The Moderate Muslim

Martin Kramer:

Professor John L. Esposito runs a slick operation at Georgetown with $20 million of funding from Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. The shared agenda of these two is to make us all feel guilty for having wondered, after 9/11, about Saudis, Muslims, and the contemporary teaching of Islam. Esposito now has a new book (with co-author Dalia Mogahed, who runs something called the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies), bearing the pretentious title Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. It's based on gleanings from the Gallup World Poll.

The core argument of the book is that only 7% of Muslims are "politically radicalized," and that "about 9 in 10 Muslims are moderate."

Kramer goes on to destroy this sugarcoated definition of "moderate".

He mentions a Pew poll from 2006:

In one of the survey's most striking findings, majorities in Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan say that they do not believe groups of Arabs carried out the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The percentage of Turks expressing disbelief that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks has increased from 43% in a 2002 Gallup survey to 59% currently. And this attitude is not limited to Muslims in predominantly Muslim countries—56% of British Muslims say they do not believe Arabs carried out the terror attacks against the U.S., compared with just 17% who do.

Kramer asks:

How can a book subtitled What a Billion Muslims Really Think not make so much as a single mention of this pervasive 9/11 denial? How many hundreds of millions out of the billion think 9/11 wasn't justified, because they suspect the CIA or the Mossad did it to smear the Muslims? And how would their believing that make them "moderate"?

If I remember correctly, the Muslims who want to apply sharia in society are also considered "moderate" by Esposito. What's funny is that even with this asinine definition of moderate, we still get 70 million Muslims who want to end Western Civilization.

You know, a tiny minority.