Ignorant opinion is unquestionably on the rise and there are dozens of examples daily that prove my claim. However the most absurd of these examples—the one employed by government officials, academics and political candidates—is that “Islam is a religion of peace.”
It is agreed by people who know nothing about Islam that most Muslims do not commit violent or terrorist acts, ergo the religion is peaceful. But that is a classic non sequitur. Most Germans in the 1930s did not embrace the excesses of Nazism. Most Chinese did not subscribe to the slaughter of millions during Mao Zedong’s Long March in 1934. Most Russians did not support Joseph Stalin’s purges from 1936–1938.
It usually takes a minority to start a revolution or “killing fields.” The key feature of radicalization in any religion or political movement is the silence or seeming acquiesce of the majority who are mainly moderate.
When the moderates say I didn’t realize what was happening or it is not any of my business, problems result. A minority controls a majority when the minority acts and the majority waits. It may indeed be true that the majority wants to go about its business without resort to extremism, but that is irrelevant. It is the meaningless fluff that makes us feel better and is meant to diminish a vision of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is the fanatics influence history more than the moderates and, at the moment, the fanatics rule Islam. Invariably well-meaning critics of Islam argue the religion needs an enlightenment, a reformation, a period of reevaluation. But overlooked by these critics is that Islam had this moment a century ago and it resulted in the ascendency of Wahhabism, a Sunni Islamic sect based on the teachings of Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, an 18th century scholar from what is today known as Saudi Arabia, who advocated purging Islam of what he considered impurities.
There is little doubt the Verses of The Sword and other Medina-related suras in the Koran promote violence in order to promote the religion. Many Muslims do not read those passages, take them seriously or regard them as a call to action. However, many do. And these are the fanatics who engage in suicide bombings, beheadings and honor killings. Moreover, because these are the activists in the Islamic faith, they take over mosque after mosque and spread their noxious views.
The peaceful majority, the moderates the press representatives invariably reference, are cowed and extraneous. In Rwanda, where bloodshed and butchery reigned for a decade, one could argue Rwandans were basically peace-loving people. But the peace-loving are made irrelevant through silence. That is the incontrovertible lesson of history.
The group that counts, the group that launches historical trends, is the extremist that threatens everything we hold dear. To deny that is to deny a reality that allows the fanatic to control our very existence.
Needless to say, it is difficult to come to grips with this condition. The comforting notion that most Muslims are just like us won’t fly when one considers who are those moving historical forces. What this adds up to may be difficult to contemplate, but, it is better to confront this reality now than at a time when it is too late to resist. Claude Bernard once noted in a somewhat different but useful context that, “The secret of function is apparent to us if we look hard enough.” My guess is we’ve been spending more time on delusional ideas—what we would like to believe—than simply taking a hard look at Islam.
-Herbert London is President of the Hudson Institute and the author of “Decline and Revival in Higher Education.”
