Are Our Educational Efforts Self-Defeating?

A FRIEND OF MINE said it doesn't help us defeat Islamo-fascism (as he called it) to know more about Islam. He feels that animosity toward Muslims is fueling a division between Muslims and non-Muslims, and our best bet would be to side with those Muslims who are against jihad.

Basically, he is saying that our educational efforts to make non-Muslims aware of the teachings of Islam ultimately defeats our purposes by making "peaceful Muslims" side with orthodox Muslims (politically active Muslims) because animosity towards Muslims causes peaceful Muslims to take sides, and the side they will take is the Muslim side. To summarize his point of view:

Non-Muslims who express their dislike of the hateful teachings of Islam will cause peaceful Muslims, who also do not like those hateful teachings, to side with Muslims who like the hateful teachings.

So therefore, if we don't know the purposes and methods — if we don't know the ideology of the Islamo-fascists — we will be better at defeating them.

It sounds absurd, but he might be right. It is possible that animosity toward Muslims will cause peaceful Muslims or "Muslims in name only" to side with more politically-active, less peaceful, more orthodox Muslims. It's possible.

Does that mean we should stop educating our fellow non-Muslims about the doctrines of Islam? My friend says yes, we should stop. And what should we do instead? His suggestion is to strengthen and support the Muslims working toward peace. He thinks we should support Muslims who are actively working to reform Islam. There aren't a lot of them. Most Muslims who are not politically-active are not reformers; they are simply apathetic about Islam. They were born Muslims so they consider themselves Muslims, but they don't really care about following the teachings of Islam.

But there are a few Muslims who are working to reform Islam, to expunge it of the intolerant, supremacist teachings in the Islamic doctrine, and my friend's answer is to support those people.

There may be some validity to this point of view. But it is also true that many Muslims that we would call "peaceful" still have a supremacist Islamic political agenda, and they work to accomplish that agenda through more peaceful means (and sometimes stealthy means) and those who know nothing about Islamic doctrine can be easily taken in by this kind of "peaceful" Muslim.

This means that by following my friend's suggestion, the ultimate agenda of Islam's prime directive would be fulfilled — aided and abetted by non-Muslims working to stop Islam's prime directive from being fulfilled.

This is yet another example of why an ignorance of the basic doctrines of Islam is counterproductive to the ultimate goal of neutralizing the politically-aggressive orthodox Muslims.

One of the biggest problems with the whole idea of "supporting peaceful Muslims" is that apathetic Muslims are apathetic. They are not active. They are not politically assertive. They don't care about any of this. They just want to go on living their lives. And the Muslims actively seeking to reform Islam — to expunge the hateful, politically-aggressive, violent, intolerant content of Islamic doctrine — are a very small percentage and have almost no following in the Muslim world, regardless of how big their following is in the non-Muslim world.

So the most popular and by far the most active Muslims are the orthodox Muslims, the politically aggressive Muslims.

Apathetic Muslims, or Muslims-in-name-only, will never dominate no matter how much support and encouragement and money we give them. They're just not interested enough.

This means that aggressive Muslims — politically-active Muslims, orthodox Muslims — will only be stopped by non-Muslims educated in Islamic doctrine. This education is the one thing that needs to be done. My friend's political idea sounds good on paper, but it only sounds good to people who don't know anything about Islamic doctrine. And that's the point.