I haven’t read the entire thread and maybe someone else has covered the point in this or the previous thread, so my apologies in advance, but to whom is it that we define ourselves as moderate muslims? Think back to your conversations with your non-Muslim friends - how many of you say, hi, my name is … and I am a moderate Muslim? I’d venture to say, not very many.
The same way most of us don’t at first instance go around and say I’m a Shia Muslim or a Sunni Muslim or Ahmedi or go on to explain to non-Muslims that we belong to a certain sub-sect of these branches of Islam, since for all intents and purposes, these are meaningless to the average non-Muslims - they don’t distinguish between or amongst Muslims since they’re not informed about Muslims.
I will qualify my comment by saying this is based on my own experience and the experience may be different for others, but I’ve only heard the term moderate Muslim in conversation amongst other Muslims to explain or rationalize our level of religious practice or to explain our actions.
How many of you remember hearing the term moderate Muslim in conversation with non-Muslims?