wants believers to get on their knees, Islamism wants you to get on yours. Islam breeds pilgrims, Islamism conquerors. Islam saves souls, Islamism drafts laws. Islam wants the freedom to believe, Islamism wants obedience." You make this distinction, and I disagree with it.
But let's say they abandon all the objectionable parts of islam, according to some standard (Western?), which in my estimation should be say 90% of it. At that point, how much of islam is left? Are they even muslims by that point? That's kind of the crux of the issue, islam-abiding muslims by definition are not moderate in my view. Not necessarily violent, they just uphold beliefs wholly incompatible with what Europe is.
Moderate is a moving goalpost too, and everyone's definition is different. Merely being non-violent doesn't make a moderate; I consider most islamic beliefs very objectionable for a European society, and from my point of view none of the discussed above should be allowed in Europe, and we didn't even get to other areas like cousin marriage, forced marriage, slavery in north Africa, terrorism, crime rates, etc.
Ultimately though, what is the point of all this? What incredible boons did Western societies get that have made all of this worth it? The bombings, the stabbings, the beheadings, the insecurity, the conflict and racial tensions, the rape gangs, the undermining of our local politics with sectarian conflicts, like what tradeoff did we get that tips the balance?
On the point about Islamism being a Western concept, maybe this particular phrase is but the irony is that a lot of Muslim countries themselves ban the violent jihadi factions and have vast numbers of Muslims who strongly oppose them. I know quite a lot of Muslims who have moved back to Indonesia or other Muslim majority countries because those governments take the threat of Islamism or jihadism much more seriously and don’t get hung up in the hesitancy to offend!! Of course most of those countries aren’t liberal utopias but that’s also true for Christian cultures countries overseas too, most of the world is more illiberal and conservative in terms of things like homosexuality and how sacred texts are treated. Even accounting for that, there is a huge degree of variation between Muslim majority countries which enforce restrictions against jihadis / Islamists / the spread of Salafi interpretations and the funnelling of money.
As for versus of the Quran etc, liberal or reformist Muslims believe that Muhammad and Islam were progressive *for their time* e g not outlawing but limiting practices that were acceptable, so all future generations of Muslims should interpret these verses as the first step towards further progress, so even there, there are many interpretations of the same context which are disputed amongst Muslims themselves. It’s not just some rogue Western notion. Even if the distinction was a Western notion, it may be useful, in the same way that a lot of what Christians take for granted in the West in terms of freedoms were very much forged in the West.
Also, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia recently classified most Hadith as unreliable and non binding, and blamed them for a lot of violence in the Muslim world. Again, hardly a Western invention.
I completely understand and share the concerns about the way many forms of Islam are practiced in the UK and Europe, but the idea that the distinction between peaceful and coercive forms is a Western lie is demonstrably false.
It's undeniable that some muslim countries have identified the extremes of their religion and have sought to curtial it, but I take issue with the idea that there is an ideal moderate islam that some people practice and others don't, that we should all aspire to present to the world. The irony there is that the state needs to be repressive and coercive to achieve it, a trajectory we are presently on. My opinion is that islam is violent in its nature and conception, and therefore being moderate equates to being, in a way, "less muslim".
"Also, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia recently classified most Hadith as unreliable and non binding, and blamed them for a lot of violence in the Muslim world. Again, hardly a Western invention." This however proves my point, the only way to make islam peaceful is to get rid of most of it, at which point there's hardly an argument for keeping the religion alive.
I completely agree with you that Western nations are not doing their job policing islam, because they are terrified of a) violence and b) being called islamophobes, another slur/invention of our mainstream discourse to suppress valid criticism.
I particularly dislike the islam/islamism distinction because it equivocates this point, and westerners are ignorant enough to believe that yes, there is indeed some pacifist strain of islam somewhere, if only the radical element were to be removed. I reject the premise entirely, and it is why I consider it a Western lie, created by Westerners for Westerners. To that point, are there words in arabic that distinguish 'islam' and 'islamism' in the way our languages do?
I’m not asking you to believe there is an ideal moderate Islam that some people practice and others don’t. What I am saying is the disagreement over which form of Islam is the real one and should be followed now has a long history and is played out in Muslim countries themselves, not just the West. This is then reflected in Muslims who end up in the West (and further shaped here too ofc), and while the terms themselves may be a Western invention at base, the differences in interpretation is not. There isn’t one word for Islam vs Islamism in Arabic per se because those exact concepts are indeed Western, but there the ways these are distinguished are via how different traditions interpret what is termed Creed, Jurisprudence and Methodology.
What you’re saying is you don’t believe there is a version of Islam which is not of the jihadi version and you ascribe that distinction to the West. But even outside of the West and in so much historical contexts, many Muslims have themselves have disagreed with that view amongst themselves. Your view is premised on the violence inherent in the formation of the religion, their view is premised on the idea that Muhammad imposed limits in comparison to the norms of that time in the context of multiple warring clans too so was more progressive *for his time*, so it’s in that spirit that future Muslims should interpret their traditions. So they would say being “moderate” IS carrying on the example of the prophet relative to their time. I am not trying to persuade you they’re correct btw. Ultimately I do not find Islam convincing and that’s why I left. But what I am trying to say is there has been huge variation in how it has been practiced and interpreted and that part isn’t a Western invention.
The view that being moderate equates to being less Muslim is basically the Salafist and eventually, the ISIS position, which is why most Muslims who disagree with them get targeted first by those groups.
To your point about re the Saudi Crown Prince’s reclassification of Hadith and this proving your point that the only way to make Islam peaceful is to get rid of it: that approach is one amongst many of the others. You can either get rid of bits or reinterpret bits, either way so what? If the attempt is successful, I don’t care which of these happens. If that seems unthinkable, then I genuinely don’t think the way most religions are practiced now could have been predicted the way they were in the 7th century. As for why bother keeping Islam around at all then, I actually left Islam so feel no particular drive to keep it. But the Muslims I know who want to retain it do so because they still believe in the *fundamentals* - and by fundamentals, I mean the 5 pillars: Prayer, Fasting, Charity, Pilgrimage and Declaration of Faith. These are all the actual obligations that most Muslims agree on. The reason what we are calling “Moderate” Muslims here don’t think they’re less Muslim is because to them, those are the fundamental obligations and they believe these are true and ordained by God. Many report feeling a divine connection with God through these rituals. Others it may be more for identity reasons- wanting to nominally stay Muslim because it’s like an ancestral connection though most families I know like that eventually securalise in future generations. I know, for example, quite a number of Muslims who stay Muslim because they believe in God and in the Abrahamic God / revelation in particular but don’t find the concept of the Trinity convincing, so they remain in Islam. Or others like Dr Timothy Winters converted from Christianity to Islam. For these people, if they believe these practices in Islam - the ones that actually oblige you every day rather than ideas about governance which barely touch an ordinary person’s every day life - how would they just get rid of it? They’d keep it but take on the interpretations of the Quran and Hadith which make the most sense to them.
To be clear, I share your concerns about Islam and Muslims in the West and specifically about freedom and that’s why I’ve spent a lot of my professional life dedicated to those freedoms. I’ve found many many Muslims who have indeed spoken up - as the original article also outlines examples of - but when those Muslims are targeted brutally both by Islamists, non Muslim leftists and by nativists, other Muslims learn their lesson. I myself am an apostate so actually I’d rather their version of Islam prevails, whether it’s “true” Islam or they’re “real” Muslims or not.
As a non Muslim I don’t think any of it is actually true, so “Islamists” aren’t any more true to me than “moderates” and I’d rather the moderates win the battle of interpretation. Just like I’m glad that the Christians who fought to end slavery won against the Christians who used the Bible to justify slavery for centuries, or the liberals won against the Christians who continued to want to burn heretics - and yes I am aware that Jesus was a fundamentally different character to Muhammed and that the Bible and the Quran are seen differently by adherents of those faiths, and I take those distinctions seriously. Even with those distinctions though, the more liberal interpretations we enjoy in the West were hard won and that is what “moderate” Muslims are fighting for too. I’d like if they could win that war of interpretation. For that to happen, they need to actually be protected from retaliation and violence when they do speak up, whereas the British state has taken to just locking them up instead. So when they speak up, they get physically attacked or threatened by Islamists, smeared as racists by progressives (whose support of Islamists goes much further than that of many Muslims themselves) and of course, told by anti Islam activists that they’re just secretly ISIS anyway. I think we are much more likely to see more ordinary Muslims speak up in greater numbers if we support the ones who actually did speak up and found themselves in danger because of it.
We can agree on what you're saying about different islamic traditions, they go all the way back to the war of succession that erupted right after the death of mohammed. I get that you have the salafists and the shia, the sunni and all the rest, and some don't believe the others are real muslims, etc. You likely have more detailed knowledge as I'm not an apostate and never was muslim.
But you'll have to concede that the nuance in the islamic world doesn't matter at all in the Western world. These distinctions go way over any westerner's head, and the peaceful vs violent narrative is the only one we have left here, the is no history of jurisprudence or debate or any of it. I personally don't believe any of the different strains is fundamentally better than the other as I think the source itself is, the quran and so on, is broken.
I realize that some muslims might struggle with this a lot, and I could sympathize to some extent if our homeland wasn't being the subject of this experiment and had to live with the consequences. No European citizen ever wanted this, and we have a long history of fighting against the encroaching of islam historically, tooth and nail, in the Iberian peninsula, Tours, Lepanto, Vienna, Constantinople... I used to think the Crusades were a terrible thing, imagine that. We just don't need any of these foreign conflicts here; our capitals are overrun and we are minorities in our largest cities. The time for subtleties was 20 years ago, and we don't want to be dealing with these issues here. People can sort out their disagreements elsewhere.
I do agree that the British state is going full Orwell on this, supported by the lunatic left, and thinks any dissenting voice against islam needs to be silenced. In my opinion it's because they have traditionally reaped the muslim votes, just like the Greens are doing right now. This will backfire in spectacular fashion, particularly regarding the gay and trans issues.
On your points on Christianity, I agree that many atrocities were committed in the name of Christ, like slavery or the subjugation of peoples in America, etc. but like you said yourself, Jesus would have never recognized that as his message.
Tomas - this is one of your most important articles since the COVID ones that made you famous (ish ?). Moderate Muslim countries do not tolerate Islamist preaching for example. The distinction is very important and key. I hope some mainstream news sources pick this up soon. Best always, Jenna
One interpretation is that you sincerely believe the distinction between Islam and Islamism is both morally and operationally important. In that reading, the article is a defense of a classical liberal principle: protect peaceful religious belief while opposing coercive political movements. Given your writing style over the years, I'd assign perhaps a 70% probability to this explanation.
But I can't quite shake a second interpretation either. The article spends thousands of words documenting terrorism, radicalization, anti-democratic rhetoric, grooming gangs, Islamist networks, second-generation radicalization, and institutional failures. By the end, many readers will likely feel substantially more worried about Islam than when they started. The concluding appeal for tolerance can therefore read less as the culmination of the argument and more as a protective disclaimer. I'd assign perhaps a 30% probability to that explanation.
Part of why I ask is that I found the article genuinely disturbing. I am probably one of the readers whose views moved in the opposite direction from the one you intended. After reading the previous article and then this one, I came away not reassured, but more pessimistic.
Suppose I accept every factual claim in the article. I then have to ask: if 15-20% are Islamists, if a much larger group is sympathetic to some Islamist goals, if Islamist organizations operate through mainstream religious institutions, if second generations can become more radical than the first, and if even experts struggle to draw the boundary consistently, how confident should ordinary citizens be that our institutions can make that distinction successfully?
More bluntly: what is the optimistic scenario here? I can see the problem you describe. I can see why collective blame would be unjust. What I struggle to see is how Europe in particular, but perhaps the West more broadly, successfully navigates this over the coming decades. The article paints a remarkably bleak picture of the challenge while placing much of the burden on Western societies to remain tolerant and discerning. That may be morally correct, but it left me wondering whether the institutions involved are actually capable of carrying that burden.
That's the question I kept coming back to. I don't doubt the moral necessity of distinguishing Muslims from Islamists. I am much less certain about the practical ability of Western societies to do so.
A great article once again, putting each issue in its proper place. Conceptual clarity is a gain in itself.
However, there is one statement I do not agree with. In the final sentence of the chapter “Islamism in Everyday Life in the West,” you write: “All of this is speech, and if it remained as such, it would be OK. But it doesn’t.”
I do not believe Islamist discourse can be considered acceptable in an open society. It is a form of hate speech that, as a necessary corollary, leads to action.
Such discourse should be denounced, and perhaps we should even consider stronger measures. The classic example is Germany, where the glorification of Nazism is illegal.
A similar situation arose on American campuses when anti-Israel demonstrators chanted slogans such as “From the river to the sea,” calling for the elimination of Israel. The president of Harvard, along with the leaders of two other major universities, initially defended this as an issue of free speech. In the end, however, they were forced to resign amid accusations that such rhetoric amounted to incitement to genocide.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if someone openly advocated the rape of children. Would that also be defended as merely an exercise of free speech?
Honestly, I wish I had a close friend who was a devout Muslim that I could have these conversations with. Being in a fairly diverse area in the U.S, and having served in the military (arguably the most diverse sliver of the U.S. population) I have friends from many backgrounds with only a few glaring exceptions. One of which is a person who is a devout Muslim.
As with most people, once I am face to face in a conversation with someone I become more human. More compassionate, more empathetic. I would like to be able to do this. However, it’s not exactly the sort of thing you bring up in casual conversation. At least not where I’m from.
Well said! It’s the classic problem with open, democratic and liberal societies. The paradox of tolerance. Where do you draw the line? Can you limit such things? Are you still a free, liberal, democratic society if you do?
It’s obvious that there is problem of intolerance and violence within Islam. Way too many Muslims believe intolerable things or are willing to tolerate other Muslims that are intolerant. As Tomas said in his article, there is an “in group” mentality as with any religious group.
As far as I’m aware there has never been a successful reform of Islam. Can there be? That’s what Majid Nawaz and his organization (Quilliam) are trying to do. I wish them the best of luck. Their mission is of the utmost importance, however, I’m not all that hopeful that they will succeed in their goals.
I was born and raised Christian. I felt I learned a lot from this article about distinguishing my Christianity from my Christianitism.
We all sit on continuum between pure religion (compassionate things we do for others) and zealotry (things we do or say to justify ourselves). We should **all** strive to take more actions based on those feelings of pure religion rather than zealotry; and I think you're article does a good job of contextualizing how a failure to do so can harm communities, groups and nations.
More generally -- Support Pure Religion, Oppose Zealotry. And as you've pointed out, there's a myriad of ways in which Islamism is being protected by people wanting to protect for Islam. Similarly I'm sure I've stuck up for Christianitism (even if not systemically).
It is also important to understand the issue of zealotry in any religion. The west used to have Christian zealots willing to die or kill for the cause in the 14-1600s. Zealotry is what is dangerous - not the religion itself.
What do you mean "the west used to have Christian zealots?" There are plenty still around today. Christianity is no better than Islam in that respect, and its historical body count is still much higher.
"The kingdom of God allows aggression." - US Speaker Mike Johnson, 10/26/23
Simple question: was Mohammed an exponent of Islam or Islamism? Did he slaughter those who opposed him or even spoke against him? Did he wage wars of conquest and force his enemies into conversion or submission?
You can interpret it in many ways. For example, Muhammad never conquered anything out of Arabia (he never even fully unite it), and his idea was to unite clans and tribes. Also, Mecca Quran is different from Medina Quran, and Jews in Medina for example coexisted with Muslims (in fact, a majority of Medinans were Jews I believe).
Also, reformist and liberal Muslims see Muhammad as comparatively progressive *for his time*, limiting but not banning practices that were widely accepted in society then, and believe that it is that progressive example itself that modern day Muslims should follow, by being more progressive and limiting the accepted injustices of *their* time. Plus like I mentioned before in another comment, the Crown Prince of Saudi basically downgraded the validity of most Hadith and blamed them for a lot of the violence in the Muslim world, so there are clear disagreements even within Muslims over what it means to follow the perfect example of their Prophet. Some see it as living exactly as he did in the 7th century and others see it as an example of limiting unjust practices relative to one’s own time in a progressive movement against oppression. Not to mention, a lot of things were permitted to the Prophet that ordinary Muslims weren’t ever allowed to do, much as the number of wives he had. So, Muslims disagree both over (1) whether Muhammad practiced Islam or Islamism as defined by today’s standards, and (2)over the extent to which any random Muslim has the authority to just do the same things he did in his lifetime.
To be clear, I am an apostate and don’t find the reformist case persuasive. I also don’t find the claims of Muhammad as a divine prophet or perfect man persuasive. Nevertheless, I recognise there is huge differences in opinion amongst Muslims themselves and between schools of thought even within a classically Islamic education and framework. Although I don’t believe Islam is true, I’d like those who believe that Islam over Islamism is its true nature to win out over the rest and I am happy to support them in that endeavour.
Thank you for sharing, I really appreciate it. If more people like you can share their experiences (as in, people who know Islam from inside), that would be helpful!
And thank you for your article. I’ve tried to put together my thoughts along similar lines before but never managed to finish it and you have written it in a much more articulate way. You may also be interested to follow the writer Asmy on Substack here - https://asmium.substack.com - who is writing a series on Islam from an actual Muslim perspective (rather than a filthy apostate one!) while also being frank about the appalling ways many Muslims themselves have behaved ie he is doing exactly what you’d like from Muslims as per your article. Muslims like that are in such a lonely position, hated equally by the Islamists, anti Islam activists and the progressives alike so I deeply admire their courage and try to support their work where possible.
Thanks for sharing, I’ll check it out!
I was interested to check out this writers work since, as you said, he’s sharing his views from the “inside” so to speak.
I only read two of his articles, both about misconceptions of Islam, and I have to say, I’m disappointed. He started off with the usual anti American rhetoric that we are used to hearing from the more extreme segments of the Muslim community (sometimes for good reason), only to move on to specific issues that people have voiced regarding some Islamic teachings/ideas (I.e. taqiyya, nifaq, polygamy etc.) all of which are reasonably troubling to “outsiders”. However, as pointed out in the comments of his article, those aren’t really the core issues that people have a problem with when it comes to Islamic extremism.
So in his next piece he pivots and tries to completely remove Islam from the picture and instead blames the problem almost entirely on bad/stupid/uneducated/poor/“gypsy people”. Not only does this smack of racism, I also think it incorrectly removes the teachings of Islam from the equation entirely. He claims educated Muslims in the USA cause zero problems exactly because they are not the same as the “garbage” Muslims who immigrate to Europe.
I appreciate the attempt he makes to have this difficult conversation, but I think it shows that he is an insider, and he is (understandably so) wanting to defend his faith/beliefs from people who might be misunderstanding it. However, I don’t think it’s intellectually honest to pretend like Islam is problem free and it’s just bad people who happen to be Muslim, or bad people purposefully twisting the message of Islam doing terrible and intolerant things.
Anyways, thank you for sharing. I’ll do another plug for the conversation between Majid Nawaz and Sam Harris here, because it think it is the best conversation regarding this issue that I have heard.
Hey, thanks for reading the pieces and for the well thought out response. The points on Taqiyah etc I thought were worth mentioning because a lot of people do seem to default to it whenever any Muslim opposes Islam.
With respect to your second point, I wouldn’t put it in the way he did but what I think is clear is that the USA and Europe received different waves of migration and you can see how these vary. Even within the UK, frankly, a lot of the initial Pakistani Muslim waves of migrants themselves talk about how shocked they are that the country let in large numbers of eg Mirpuri Pakistani waves, and I do think they’re treated in similar ways to gypsies in terms of being a clannish group who even others that share their religion and ethnicity often don’t want to live near. I’m as critical of Islam as any person, having left it and having been at threat from Islamists for apostasy, but none of my years of classical Islamic study has led me to conclude that things like the brutal Rotherham mass rapes or random beheading attacks are sanctioned even by the most violent Islamic clauses. Most of those perpetrators themselves were petty criminals too and engage in a lot of other haram or forbidden behaviour so I really don’t think it’s Islamic scripture that drives them, they care little for being holy men. If anything , more religiosity could have stopped them if they truly feared Hell. And a lot of people who spoke out against them who were Muslim did so out of a deep religious conviction. That’s why I do suspect he’s right that they are the product of clannish societies that would be doing this without Islam. I actually know some women from very minority Christian families eg in Syria that share a similar type of culture and there is a lot of overlap there. And along the same vein, I don’t think those men would behave differently if they converted to Christianity or became atheists. So this is why I was more sympathetic to his initial two articles. This doesn’t mean other phenomena are not directly related to Islam such as the phenomena of men going around threatening to behead anyone who depicts of offends their Prophet based on their interpretation of Islamic law (which i still think is the incorrect one but i can see the link).
But you’re right that that’s all beside the point- the reason I pointed to his series is that he is planning to write about Islam specifically. The first two articles were laying out some of these initial points because he says that in later instalments he wants to focus on Islam itself and people’s issues with it because elsewhere he’s already conceded that it’s a lot of Muslim behaviour which causes justifiable anger in return. He has already written about some things referred to in the comments on his previous posts. He said in that post that the next series of articles will in fact refer to the issues people take with Islam itself including its rulings on things like slavery and apostasy. So I don’t think he’s attempting to remove Islam from the picture or shy away from these things. He’s also pointed to the 3 centuries of crisis in Islamic intellectual thought which I’ve noticed too, and he has said in comments that the slavery articles probably won’t be favoured by some Muslim readers, so that’s why I am curious what he has to say on all this “from the inside.”
I do find his style of writing re racial meme jokes personally off putting but I regularly see it amongst other Gen Z internet minded writers so for my sins, I just don’t pay much heed to it and focus on the main points lol.
The Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz and similar talks were also good, but I haven’t kept up with Maajid recently. Last I checked he seemed to have fallen down some strange rabbit holes. I suppose not much is stranger than the Tommy Robinson - Maajid Nawaz alliance though, which to me actually showed that the fiercest critics of Islam are just desperate for some honesty. Oh if only the rosy honeymoon period lasted!
PS re your “sometimes with good reason” qualifier, yes I’m not anti American or any Western, rather the opposite but yes I do think some of these points are valid (as explanatory forces and not excusing behaviour in terms of why specific rulers and interpretations became dominant). Does it get overstated by the nutters? Yes - Maajid refers to them as half truths.
Overall I think the writer is writing in good faith and I’m interested to see what he has to say when he comes to the specific questions about Islamic doctrines themselves that he has promised in the next instalments
Mohamed killed jews in Medina because they didnt about him as a prophet
Please read about the Medina Constitution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Medina#Relationship_with_Jewish_tribes
Those were other times. Christians were also murdering each other and non-christians in drove, in the name of religion. So were muslims. Christians are doing better these days, and Muslims also.
Tomas, this article changed my perspective. Drawing the distinction between Islam (a personal religion) and Islamism (a coercive political ideology) is a powerful light that clarifies the entire debate. It helps defend moderate Muslims and fight extremism without falling into the trap of Islamophobia. Thank you so much for this very important work.
Agreed. I need to remind myself that not all self-proclaimed Christians are hate-filled bigots as well, hard as that may be to remember these days.
"Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it." – George Bernard Shaw
"Like in most religions, most adherents of Islam are kind, welcoming, peaceful, and productive." Those first few words are important. It's important not to judge people by the extremists of their faith, whether that's Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Sikh, pagan or anything else, and calling out extremism is not the same as being prejudiced against a religion.
Agreed!
A great article, thank you Tomas. Respect for having courage to write on such a sensitive topic! I disagree only on the Preacher Calls: I think demanding to have Preacher Calls in a Western Non-Muslim country is a sign of Islamism, not Islam, because it expands the private religion into public space and "conquers" it. Of course you could argue that church bells are "conquering" public space too, but my counter argument would be that we can give church bells an exception for historical/cultural reasons (since they have been part of the European culture for 15 centuries or so).
Maybe you're right. There are some honest grey areas there—some of which I'd like to explore—and this is one of them. Other examples include the hijab and public prayers.
Ha! I have joked with my family when we are in Muslim countries that the source of Islamic terrorism is the 5AM call to prayer. That makes anyone and everyone wake up angry and ready to fight. I have read that the Bilal ibn Rabah, the first muezzin, had a beautiful singing voice that was a joy to hear. By contrast, when I hear the call to prayer it is a loud, screechy, scratchy, awful sound from a cruddy speaker that does not in any way inspire peace and love. Call to prayer in the modern way is obnoxious and disruptive. Modern Muslims can use one of many apps that give them call to prayer at the right time for their location, and also help them point to Mecca. (Church bells are rarely unpleasant to hear, even in the early morning. They have evolved over time to sound good.)
That's an interesting point. Thanks!
Agreed. But church bells early in the morning are not universally loved; where I live, the vast majority of people are non-religious and have coerced the churches to ring their bells at 11:00 on Sunday mornings, not earlier. By 11, even those with hangovers are mostly awake.
Also they don't have a message. And they ring on time.
Holy books of all major religions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - have advocated for violence to spread the ideas of that religion. However, Judaism and Christianity have mellowed down and a majority of their followers have stopped interpreting their religious books literally. There are hard core followers of these two religions who still want to follow their books , but they are insignificantly small or in case of Judaism too weak and are contained in Israel.
In case of Islam the religion has not been able to mellow down because of following reasons:
1. Their book uses much harsher language to scare anyone who wants to not interpret it literally.
2. Significantly a larger % of followers - still a minority of all followers but much more than other two religions - still believes in interpreting their religious books literally. The ones who don't want to follow literally are scared and dare not condemn/criticize openly.
3. Thus Islam is not a religion of peace. Most politicians refrain from saying this loud and clear.
As mentioned in the article a majority of followers of Islam are good , peace loving people but they are scared to criticize the actions of their co-religionists who advocate for violence.
Yes there are many reasons why it has a stronger share of radicals.
I think most people miss a crucial one: oil.
An inordinate share of oil reserves are in Muslim countries, and oil doesn't require human capital to produce wealth. As such, many Muslim countries haven't had as much pressure to improve human capital, which in turn requires commerce, collaboration with others.
We see it time and time again: Some of the countries that historically supported Islamism the most were the biggest oil and gas producers (Saudi Arabia and its Wahhabism, Qatar, Iran). They went on to fund a lot of the growth of Islamism abroad.
Countries or areas that didn't have oil, yet developed, are consistently more moderate, like Dubai, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey (with a slide back in this last case).
That's why I have the hope that the end of oil will bring a serious renaissance in Islam in the coming 2 decades
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/the-future-of-petrostates-after-oil
Interesting hypothesis. A variant of the resource curse. That makes a lot of sense. Societies that don't have to "work" for their income can tolerate all kinds of non-productive practices.
Correct
The article focuses on that entirely
Bien mal acquis ne profite jamais.
And all this oil money flux is now sucking-in the US over there again. A true black hole.
Nowhere in the Bible advocates for violence to spread the ideas of Christianity.
Yes, violence has sometimes been used to spread the ideas of Christianity. But unlike Islam, it wasn't baked into the religion from the beginning. The decline of Christianist violence is not, as you claim, the result of an originally violent religion mellowing out and not being taken literally anymore.
I asked ChatGPT:
Deuteronomy 7:1–2: commands the Israelites to defeat and destroy certain nations.
Deuteronomy 20:16–18: instructs that certain conquered peoples should not be allowed to remain.
Joshua describes military campaigns presented as divinely sanctioned.
Gospel of Matthew 10:34, Jesus says: "I came not to bring peace, but a sword."
Luke 19:27, in a parable, Jesus says: "Bring here those enemies of mine who did not want me to reign over them, and slaughter them before me."
Probably much less than the Quran, but not squeacky clean hands either
An interesting and important point to note imo. Many modern Christian’s view the “Old Testament” as something for followers of Judaism and less for modern Christians. It’s full of interesting stories with lessons to be learned, and there is some important foreshadowing of Jesus’ coming, but otherwise it is a “rulebook” for a certain people (Jews), in a certain period of time. Jesus explicitly says that the old laws (the laws of the Old Testament) are no longer to be followed by his new followers. Therefore, I think one could very easily argue that Christianity does not in fact condone violence, and that it is distinctly different from Islam in that way.
Yeah that’s what a moderate Christian would say indeed. And he’d be right. Just as a moderate Muslim would be right in his more lenient interpretation of Islam.
Fair point. I would argue that that would be a much more difficult argument to believe coming from a Muslim than it would be from a Christian. The layout of these two holy books is different. The message of Jesus and the message of Muhammad are different. As is the outcome in our modern world.
I think Sam Harris made a valid point in his discussion with Majid Nawaz. If in some future world a person picked up these two books (the Bible and the Quran) and read them cover to cover and then acted on that reading (as if it was the literal word of god), we would have a problem. Any honest reading of the Quran is very hard to square with our western ideals of human rights, liberalism, and democracy. You have to purposely leave out or (in my opinion) misread certain parts in order to be a moderate Muslim. This is the same for the Christian Bible. However, for whatever reason, the west has been able to move away from the worst parts of the Bible.
The first ones are about Judaism, not Christianity.
The Matthew text is said in the context of bolstering his followers to remain faithful in the face of persecution by the sword - not to use the sword themselves.
The Luke text is a parable.
The Old Testament is part of Christianity.
The context of Matthew, a parable… are you reinterpreting the texts from a more positive lens?
The context of Matthew is not a parable.
Matthew 10:16-39 is all about how Christians are likely to face persecution by the sword.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010%3A16-39&version=NIV
True enough for Christianity. But Judaism is a non-evangelizing religion one is born into, or goes through substantial effort to convert into. It is not and has not been spread through coercive violence.
Thank you for writing this article Tomas. It takes a hefty dose of courage and self reflection to put out an article like this one.
Since my own catastrophic, first hand experience with Islamism during my time in Afghanistan I have struggled with these very ideas you discussed in the article. How do you appose the ideas of Islamism while not trampling on the religious freedom/freedom of speech of moderate Muslims? It becomes increasingly difficult when you are trying to have this conversation in the context of a liberal, progressive, left leaning society that immediately shuts down any discussion of problems within Islam (and I refer to Islam specifically rather than organized religion more generally, because progressives have no problem calling out problematic behavior within Christianity or Judaism).
If folks have not listened to the conversation between Majid Nawaz and Sam Harris regarding these same ideas, I would recommend giving it a listen. This is arguably one of the most important issues of our time, along with climate change. I am very grateful for your attempt to shine a light on the darker corners of our shared human experience.
Keep up the great work!
Thank you!
Ah yes, I had forgotten about Sam / Majid. Great conversations.
Honestly, the solution to the progressive liberal tendency to just shut down discussion about Islam is to simply continue to insist on having it - on sound liberal, progressive grounds. It doesn’t make me popular always but I think it’s too important to concede, and leaving the issue to the right is a spectacular own goal on the part of the liberal left.
Sarah Haider’s speech on his from over a decade ago is excellent. It is called “Islam and the Necessity of Liberal Critique” and is on YouTube.
Helen Pluckrose also writes about opposing illiberal Muslims and supporting liberal ones from a liberal perspective on her Substack and in her other work.
Excellent summary, absolutely top notch. But my real world take-away is that there is a blurry line between the two, and one of the two is extremely dangerous to society. The safest course would be to minimize the numbers of Muslims from the start to avoid the risks.
I hate to say this, but I kept thinking this article almost reads like how it is our duty to separate the good from the bad Nazis. To paraphrase Trump, I am sure there are good ones on every team. But perhaps the best course is just keep them all out.
I predict some parts of Europe will collapse from this tension in the next few decades.
Nazis were united by one leader. Muslims are not. We should definitely get rid of Islamists.
Not following. Modern Nazis aren’t necessarily united, and I am not sure how it would matter to the discussion if they were. I am really not trying to be too argumentative on your great article, I just need to point out my fear…
In a world where there is a porous and changing division between good and bad members of an organization, the safest bet may be to just keep out anyone belonging to the organization. This puts the burden in the only sustainable place — on those within the organization — to police themselves.
I hope this distinction gains currency to afford Muslims their constitutional rights in the US, and to clear up the Zionism accusations rampant in current political discussions. Although Israel was established as a Jewish political state, Israel is not anti-Muslim. Israel was established as a country with freedom of religion, and bears no ill will towards peaceful neighbors like UAE. As a Cuban refugee to this capitalist US, I cannot help but think that eventually the principles of capitalist self-interest will bring Peace to the Middle East and the whole world. I think the descendants of the people who preserved European Liberal values during the Dark Ages would now profit from cooperating with Israel as a way of moving towards peace and prosperity.
I don't think Muslim women have any free will to " want" to wear a hijab because they are indoctrinated since early childhood. I witnessed young Muslim women in Germany " deciding " to start wearing it " to be a good Muslim " although no line in Quran says they must cover their body. Mostly they do it because of family obligations. The husband rules and he dresses as he pleases (generally Western like) while women must be covered like Catholic nuns in black even under the hot summer sun while their husbands wear shorts and T shirts. On the other hand I don't quite see the difference between Islam and Islamism because Muslin countries (none of them is a democracy) couldn't yet separate the church from the state. And take Saudi Arabia for instance: they are still influenced by Salafistm/Wahhabism a most extreme Islamic tendency that even forbids music. Of course they are more "open" nowadays, you can enjoy even international music there and it's true that MBS' government has enabled women to drive cars but the socially fighting women that promoted this are still in jail and I don't think their human rights are being respected. And MBS (Mohamed Bin Salman) murdered Jamal Khashoggi the Washington Post Saudi journalist; and Qatar supports economically Hamas, and if you are a raped woman in the Emirates better don´t go to the police because they will put you in jail for fornicating. So I think there is a lot of hypocrisy in their politicians and other communicators you quote.
Read "The evolution of God" ( by Robert Wright) or better "God is not great" by Christopher Hitchens and you will understand better.
Greetings
I hear you. The hijab is not so clear cut because you can never tell whether wearing it is a personal idea or not
I commend you for a brave attempt, even though I really disagree! But you have made me think, which I am grateful for.
Do share your disagreement!
Well, ever so briefly, you've defined things so that Islam is acceptable to a Western liberal, ie someone using an inherited Christian standard of right and wrong. The trouble with that is that Mohammed himself doesn't meet those standards - he had different standards - which means that in any internal Islam debate, the position closer to Mohammed is stronger. This is the Medinan vs Meccan question, ie the harsher verses abrogate the (earlier) more moderate verses. Yes you can construct a version of Islam that looks a lot like other faiths; what is more difficult (and where I disagree with you) is saying that that version of Islam is the 'true' version. I don't think Islam has the internal theological resources to justify your claim - as it would mean accepting that Mohammed was flawed, and I don't think that's possible within Islam as such.
Islamism is a western concept. In the islamic world, there is only islam. Islam is political and intolerant by its very nature. Some muslims follow it to the letter, and some decide to ignore the worst parts. That's not down to the principles of the religion, which are clearly defined in the koran and hadiths as I've read them, but down to other factors such as culture, local laws and personal choice. There is no blurry line, there is a gradient of how much one decides to uphold and how much to ignore. The most extreme version is what is written down.
Islam is exclusionary by its very nature. The scriptures are only considered valid in old arabic, and considered quite literally the word of God. They have ingrained prejudices against non-believers, women, dogs, pork and a host of other arbitrary rules. The mentality is extremely closed, islam has to ignore any semblance of historical accuracy because otherwise the principles on which it's founded fall apart.
'Moderate' islam is just the tool of violent islam. The non-violent people don't monitor the violent ones because they in fact agree with the principle but not with the means. Take for instance the UK's rape gangs, they were all shielded by the community. It's a tribal mentality, the ummah, that forbids a muslim from accusing another, combined with taqiyya, the permission to deceive non-believers. However why is any of this surprising? Mohammed was a terrible person by almost any standard we subject him to; he waged war and executed entire communities, he stole other people's wives, he married a young child, he assassinated political opponents, and he was fine with slavery. For a universally accepted figure, he falls short on basically any metric.
All the countries you mention that want to be open to other religions, where are they? Where are the churches and the synagogues in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, all the beautiful, open, democratic muslim countries? It's just lip service for the gullible.
I've often heard the expression Abrahamic religions, because of the supposed things they have in common. (Just as a by the by, even the story of Abraham is different in islam, as the sacrificed is not Isaac but Ismael) This is another tool to confuse people of the nature of the belief system, as if they are somehow equivalent. This couldn't be further from the truth. I once heard the following: "radicalize a Christian, get a saint; radicalize a muslim, get a t". The more I learn about islam, the more true I believe it to be. If this is islamophobic (another made up insult to discredit criticism) so be it. A lot of these magic words like racism have stopped having the effect they used to. It's gone, as it should have ever been.
A lot of people in Europe are extremely scared of the growing number of muslims, and they are right to be. The reaction to the encroaching of islam on the West could be brutal if muslims don't return back to their own countries of their own volition. We haven't benefitted at all from the immigration from the Middle East and African countries and it is increasingly obvious that multiculturalism is a failed experiment.
I used to be a lukewarm "it'll be fine, we'll get along" kind of person, naively thinking things would sort themselved out. There is basically nothing that can convince me that anything short of total remigration is a solution at this point.
I think you should re-read the section about Moderate Muslims. It doesn't look like you addressed it at all.
I don't believe there is a moderate version of islam, for example, just that some people decide to ignore certain ideas, so perhaps you call those moderate. The reason I see them as complicit in what you call islamists is that they don't police, monitor, or condem their actions, even in the West.
Sharia: it is the law of the land in about ~40 majority muslim country. Places that weren't muslim become islamified. There is very little evidence to think this cannot happen in Europe. The moderates won't mind. They might not participate in the establishment of such a system, but they won't complain
Leaving Islam: the penalty for muslims leaving the religion varies, a lot of moderate muslims are ostracized and even in the West live in hiding, but in many supposedly modern, moderate, muslim countries (Qatar, UAE) there are death penalty laws for apostasy
Blasphemy: we had someone attack another man with a knife for burning the koran in the UK, and another man (Salwan Momika) killed by muslims in Sweden for blasphemy. I never read any outrage from the moderates
Prayer: images of muslims praying in the streets, and mosques blaring the call to prayer are now commonplace in many places in Europe. Moderates don't seem to mind, I never see anyone wanting to reduce that or condemning it. That's because it is a political domination tool that benefits all muslims
Education: Public schools are bending over backwards to provide halal-only meat, taking kids on trips to mosques, disallowing even valid criticism (a teacher had to go into hiding for presenting an image of mohammed). No outrage from the moderates
Women/Hijab/Dress Code: draping women in black in summer in the streets, on the beach, cannot shake a man's hand, forced hijab, etc. All of this is accepted by moderate muslims, this constant demeaning
Child marriage: several countries have legal child marriage (Afghanistan? Nigeria?), maybe we should consider the country as islamist. Again, I don't think they see themselves that way
Israel/Palestine: muslims are the most biased people on this subject. It's only natural, the koran literally starts by mentioning them in the first pages, it's an age old religious struggle since mohammed got annoyed by them. Moderate or not, the negative opinion of jews by a muslim is almost a statistical certainty
So yes, some muslims don't engage in violence, mysogyny, etc. but they are happy to look the other way and be complicit. Eventually, with muslims no longer a minority, things become bleaker. Hopefully that addresses that particular point
The flaw in your reasoning is that I gave you examples of moderates and Islamists.
You are saying: moderates don’t exist, because look at all the examples of Islamists I can find.
This is poor thinking. For you to prove that moderates don’t exist, you need, among other things, to explain how I was able to get so many quotes of moderates. Did I lie? Are they lying? Why would so many of these countries ban the Muslim brotherhood? What about the abrahamif house in Abu Dhabi? You need to be able to explain away all the examples of moderate Muslims with an alternative hypothesis.
Note how I never said there aren't moderate muslims, I'm saying there is no moderate islam. Moderates existing or not is relatively irrelevant because they either tacitly support what the islamists do, or their indifference does not fix the problems caused by them. You say they ban the Muslim Brotherhood and you know what? Good for them, but that's just what we should have done ages ago, our weak governments don't do it to appease. I do find it a bit hypocritical though that Qatar houses the leaders of Hamas. And islamists make up a huge percentage of muslims, it's not like this minute proportion.
"I hope the difference is clear: Islam whispers to the soul; Islamism shouts on the street. Islam wants believers to get on their knees, Islamism wants you to get on yours. Islam breeds pilgrims, Islamism conquerors. Islam saves souls, Islamism drafts laws. Islam wants the freedom to believe, Islamism wants obedience." You make this distinction, and I disagree with it.
But let's say they abandon all the objectionable parts of islam, according to some standard (Western?), which in my estimation should be say 90% of it. At that point, how much of islam is left? Are they even muslims by that point? That's kind of the crux of the issue, islam-abiding muslims by definition are not moderate in my view. Not necessarily violent, they just uphold beliefs wholly incompatible with what Europe is.
Moderate is a moving goalpost too, and everyone's definition is different. Merely being non-violent doesn't make a moderate; I consider most islamic beliefs very objectionable for a European society, and from my point of view none of the discussed above should be allowed in Europe, and we didn't even get to other areas like cousin marriage, forced marriage, slavery in north Africa, terrorism, crime rates, etc.
Ultimately though, what is the point of all this? What incredible boons did Western societies get that have made all of this worth it? The bombings, the stabbings, the beheadings, the insecurity, the conflict and racial tensions, the rape gangs, the undermining of our local politics with sectarian conflicts, like what tradeoff did we get that tips the balance?
The answer, for me, is nothing
this
Too bad you decided to hide the reply
I didn't hide it, this looks like a new Substack feature, not sure how it works. Haven't read your comment yet though
My bad then for assuming, accept my apologies on this
On the point about Islamism being a Western concept, maybe this particular phrase is but the irony is that a lot of Muslim countries themselves ban the violent jihadi factions and have vast numbers of Muslims who strongly oppose them. I know quite a lot of Muslims who have moved back to Indonesia or other Muslim majority countries because those governments take the threat of Islamism or jihadism much more seriously and don’t get hung up in the hesitancy to offend!! Of course most of those countries aren’t liberal utopias but that’s also true for Christian cultures countries overseas too, most of the world is more illiberal and conservative in terms of things like homosexuality and how sacred texts are treated. Even accounting for that, there is a huge degree of variation between Muslim majority countries which enforce restrictions against jihadis / Islamists / the spread of Salafi interpretations and the funnelling of money.
As for versus of the Quran etc, liberal or reformist Muslims believe that Muhammad and Islam were progressive *for their time* e g not outlawing but limiting practices that were acceptable, so all future generations of Muslims should interpret these verses as the first step towards further progress, so even there, there are many interpretations of the same context which are disputed amongst Muslims themselves. It’s not just some rogue Western notion. Even if the distinction was a Western notion, it may be useful, in the same way that a lot of what Christians take for granted in the West in terms of freedoms were very much forged in the West.
Also, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia recently classified most Hadith as unreliable and non binding, and blamed them for a lot of violence in the Muslim world. Again, hardly a Western invention.
I completely understand and share the concerns about the way many forms of Islam are practiced in the UK and Europe, but the idea that the distinction between peaceful and coercive forms is a Western lie is demonstrably false.
It's undeniable that some muslim countries have identified the extremes of their religion and have sought to curtial it, but I take issue with the idea that there is an ideal moderate islam that some people practice and others don't, that we should all aspire to present to the world. The irony there is that the state needs to be repressive and coercive to achieve it, a trajectory we are presently on. My opinion is that islam is violent in its nature and conception, and therefore being moderate equates to being, in a way, "less muslim".
"Also, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia recently classified most Hadith as unreliable and non binding, and blamed them for a lot of violence in the Muslim world. Again, hardly a Western invention." This however proves my point, the only way to make islam peaceful is to get rid of most of it, at which point there's hardly an argument for keeping the religion alive.
I completely agree with you that Western nations are not doing their job policing islam, because they are terrified of a) violence and b) being called islamophobes, another slur/invention of our mainstream discourse to suppress valid criticism.
I particularly dislike the islam/islamism distinction because it equivocates this point, and westerners are ignorant enough to believe that yes, there is indeed some pacifist strain of islam somewhere, if only the radical element were to be removed. I reject the premise entirely, and it is why I consider it a Western lie, created by Westerners for Westerners. To that point, are there words in arabic that distinguish 'islam' and 'islamism' in the way our languages do?
I did not say we need to foster moderate Islam. I said we should tolerate it. And she should fight Islamism.
I’m not asking you to believe there is an ideal moderate Islam that some people practice and others don’t. What I am saying is the disagreement over which form of Islam is the real one and should be followed now has a long history and is played out in Muslim countries themselves, not just the West. This is then reflected in Muslims who end up in the West (and further shaped here too ofc), and while the terms themselves may be a Western invention at base, the differences in interpretation is not. There isn’t one word for Islam vs Islamism in Arabic per se because those exact concepts are indeed Western, but there the ways these are distinguished are via how different traditions interpret what is termed Creed, Jurisprudence and Methodology.
What you’re saying is you don’t believe there is a version of Islam which is not of the jihadi version and you ascribe that distinction to the West. But even outside of the West and in so much historical contexts, many Muslims have themselves have disagreed with that view amongst themselves. Your view is premised on the violence inherent in the formation of the religion, their view is premised on the idea that Muhammad imposed limits in comparison to the norms of that time in the context of multiple warring clans too so was more progressive *for his time*, so it’s in that spirit that future Muslims should interpret their traditions. So they would say being “moderate” IS carrying on the example of the prophet relative to their time. I am not trying to persuade you they’re correct btw. Ultimately I do not find Islam convincing and that’s why I left. But what I am trying to say is there has been huge variation in how it has been practiced and interpreted and that part isn’t a Western invention.
The view that being moderate equates to being less Muslim is basically the Salafist and eventually, the ISIS position, which is why most Muslims who disagree with them get targeted first by those groups.
To your point about re the Saudi Crown Prince’s reclassification of Hadith and this proving your point that the only way to make Islam peaceful is to get rid of it: that approach is one amongst many of the others. You can either get rid of bits or reinterpret bits, either way so what? If the attempt is successful, I don’t care which of these happens. If that seems unthinkable, then I genuinely don’t think the way most religions are practiced now could have been predicted the way they were in the 7th century. As for why bother keeping Islam around at all then, I actually left Islam so feel no particular drive to keep it. But the Muslims I know who want to retain it do so because they still believe in the *fundamentals* - and by fundamentals, I mean the 5 pillars: Prayer, Fasting, Charity, Pilgrimage and Declaration of Faith. These are all the actual obligations that most Muslims agree on. The reason what we are calling “Moderate” Muslims here don’t think they’re less Muslim is because to them, those are the fundamental obligations and they believe these are true and ordained by God. Many report feeling a divine connection with God through these rituals. Others it may be more for identity reasons- wanting to nominally stay Muslim because it’s like an ancestral connection though most families I know like that eventually securalise in future generations. I know, for example, quite a number of Muslims who stay Muslim because they believe in God and in the Abrahamic God / revelation in particular but don’t find the concept of the Trinity convincing, so they remain in Islam. Or others like Dr Timothy Winters converted from Christianity to Islam. For these people, if they believe these practices in Islam - the ones that actually oblige you every day rather than ideas about governance which barely touch an ordinary person’s every day life - how would they just get rid of it? They’d keep it but take on the interpretations of the Quran and Hadith which make the most sense to them.
To be clear, I share your concerns about Islam and Muslims in the West and specifically about freedom and that’s why I’ve spent a lot of my professional life dedicated to those freedoms. I’ve found many many Muslims who have indeed spoken up - as the original article also outlines examples of - but when those Muslims are targeted brutally both by Islamists, non Muslim leftists and by nativists, other Muslims learn their lesson. I myself am an apostate so actually I’d rather their version of Islam prevails, whether it’s “true” Islam or they’re “real” Muslims or not.
As a non Muslim I don’t think any of it is actually true, so “Islamists” aren’t any more true to me than “moderates” and I’d rather the moderates win the battle of interpretation. Just like I’m glad that the Christians who fought to end slavery won against the Christians who used the Bible to justify slavery for centuries, or the liberals won against the Christians who continued to want to burn heretics - and yes I am aware that Jesus was a fundamentally different character to Muhammed and that the Bible and the Quran are seen differently by adherents of those faiths, and I take those distinctions seriously. Even with those distinctions though, the more liberal interpretations we enjoy in the West were hard won and that is what “moderate” Muslims are fighting for too. I’d like if they could win that war of interpretation. For that to happen, they need to actually be protected from retaliation and violence when they do speak up, whereas the British state has taken to just locking them up instead. So when they speak up, they get physically attacked or threatened by Islamists, smeared as racists by progressives (whose support of Islamists goes much further than that of many Muslims themselves) and of course, told by anti Islam activists that they’re just secretly ISIS anyway. I think we are much more likely to see more ordinary Muslims speak up in greater numbers if we support the ones who actually did speak up and found themselves in danger because of it.
We can agree on what you're saying about different islamic traditions, they go all the way back to the war of succession that erupted right after the death of mohammed. I get that you have the salafists and the shia, the sunni and all the rest, and some don't believe the others are real muslims, etc. You likely have more detailed knowledge as I'm not an apostate and never was muslim.
But you'll have to concede that the nuance in the islamic world doesn't matter at all in the Western world. These distinctions go way over any westerner's head, and the peaceful vs violent narrative is the only one we have left here, the is no history of jurisprudence or debate or any of it. I personally don't believe any of the different strains is fundamentally better than the other as I think the source itself is, the quran and so on, is broken.
I realize that some muslims might struggle with this a lot, and I could sympathize to some extent if our homeland wasn't being the subject of this experiment and had to live with the consequences. No European citizen ever wanted this, and we have a long history of fighting against the encroaching of islam historically, tooth and nail, in the Iberian peninsula, Tours, Lepanto, Vienna, Constantinople... I used to think the Crusades were a terrible thing, imagine that. We just don't need any of these foreign conflicts here; our capitals are overrun and we are minorities in our largest cities. The time for subtleties was 20 years ago, and we don't want to be dealing with these issues here. People can sort out their disagreements elsewhere.
I do agree that the British state is going full Orwell on this, supported by the lunatic left, and thinks any dissenting voice against islam needs to be silenced. In my opinion it's because they have traditionally reaped the muslim votes, just like the Greens are doing right now. This will backfire in spectacular fashion, particularly regarding the gay and trans issues.
On your points on Christianity, I agree that many atrocities were committed in the name of Christ, like slavery or the subjugation of peoples in America, etc. but like you said yourself, Jesus would have never recognized that as his message.
Tomas - this is one of your most important articles since the COVID ones that made you famous (ish ?). Moderate Muslim countries do not tolerate Islamist preaching for example. The distinction is very important and key. I hope some mainstream news sources pick this up soon. Best always, Jenna
It feels like it from the inside, I'm glad you feel it too!
This piece left me with a genuine puzzle.
One interpretation is that you sincerely believe the distinction between Islam and Islamism is both morally and operationally important. In that reading, the article is a defense of a classical liberal principle: protect peaceful religious belief while opposing coercive political movements. Given your writing style over the years, I'd assign perhaps a 70% probability to this explanation.
But I can't quite shake a second interpretation either. The article spends thousands of words documenting terrorism, radicalization, anti-democratic rhetoric, grooming gangs, Islamist networks, second-generation radicalization, and institutional failures. By the end, many readers will likely feel substantially more worried about Islam than when they started. The concluding appeal for tolerance can therefore read less as the culmination of the argument and more as a protective disclaimer. I'd assign perhaps a 30% probability to that explanation.
Part of why I ask is that I found the article genuinely disturbing. I am probably one of the readers whose views moved in the opposite direction from the one you intended. After reading the previous article and then this one, I came away not reassured, but more pessimistic.
Suppose I accept every factual claim in the article. I then have to ask: if 15-20% are Islamists, if a much larger group is sympathetic to some Islamist goals, if Islamist organizations operate through mainstream religious institutions, if second generations can become more radical than the first, and if even experts struggle to draw the boundary consistently, how confident should ordinary citizens be that our institutions can make that distinction successfully?
More bluntly: what is the optimistic scenario here? I can see the problem you describe. I can see why collective blame would be unjust. What I struggle to see is how Europe in particular, but perhaps the West more broadly, successfully navigates this over the coming decades. The article paints a remarkably bleak picture of the challenge while placing much of the burden on Western societies to remain tolerant and discerning. That may be morally correct, but it left me wondering whether the institutions involved are actually capable of carrying that burden.
That's the question I kept coming back to. I don't doubt the moral necessity of distinguishing Muslims from Islamists. I am much less certain about the practical ability of Western societies to do so.
A great article once again, putting each issue in its proper place. Conceptual clarity is a gain in itself.
However, there is one statement I do not agree with. In the final sentence of the chapter “Islamism in Everyday Life in the West,” you write: “All of this is speech, and if it remained as such, it would be OK. But it doesn’t.”
I do not believe Islamist discourse can be considered acceptable in an open society. It is a form of hate speech that, as a necessary corollary, leads to action.
Such discourse should be denounced, and perhaps we should even consider stronger measures. The classic example is Germany, where the glorification of Nazism is illegal.
A similar situation arose on American campuses when anti-Israel demonstrators chanted slogans such as “From the river to the sea,” calling for the elimination of Israel. The president of Harvard, along with the leaders of two other major universities, initially defended this as an issue of free speech. In the end, however, they were forced to resign amid accusations that such rhetoric amounted to incitement to genocide.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if someone openly advocated the rape of children. Would that also be defended as merely an exercise of free speech?
I didn’t want to dive too deeply into that topic, I left it for another time. But I actually agree more than I let it know.
Honestly, I wish I had a close friend who was a devout Muslim that I could have these conversations with. Being in a fairly diverse area in the U.S, and having served in the military (arguably the most diverse sliver of the U.S. population) I have friends from many backgrounds with only a few glaring exceptions. One of which is a person who is a devout Muslim.
As with most people, once I am face to face in a conversation with someone I become more human. More compassionate, more empathetic. I would like to be able to do this. However, it’s not exactly the sort of thing you bring up in casual conversation. At least not where I’m from.
Well said! It’s the classic problem with open, democratic and liberal societies. The paradox of tolerance. Where do you draw the line? Can you limit such things? Are you still a free, liberal, democratic society if you do?
It’s obvious that there is problem of intolerance and violence within Islam. Way too many Muslims believe intolerable things or are willing to tolerate other Muslims that are intolerant. As Tomas said in his article, there is an “in group” mentality as with any religious group.
As far as I’m aware there has never been a successful reform of Islam. Can there be? That’s what Majid Nawaz and his organization (Quilliam) are trying to do. I wish them the best of luck. Their mission is of the utmost importance, however, I’m not all that hopeful that they will succeed in their goals.
I was born and raised Christian. I felt I learned a lot from this article about distinguishing my Christianity from my Christianitism.
We all sit on continuum between pure religion (compassionate things we do for others) and zealotry (things we do or say to justify ourselves). We should **all** strive to take more actions based on those feelings of pure religion rather than zealotry; and I think you're article does a good job of contextualizing how a failure to do so can harm communities, groups and nations.
More generally -- Support Pure Religion, Oppose Zealotry. And as you've pointed out, there's a myriad of ways in which Islamism is being protected by people wanting to protect for Islam. Similarly I'm sure I've stuck up for Christianitism (even if not systemically).
Love this, Christianitism. I'll adopt it!
"I like your Christ. Christians, not so much. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." – M. Gandhi
It is also important to understand the issue of zealotry in any religion. The west used to have Christian zealots willing to die or kill for the cause in the 14-1600s. Zealotry is what is dangerous - not the religion itself.
Agreed
What do you mean "the west used to have Christian zealots?" There are plenty still around today. Christianity is no better than Islam in that respect, and its historical body count is still much higher.
"The kingdom of God allows aggression." - US Speaker Mike Johnson, 10/26/23
Source: https://www.newsweek.com/mike-johnson-bible-aggression-urges-christians-fight-1838390
Christianity doesn’t have 15% of adherents wanting (and coercing others) to impose its beliefs on others.