[joegrundman]

Originally Posted by Rt Hon Baroness Warsi

The notion that all followers of Islam can be described either as “moderate” or “extremist” can fuel misunderstanding and intolerance, she will say.
“It’s not a big leap of imagination to predict where the talk of 'moderate’ Muslims leads; in the factory, where they’ve just hired a Muslim worker, the boss says to his employees: 'Not to worry, he’s only fairly Muslim’.
“In the school, the kids say: 'The family next door are Muslim but they’re not too bad’.

These are mixed messages.

The latter one is the easiest.

“In the school, the kids say: 'The family next door are Muslim but they’re not too bad’.

this is influenced by the most recent work of Tariq Ramadan and his "tolerance is not enough" *- she's clearly uncritically taken this attitude that tolerance implies hegemony and the power and mind to indulge others their peculiarities. Well Ramadan's latest work is not something trivial and easily dismissed.

It is to say that in a modern society, tolerance is not what is required but instead complete, from the heart, acceptance that others may be group a,b,c and that is no reason to have any kind of prejudice about them - even benevolent prejudices, just as you don't about neighbours who appear to be of your own background.

I can see where she's coming from with that, and i guess it does represent some kind of ideal state, but she is clearly relating this not to a universal ideal but specifically to the case of Muslims who are singled out for suspicion in a way quite removed from the experience of Jews, Hindus, Chinese, Poles or other non-Anglo-Christian groups. In her comment here it is as if to say this is just a general fact of not being of the main group and unrelated to anything that the muslim community of britain, europe or the world may actually be specifically doing.

I feel this is willfully ignoring the obvious

* see. Ramadan, T.A Quest for Meaning

Part 2

The notion that all followers of Islam can be described either as “moderate” or “extremist” can fuel misunderstanding and intolerance, she will say.
“It’s not a big leap of imagination to predict where the talk of 'moderate’ Muslims leads; in the factory, where they’ve just hired a Muslim worker, the boss says to his employees: 'Not to worry, he’s only fairly Muslim’.

This I'm afraid is revealing, in a way that i think she maybe didn't realise. This amounts to a confession that there is not in her mind a distinction between extremist islam and true islam.

For those in the west who have been regularly drawing distinctions for the two (including myself),we are basically hoping for a developed moderate ideology to arise that can refute the extremist narrative. In short what we would prefer is not to diminish moderates as "fairly muslim", but to be able to diminish extremists as "not real muslims"

Warsi tells us that in her discourse the opposite perception is, if anything, the true one and that she identifies extremist islam as real islam and fears moderate islam will be portrayed as the fake version.

this whole muslim relations story is getting worse, not better. How can the fanatics not be invigorated by the obvious signs of western war weariness in afghanistan? How come no one here has even commented on the highly consequential murder of Salman Taseer in Pakistan?