Rod Dreher of The American Conservative predicts: “This is why I don’t share the anxiety many conservatives have about Islam in America (Islam in Europe is a different matter, for particularly European reasons). For better or for worse, post-Christian America is going to turn Islam into Moralistic Therapeutic Deism too.”
Are there secular Muslims in the United States? Of course. Are there Muslims who have adopted Western values in the United States? Certainly. Are there Muslims in the United States who have become less devout and observant in Islam? No doubt about it. Are there Muslims who have adopted the moral relativism and libertinism of some of their allies on the Left? Sure.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
But will Islam itself be overcome in America, and become “Moral Therapeutic Deism,” such that there would be no cause to “share the anxiety many conservatives have about Islam in America,” i.e., no reason to be concerned about jihad terror and Sharia oppression of women and others?
Maybe. But there is considerable evidence to the contrary. Take, for example, American journalist Charles Glass, when he was kidnapped and held hostage in Beirut by Hizballah in 1987. “The guards,” Glass recalled, “were all young. They liked Michael Jackson
Another secularized Muslim was Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who murdered 84 people in Nice, France in a vehicular jihad attack in 2016. According to the Mailonline, Bouhlel “was an ‘unlikely jihadist’ who flouted every rule of Islam.” He “drank alcohol, ate pork and took drugs,” and “never prayed or attended a mosque.” Likewise, the 9/11 hijackers were secularized enough to go to strip clubs before they flew jets into buildings. What Dreher doesn’t consider is that a Muslim could indeed become secularized and Westernized, and then try to cancel out his sins by doing a great deed for Allah.
And what good deed weighs the most? Jihad. A hadith has a Muslim asking Muhammad: “Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward).” Muhammad replied, “I do not find such a deed.” (Bukhari 4.52.44) So if a believer goes on jihad, his good deeds will outweigh all his evil deeds. Thus if a jihadist knows he is about to wage a great jihad, he knows its value will outweigh anything evil he has done, and he can relax a bit, have a few drinks, etc.
Then there is the example of Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, who ran down nine people on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with an SUV in 2006. Those who knew him recalled that Taheri-Azar was a “marijuana smoker and ‘most always high’ and that he drank heavily as well….Though, it is reported that in the past year he turned away from these habits and became more religious.” So Taheri-Azar was an example of “the crisis of advancing secularization in our community,” and then he recovered his religion, and embarked upon a jihad.
There are myriad other examples of the same kind of thing. Dreher fails to realize that it isn’t a flat Either/Or between Islam and Moral Therapeutic Deism. Muslims can easily move from one to the other, and some decide to wage jihad to rid themselves of the guilt that they may feel they have incurred by living in un-Islamic ways.
The American Conservative, a paleocon publication founded by Pat Buchanan, has never been much for recognizing the jihad threat; quite the contrary. Its executive editor, Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, has written several lengthy screeds attacking me, Pamela Geller
And so Dreher, Vlahos, and other American Conservative writers will continue on their way, and if at any point they end up with a jihadi’s knife slicing through their necks, they can congratulate themselves in their last moments that they did all they could to save us all from Moral Therapeutic Deism.
Dreher didn’t even wake up when this extraordinary comment was posted under his article:
Ergeneqon says:
December 20, 2018 at 9:47 am
Trust me when I say that the inevitable divorce between Islam and the Left will be NASTY.
Now, the following rant will be harsh, but with regard to the secularization taking place among American Muslims, I say good riddance. Here’s why.
Islam doesn’t need these traitors. It is they who need Islam.
The Qur’an is very clear on this:
0 you who have attained to faith! If you ever abandon your faith, God will in time bring forth [in your stead] people whom He loves and who love Him – humble towards the believers, proud towards all who deny the truth: [people] who strive hard in God’s cause, and do not fear to be censured by anyone who might censure them: such is God’s favour, which He grants unto whom He wills. And God is infinite, all-knowing. (Surah 5: Verse 55)
The problem with many so-called American Muslim groups and individuals is that they argue from a position of weakness.
They’re trying to change their own values and principles in order to not only be accepted but also to appease the very factions (mostly composed of conservatives and segments of the right) that they perceive as “oppressing” them.
This constant apologizing for their beliefs, trying to change peoples’ “perceptions” of Islam, of trying to convince others that they’re not terrorists – none of it has worked nor will such tactics work.
The support for gay marriage among these Muslim idiots is a misguided attempt at gaining acceptance from mainstream culture. But spiritually, they will pay in the long run.
It never pays to suck up, and it especially never pays to sell out God’s scripture for a paltry price.
These cultural and secularized Muslims have to understand is that we’re not Jews.
We can’t deny the claims of our faith and still be called Muslims.I don’t care what their reasoning is – these fake Muslims who are going a long with the zeitgeist are not Muslims. They’re apostates, and they must be called out as such.
It’s nigh time that Islam in America go on the ideological offensive. We must stand firm for God, for scripture, and for the truths of Islam, with no apologetic bent whatsoever. And we must take the fight to liberalism, secularism, and all of its offshoots.
We will not make any apologies, either for the supposed violent verses of the Qur’an, controversial hadith, or dhimmitude.
No apologies. Not now, not ever, and useless parasites such Robert Spencer, Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and co can all collectively go straight to Hell.
And for the record, I was born in the US and I came from a Kemalist Turkish family, and I have thoroughly rejected the legacy and thought of Kemal Ataturk. How’s that for secularization?
It’s unbecoming of Islam to play the oppressed card, and it’s sure as hell beneath a Turk.
To this bracing honesty, Dreher responded: “I would rather live next door to Pat Robertson than that Muslim hothead. Pat Robertson at worst would insult me. That guy would enslave or even kill me if given the chance.”
But Dreher still evidently thinks that Islam will become something that is not Islam in the United States, and that therefore there is no reason to be concerned. It’s the stuff that dreams are made on.
Article posted with permission from Robert Spencer
