.... In a way, it’s easier for Muslims and their friends on the Left to go after people like me and you than it is to go after Boko Haram, the Muslim Brotherhood, or any of these other groups who say they are going to fight corruption by creating some kind of puritanical utopia based on scripture, because moderate Muslims share the teachings of the Koran and hadith.
So, intellectually, they never get beyond the point of saying, “Oh, those passages have been misinterpreted.” That’s as far as they ever go.
The reason the so-called Muslim “extremists” are so successful at recruiting, keeping, inspiring, and mobilizing people—and then finally getting them to wage jihad—is that what they’re saying is fully consistent with the teachings of Muhammad. For an intelligent 20-something-year-old, if you say, “Don’t believe me; just read it in the Koran,” he will understand. [Sam Harris] Read more
