Mainstream Muslims Finally Take on Extremists

[Famous Mortimer]

Believing in the literalness and infallibility of the Koran necessitates a lot of extremist views.

Until Muslims are ready to throw that idea out, the way most Christians did, extremism will remain a major problem.

[Famous Mortimer]

Islam also shouldn't be judged on what Muslim countries do. Well, not entirely.
The question in my mind are countries with minority Muslim populations, where Muslims don't have the same kind of power that they do in majority Muslim countries.
Muslims in a country such as the USA are more likely to be moderate to the degree that they accept the values, culture and ethics of whatever country they are in.
Of course, secular countries with Muslim majorities would be better than non secular ones. This would be true of other religions as well.

Islam shouldn't be judged by what Islamic societies do but by what Muslim minorities in non-Islamic societies do? Why? This seems like a random assertion. The only reason I can think of for making it is that you think Muslim minorities make Muslims look better. The fact is, they don't though. It does not look good when a group only supports freedom of expression when they they themselves are a minority.

[Famous Mortimer]

Islam also shouldn't be judged on what Muslim countries do. Well, not entirely.
The question in my mind are countries with minority Muslim populations, where Muslims don't have the same kind of power that they do in majority Muslim countries.
Muslims in a country such as the USA are more likely to be moderate to the degree that they accept the values, culture and ethics of whatever country they are in.
Of course, secular countries with Muslim majorities would be better than non secular ones. This would be true of other religions as well.

Islam shouldn't be judged by what Islamic societies do but by what Muslim minorities in non-Islamic societies do? Why? This seems like a random assertion. The only reason I can think of for making it is that you think Muslim minorities make Muslims look better. The fact is, they don't though. It does not look good when a group only supports freedom of expression when they they themselves are a minority.

Muslim minorities want to help Islam to evolve. Is there anything wrong with that? I don't think they make Islam look better; the point is that they aren't the same as other Muslims.

You're missing my point. You assume that minority Muslim communities just happen to coincidentally be more liberal. I think that's unlikely. They're probably more liberal because their situation forces them to be. If you took those same communities and plopped them in the middle of an Islamic society, they would mostly likely adopt the norms of that new, more conservative, society even more quickly.

[Famous Mortimer]

Jesus. Settle down.

[Famous Mortimer]

Conservatism, even if it's not violent, encourages violence. If a society endorses the views that the Koran was literal and Mohammad was a great guy, that's going to encourage some people to act out the Koran literally and act like Mohammad.

[Famous Mortimer]

Define these "Western Values" and "Islamic Values" that you suppose are inherently exclusive

"Free speech vs. "Blasphemy laws and using violence to stop free speech"
"Feminism vs. Treating women as inferior and mutilating their genitals"
"Democracy, separation of church and state vs. Islamic theocracy"
"Cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism vs. ignorance and hatred of minorities"
"Minority rights vs. Tyranny of the majority"
"An acceptance of basic classical liberal values vs. trying to exploit freedom while speaking against it"
"Gay Rights vs. Death penalty for gay sex"
"Proper law and justice vs. sharia law"
I could go on.

Those are not "Islamic" values, those are "Islamist" values. Two letters, big difference.

Genital mutilation isn't inherently Islamic but most of those other things are indeed Islamic values. They come directly from the Koran and the Hadith.

[Famous Mortimer]

A lot of liberals seem to think Islam and Christianity are basically analogous. Like Islam is a Browner, poorer version of Christianity and there are or can be a lot of essentially agnostic MINOs just like most Western Christians are essentially agnostic CINOs.

The religions are not the same though. Both have horrible holy books but there's a difference between The Bible and The Koran. Belief in the literalness of The Bible is not required or all that widespread. Even when it is, Christianity has the benefit of being able to dismiss all the problematic crap hand waving "it doesn't matter, that was the OLD covenant, only what Jesus said matters now." Muslims don't have those escape clauses. Belief in the Koran as inerrant is as central to Islam as the Resurrection is to Christianity so it's much harder to do away with.

There's a chance we might see some liberal movement that rejects Koranic infallibility in favor in favor of Western Christian style "these are just stories but the morals are true" but I think that's unlikely. Again, Koranic infallibility is central to Islam, if you take that away, there's basically nothing left. Wide spread apostasy is probably more likely to catch on. Still, even if a movement that doesn't read the Koran literally COULD catch on, we'll never know because as it stands, trying to start such a movement in most Islamic countries would get you murdered, either by the state or by terrorists.

[Famous Mortimer]

Women have been oppressed by Islam since it started. Although it was a slight improvement for some women compared to the oppression they faced before. Still, oppression by any standard. Yes, that's inherent to Islam, because it's justified by the holy book of Islam which says men and women are not equal. This has been a constant for centuries. Even when Marxism and Arab nationalism had their 30 years or so of political relevance, it was still there. It was there before and it's there after and it will probably keep being there, because it's linked to the religion.