In my latest reading of Mitt Romney’s No Apology: Believe in America,
Romney talks about radical Islam. He believes that the goal of radical
Islam is to create a worldwide caliphate in which everyone is under
sharia law, and he refers to a statement by the 1928 founder of the
Muslim Brotherhood that manifests that kind of vision. And Romney
maintains that radical Islam hates the United States because of our
freedoms and our culture, which go against its Muslim beliefs.
To
his credit, Romney is not a complete Islamophobe, for Romney
acknowledges that there are moderate Muslims. My impression is that
Islamophobes do not believe that there are actual moderate Muslims but
rather regard all Muslims as part of a sinister conspiracy. But, as
Romney points out, radical Muslims have killed moderate Muslims.
I
do not agree with Islamophobes, but I wonder: If they are right, what
exactly can people do? One way that the U.S. has been fighting radical
Islam has been to cultivate relationships with moderate Muslims and to
promote them. But if there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim, then
the West is in a losing battle. Fortunately, there are moderate
Muslims.