medaura18586:

Perhaps the treatment they receive by Gorin, Bosom, and yourself helps establish these Kosovar Albanians' notion that the West assumes that Muslims are invariability synonymous with fundamentalist butchers, and it is the application of such prejudice to themselves they try to dispel.

Who is this "Bosom"? Sounds like an interesting individual!

Seriously, this is a familiar argument, but I would like to see you establish from anything I have ever actually written that "Muslims are invariably synonymous with fundamentalist butchers." I have never said anything remotely like that, and neither has "Bosom," for that matter. But it is a common hand in the deck of those who attack our work. Pardon me, but it is hard for me to take it seriously. What "Bosom" and I and many others have established is that the doctrines of jihad violence against and the subjugation of unbelievers do not represent a "twisting" or "hijacking" of Islam, but are mainstream Islamic ideas taught by all the orthodox sects and schools of jurisprudence (madhahib). This is a matter of fact, and is open to factual refutation. No one has ever actually refuted it. Nor can they, because it is true.

But does it follow from the existence of these doctrines that "Muslims are invariably synonymous with fundamentalist butchers"? Of course not. There is, as Totten's latest piece illustrates and as I have discussed many times, a spectrum of belief, knowledge and fervor among Muslims. Moderate and nominal and secular Muslims, however, such as the ones he encountered, remain vulnerable to the jihadist appeal, which proceeds by claiming for itself the purity of Islam. They retain this vulnerability as long as it remains possible that they could at some point decide to become serious about the observance of their faith.

The statement "we are Muslims, but not really" indicates that they believe that they aren't quite true Muslims now -- and that is what makes for the vulnerability. If their saying this were an attempt to deflect "prejudice" from me and people like me, it is calibrated in exactly the wrong direction. What they might say in that instance would be "We are the true Muslims, not the Wahhabis," or some such. That would make the claim you want to make -- that they are challenging the Wahhabis' self-characterization as the true Muslims. In reality, they are not challenging it, they are conceding it.

Are you just ignorant of the tradition of Sufi Islam, the Bektashi tradition in particular, in Kosovo and Albania proper, or are you just conveniently neglecting to account for it?

Are you just ignorant of the fact that Sufi Islam, including the Bektashi tradition, has never rejected the doctrines of jihad against infidels and Islamic supremacism, or are you just conveniently neglecting to account for it?

Here are details: Sufism Without Camouflage (Beyond Stephen Schwartz) by my friend "Bosom."