I listened to the very interesting hour-long debate between Lawrence Auster and Supna Zaidi at the event organized by ACT! For America (which I blogged about here).
This debate, which also included the participation of audience members, occurred after each presenter finished a prepared speech, and answered questions from the audience.
Mr. Auster began his challenge to Miss Zaidi by saying:
What I heard over and over again was wishful thinking. Your position is, I think we ought to have standards, I think Muslims should not impose their faith on others, I think there ought to be moderate mosques, I think people should not yield to the power of jihadist Islam. These were all your personal opinions the way you would like things to be. The reality is that is not the way Islam is.And from this introduction, below are what I considered the pertinent points of the debate, which I have divided into segments. Some of it is directly transcribed from the audio, most of it I've simplified in my own words.
You can go to the Unofficial Lawrence Auster page and scroll down to "Who belongs in the counter-jihad movement?" and "The Debate" to hear the whole debate, which I do recommend, partly to hear the debating style of Miss Zaidi, who I found cleverly rebutted several arguments, but who at the end of the day was unable to see the fallacy of her argument of plucking this moderate Muslim out of the thin air of her imagination. I found this inability strangely stubborn, as though some personal stance was at stake. Maybe if she started to acknowledge the violence and aggression of her religion, it might make her less religious, or even renounce her religion altogether?
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Organizing moderate Muslims
Z. We need to organize the moderation of Islam.
A. How long will moderation [reform] of Islam take?
Z. A couple of decades.
A. So we should let these people in, work on them for 50 years [until they're moderate], in the mean time they’ll do what they do?
Z. Screen them both at immigration level, and their schools, mosques and those individuals once in the country.
A. Still not enough. What if they don’t do what they say [or do what they don’t say]? Robert Spencer has finally said that screening is ineffective, and all Muslim immigration should be stopped. Why should a country allow people in with such huge problems in the first place?
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Who are the Islamists and who are the Muslims?
A. Are sharia believing, jihad believing Muslims objectively Muslims?
Z. Yes.
A. Then why do you call them Islamists?
Z. All Islamists are Muslims, all Muslims are not Islamists.
A. The net effect of this is saying that Islam is not the problem, but only Islamism is the problem. This weakens a society’s ability to defend itself from the dangerous form of Islam.
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A private vs. a public religion
Z. You should be satisfied with practicing your faith at home – in private.
A. Real religions are not just private.
A. The real Islam by its very nature is public, social, political – the real Islam is not just private.
A. Miss Zaidi is trying to create something that has never existed except in the
individual private realm and try to act as though this can become the common Islamic practice for most or all Muslims.
A. Shall we gamble our society on this wishful thinking?
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Is Sharia different in different situations?
Z. Sharia is an intangible; it means nothing, it illustrates itself in different ways depending on the generation or the century.
A. Spencer completely disagrees. The fundamentals of sharia are the same in all the Islamic splinters, they may differ on details.
A. This is a typical liberal argument – "there is a lot of diversity in Islam, you don’t need to worry about it". They do this to distract people from the essence of Islam.
A. There are all types of conflicts within Islam, does that mean that there is no such thing as Islam?
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What to do about the aggressive Muslim presence
A. The general trend of Western societies is to yield gradually to Muslims’ demands.
A. The inevitable dynamic happens where Muslims’ sharia-mandated aggressiveness and Westerners' acquiescence results with Muslims getting more and more power.
A. Separation of Islam from the West is the only solution to counter their sharia-commanded aggressiveness and Westerners' inevitable acquiescence.
