Can Islam be reformed?

Some time back Patrick at Born Again Redneck posted an essay about Islam by his partner Andy, who doesn't have his own blog. Here is the last paragraph:

If there are any Muslims who think there is something wrong with Islam, then it is time to get up off your lazy asses and get a backbone. Tell your cult-crazed clerics they are insane. Figure it out. If you are in America, England or anywhere in the west, you are free to make your own decisions and you can decide what is best for you and your children. You have to clean your own house and your own community. You either think these Islamofascists are dangerous radicals or not. There is no middle ground on this. If you won't clean your community of these types it is rightly assumed you are part of the problem. When this puts fellow Americans in danger you have lost your standing as Americans in my eyes. If you cannot police your own community, be prepared to take the consequences of your inaction. Americans are "live and let live" by nature but, if you don't start putting your own house in order, we will come in and do it for you. So, if there are moderate Muslims out there, prove it or be tarred with the same brush as your radical counterparts. What you say do or think is your own business but, if you are a threat me or mine, I'll kill you without a second thought just like a rabid dog.

I've said more or less the same thing ever since I started this blog. We hear that Islam is a "religion of peace" even though there is very little "peace" in Islam's sacred writings which command the faithful to spread the faith by persuasion if possible and by war if not.

The entire recorded history of Islam follows this pattern. When Islam is faced with enemies who are weaker it advances making converts at sword-point. When Islam is defeated by stronger enemies it retreats and goes dormant as its members attempt to make sense out of what has happened. They are confused because there is not one hint in the Koran that Muslims can be defeated and lose territory that they have once gained.

There is a tradition in the Koran and the examples of the Prophet of agreeing to a temporary truce with an enemy in order to gain strength. However the expected outcome of such a cease-fire is always a renewed attack by the soldiers of Allah when they have amassed enough force to win the day.

Again, the Koran does not even hint at any other way of ordering the universe.

While Muslims do not have an army or navy to match the Western nations they believe that the weapon of terrorism has been given to them by Allah as the means to bring down the West. They believe that the Soviet Union was destroyed in Afghanistan and that the United States is a paper tiger ready to fall before a sustained assault.

It should not come as any surprise to us that those Muslims who take their religion most seriously are either terrorists or direct or indirect supporters of terrorists. When even an organization like CAIR (the Counsel on American Islamic Relations), which exists for the sole purpose of lying to the West in order to present the picture of "peaceful Islam", cannot bring itself to condemn the most murderous acts of terrorism in anything but the most tepid and weasel-worded way - "Of course CAIR denounces the recent bombing which killed 400 elementary school children. However we must understand the misguided actions of the bombers in the context of the reality that both Israel and the United States are both much worse. And that the actions of the US and Israel are what drove these unfortunate Muslims to such an extreme, yet at the same time understandable and ultimately excusable, action" - you know that the culture of jihad is not just deeply embedded in the Islamic mindset but forms a fundamental part of that mindset.

The moderate Muslims, which surely do exist, are at a tremendous disadvantage in that the Koran really does teach what the extremists claim that it teaches. Martin Luther had the advantage of being able to translate the Bible into German and then tell the German people to read it for themselves and see that there is nothing in there about purgatory or papal authority. The Muslim reformer cannot do this. He must convince the faithful to ignore, edit out or reinterpret what Islam's holy documents teach in plain language.

The only hope of actually creating a reformed Islam is for those nations and peoples whom the Muslims seek to defeat and kill or convert or enslave, which is everybody in the world who isn't a Muslim, stand up to them and meet force with overwhelming force.

If those states which support Islamic jihad like the Taliban regime in Afghanistan or Saddam's dictatorship in Iraq (which paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers) are invaded and their governments shattered and replaced with pro-Western governments and "insurgencies" like the Iranian and al Qaeda directed operation in Iraq are fought to the bitter end, no matter how long it takes, then Islam will enter another period of retreat and dormancy.

At that time, when the Islamic nations have been essentially made protectorates of the civilized nations, a moderate Islam may be able to arise. At the point in time when Muslims are once again shaking their heads in puzzlement over their latest defeat and wondering why Allah has once again abandoned them preachers of genuinely peaceful reformed Islam may be able to gain purchase.

But it will only be during such a time of sustained and crushing military defeat, the kind of loss which breaks the spirit and shatters the faith, that such a radically different form of Islam could be expected to take root.

In summation we often hear that the reform of Islam must come from within. This is true, but the environment in which such reform could succeed can only be imposed from without. The non-Muslim world must find its resolve - grow a pair, to use a vulgarism - and start fighting back. George W Bush has made a good start in Afghanistan and Iraq, but his continual bleating about Islam (as it is right now) being a "religion of peace" undoes much of what he hopes to accomplish.

As long as Muslims think that they are winning (and they get that impression every time a high-profile Democrat talks about the war being already lost) they will see no need to reform their faith. In fact as long as they think they are winning they will think that any Muslim reformer is an agent of Satan. Before they will be willing to listen their confidence must be broken and the only hammer strong enough to do that is military force.