Moderate Muslim

[X2]

@CM

Well with Zakat I believe there are some preconditions that apply. But I am not at all familiar with them so I can not comment on it.

Regarding searching this forum. Pat Robertson also has very vocal supporters and people who will defend him to his death. You can do a search for Stormfront which is a world wide group that supports white extremism and the supremacy of Christianity and they are worse than the Taliban. Stormfront recruits in computer games targeting young impressionable children. Hell I have had to deal with them in World of Warcraft when I play the game.

There will always be supporters of extremism and more importantly since they are the minority they are most vocal to make it appear that they are the majority.

But the difference is people do not make the distinction between them and themselves by calling themselves Moderate. Rather they state they do not follow the correct path of the faith and that they abuse it.

As for what I state on how they and I are different, I state that the Taliban abuse ignorance, poverty and anti-western sentiments for a politically motivated grab for power and the cloak it in the garb of Islam.

excellent answer…

just one clarification about my point about the extremism definition thing, its not about ppl supporting taleban, but more about people who dont like that term and want to give it their own definition, which as all fine and dandy but it poses certain issues.

I have many non muslim pals and the definition they have for extremist anything is not that they are extreme in following their religion, but they they are extremists (aka misguided nutjobs) who are muslim, just like there are extremists who are christians or jews or hindus or whatever. It does little to get in a discussion of semantics of what extremist means..

so in the example you gave of Pat Robertson or here is another real piece of work Fred Phelps..when I ask what ppl think of them they just say they are right winger extremist nut jobs, I just say yep so we have their kind as well..now separate from that it can be discussed if the term extremist is correct, but in that context its perfectly fine to correlate our nutjobs to their nutjobs as a frame of reference even if the term they use is not extremist but party animal or mickey mouse. the intent is to communicate. What is counter intuitive is to declare oneself as extremist or fundamentalist and then argue about the definition of the term two separate things and muddying the water does little.