'Moderate Islam' is a Western Lie

Muslims continue insisting that one of the West’s favorite dichotomies—radical vs moderate Islam—is a myth.

A Muslim cleric recently devoted an entire sermon making this point. Uploaded onto YouTube on Oct. 16, 2022, Sheikh Yunus Kathradas, a Canadian imam, made several assertions (in both Arabic and English) that contradict what every person living in the West has been repeatedly told since September 11, 2001—that the true face of Islam is “moderate” and upholds the same values prized by the West; whereas those who distort and/or selfishly seek to exploit Islam are “radical” and do not represent Islam.

Throughout his sermon, Sheikh Kathradas repeatedly emphasized that the moderate/radical dichotomy is an outrageous fiction made up and employed by Islam’s enemies (the West) as well as ignorant or hypocritical Muslims...

He also correctly defined Islam as submission to Allah, and the enforcement and upholding of his rules - as enshrined in sharia - which tend to be black and white, and, therefore, afford little wiggle room for moderate or radical “interpretations.”...

In late 2017, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan famously said, “Islam cannot be either ‘moderate’ or ‘not moderate.’ Islam can only be one thing”—that is, Islam can only be what it teaches, that and nothing more or less....

An Arabic-language article published in 2011 offers perspective. Titled (in translation) “The Truth about the Moderate Muslim as Seen by the West and its Muslim Followers,” its author, Dr. Ahmed Ibrahim Khadr, begins predictably enough:

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the author of more than ten books. In an interview with Vocab Malone, Spencer answered, “is there such a thing as moderate Islam”? He also discusses the attempted reform within Islam. Is there a moderate Islam?

Netherland’s Party for Freedom (PVV) leader Geert Wilders explains, “There is no moderate Islam; there is no European Islam or that kind of nonsense. There’s only one Islam. And that is the Islam of the book, the Koran, of the life of Muhammad. And that is the Islam that we know and that, unfortunately, cannot and will never be changed. It’s not extreme; extreme Islam is a pleonasm. That means exactly the same.”

Geert Wilders: We need to take European borders under control, otherwise we will cease to exist.

The media’s usual rendering of Allahu akbar as “God is great” is misleading and omits the aspect of superiority in the word akbar (which means “greater” or “greatest,” not merely “great”) and blurs its specific reference to Allah – and not to any other entity or deity. Translating and understanding this phrase as merely “God is great” is not only wrong – it also strips it of its crucial aspect of Allah’s supremacy over all other entities and deities. This is why throughout the history of Islam, and to this day, Allahu akbar has been a battle cry shouted out during attacks, as demonstrated in modern-day Islamic terror attacks....

Translating concepts from one language into another is a difficult endeavor. Translating concepts that have no equivalent in the target language is even harder. Translating religious concepts for a culture in which religion has ceased to play a central role in the life of the individual and in society is hardest of all....

However, the rendering of Allahu akbar in the U.S. media as “God is great” omits the aspect of superiority in the word akbar (which means “greater” or “greatest,” not merely “great”) and blurs the specific reference to Allah rather than to another deity. In the same vein, la illaha illa Allah is often translated in the U.S. media as “There is no god but God” (rather than “There is no god but Allah”). Omitting the supremacy of Allah over all other deities is a mistranslation, and moreover leads to a logical fallacy...