What is a moderate Muslim?

It has become orthodoxy in Western societies to believe that most Muslims are moderate and only a handful are radical. What follows from this line of thinking is twofold. Firstly, Muslims as a whole should not be held responsible for the acts committed by the radical members of their religion. Secondly, Islam is actually a peaceful religion, but is being distorted by a minority. Whether or not these two considerations are true is beside the point. What is important to note is they are widely believed and stem from the first premise that most Muslims are moderate.

Recently, however, there has been an increase in people willing to debate the notion that most Muslims are moderate, or alternatively, Islam is a moderate religion. You can now find people arguing for and against this belief in Pubs and Households, not just Universities and Parliaments. As the Middle East continues to be fertile grounds for Radical Islamic Theology, answering this question is becoming less like an exercise in abstract thinking and more like the most important question facing Western Civilization.

However, I have noticed something that seems to be completely absent from this debate, and that is, what exactly does moderate mean? To illustrate my point, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Muslim representatives, such as Asghar Bukhari of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK, and Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, the Mufti of Australia, publicly condemned the shootings. This was taken to mean they are moderate, as they do not condone violence. But is that all moderate means?

A better question for Ibrahim and Asghar would have been, do you support blasphemy laws (as this was the shooters motives)? Blasphemy laws are in place in dozens of different countries. They essentially make criticising or denigrating the Prophet Muhammed illegal and punishable by the state. The penalties range from a monetary fine to execution or public hanging. If I am a Muslim and I support Blasphemy laws, that means that me and the terrorists are different due to our means, but not our ends. We both want to silence and/or punish blasphemers. I just want to do it through the state, while the terrorist wants to do it himself. If this is considered the crucial difference between a moderate and a radical, I am concerned.

To take another all too common example, is the rise of sharia law. The Council on American and Islamic Relations is hailed as the biggest group representing the needs of the Muslim community in America. They are so influential that they advise presidents and can make or break a politician. Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for CAIR, stated in 2015 that he does not advocate violence in order to impose Sharia law, but that if Muslims were a numerical majority he would want the American Constitution to be replaced by Sharia Law. Even the founder, Omar Ahmed stated that Islam is not in America to be equal, but to be dominant. This is an organization that is considered to be moderate, as it generally condemns the type of violence that Sharia Law would actually sanction, if Ibrahim Hooper gets his wish.

Another revealing area that I won’t delve too deep into is that of gay rights. In the Gallup Coexist Index of 2009, it was revealed that a majority of UK Muslims (Muslims living in a secular country, rather than the more radical Middle Eastern countries) believe homosexuality to be a sin that should be illegal. I consider this a radical position, even though the participants do not condone the gay bashings that can sometimes lead from these views. But as the current orthodoxy goes, most Muslims are moderate.

I leave you with these final questions, what do you believe the word moderate to entail? Is a moderate Muslim one who condemns the violence committed by other Muslims but still supports their end goals? As I am sure you will find yourself sooner or later embroiled in this debate, ask yourself, what is an acceptable definition of the word moderate?