Moderate Muslims Go Home

David S. Margoliouth wrote in 1911 that "A German scholar who had the unlucky idea of demonstrating before an Algerian audience that the Koran was in vulgar Arabic was near causing a tumult."1.

Gotta love those English, huh? The German was speaking to an audience of Muslim intellectuals, and they wanted to kill the guy for him stating that the Koran is in a vulgar dialect of Arabic, itself a vulgar language:

3. Spoken by or expressed in language spoken by the common people; vernacular: the technical and vulgar names for an animal species.

4. Of or associated with the great masses of people; common.

But now, nearly a hundred years on, how things have changed.

Councillor shuts down committee for ex-Muslims

Politician Ehsan Jami says people are scared to join the organisation because of threats from Muslims.

17 April 2008

THE NETHERLANDS - Dutch politician Ehsan Jami is closing down his Central Committee for Ex-Muslims. He claims people are scared to join the organisation because of threats from Muslims.

Jami sits on the municipal council in Voorburg, formerly for the Labour Party, now as an independent. He presented plans for a committee for former Muslims last year. He was subsequently assaulted in the street and was provided with police protection.

Jami was planning to make a cartoon animation on the Prophet Muhammad, which was to feature explicit sexual scenes, but recently agreed to give up the idea in response to an appeal from Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin.

Jami is currently holding discussions with a political party on the possibility of his standing for a seat in parliament in the next election. However, he is not prepared to reveal which political party is involved.
http://www.expatica.com/nl/articles/news/Councillor-shuts-down-committee-for-ex_Muslims.html
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One of the 19th century's weirder travel writers, Charles Montagu Doughty (1843 – 1926), known for his nearly unreadable Travels in Arabia Deserta, (1888) wandered more or less aimlessly around Arabia for a couple of years, managing to get himself beaten up and threatened with death on a regular basis because he was not a Muslim and wouldn't openly convert to satisfy the natives, a story well-described in Andrew Taylor's God's Fugitive: The Life of Charles Montagu Doughty.

So, one can be a myopic intellectual who unknowingly offends to the point of nearly being killed by a mob of Muslims, or one can be a knowing apostate Muslim in Europe who brings down the wrath of Muslim savages in Europe, or one can be a buffoon who pisses off Muslims to the point they simply attack and beat and rob and humiliate one. Yes, there is Pym Fortyun, killed by a Muslim sympathizer, or Theo van Gogh murdered by a Muslim, or any number of Muslims murdered in Europe and the West generally by other Muslims for not being Muslim enough or Muslim of a different sort. Regardless, I'm seeing a pattern here. Like the Dutch politician Ehsan Jami, I see that former Muslim are afraid to join an apostates' organization because of threats from Muslims. What I don't see is any way of Islam changing from being a triumphalist poligion into anything other while remaining Islam. If Islam is a fanatic's "seventh century tribal code enflamed by ethnicity," as E.O. Wilson writes of it, who am I to suggest that what it is and has always been should suddenly change into anything else? What right does any so-called moderate have to challenge centuries of tradition and canon? Islam is what Islam is. It might move around a bit within the confines of its nature but if it moves too far it's no longer Islam, and folks should have some right to maintain a thing as it is if it's what they want. Obviously, Muslims want Islam to be what it's always been: a nasty and violent totalitarianism. Who am I to argue? Who am I to judge?

1. David S. Margoliouth, Mohammedanism. London: Thorrnton Butterworth; 1911; rpt. 1928; p. 243.