Saving the decaffeinated Muslim from our need to wake up and smell the coffee

Okay; I couldn't think of a pithier title for my posting today, so it'll have to do.

It refers to this annoying tendency I've noticed in Hugh Fitzgerald, a major contributor to Jihad Watch (and many moons ago, actually "Vice-President" of Jihad Watch for years, before he mysteriously disappeared, only to mysteriously reappear again).

What annoying tendency is that, Pepe? you might ask...

It's his asymptotic tendency to assume, and then with painstakingly meticulous analysis argue, that a given Muslim who seems to be a "reformer" is really being sincere and thus is exhibiting baffling symptoms of cognitive dissonance as they try to deny their Islam whilst incoherently and paradoxically continuing to promote it (I've written about this spasm of Hugh's a few times, such as in my essay "The Ponytailed Muslim").

Hugh's elaborate essays on this seem to me to be a waste of time, frankly; they seem almost determined to find a way to explain and defend these exercises in "reformist" apologetics of Islam by these supposed Muslim "reformers" -- a way other than what should be the axiom of our rational prejudice:

Don't trust any Muslim when they try to tell us Islam isn't a grotesquely monstrous horror from the start in the 7th century to the hot present.

And by "don't trust", of course, I mean: Assume they are doing taqiyya.

This assumption should not be the fruit of laborious investigation. It should be axiomatic (hence, rational prejudice).

This is not to say that there probably do not exist many Muslims who are, in fact, caught in various complex gauzy webs of cognitive dissonance, relative ignorance of their own Islam, and fear of other more devout Muslims. But it is to say that, given the roilingly complex dangers from Muslims on the macro level (particularly as that macro dimension is increasingly metastasizing and interpenetrating our Western world), we cannot afford to err on the side of presuming some elaborate form of innocence of any significant demographic of Muslims -- which means we must suspect all Muslims.  Unless we don't care about preserving our civilization past the 21st century, that is.

The reason I bring all this up is another recent Hugh Fitzgerald multi-part series where he probes a Muslim reformer and wonders, scratching his head, why they are whitewashing Islam (as if we shouldn't already assume why).  One recent installment of his was about a Muslima named Souad Mekhennet.  Throughout his 3 parts, Hugh probes and probes, and scratches and scratches his head, then we finally glimpse his asymptotic problem, thanks to our old friend Big W, who spotted it early on:

thebigW says Feb 1, 2019 at 1:25 pm 

[quoting Hugh] ” I have the distinct feeling that Souad Mekhennet, born into a Muslim family, may never have read, that is, never allowed herself to read, the complete Qur’an, for fear of what she might discover. ” 

This Hugh Fitzgerald feller seems determined to find a way to save this Muzzlima from the only conclusion we should make, that’s she’s just another lying taqiyyist. I coulda told you that without even reading her bullcrap. 

Hey Flo! Buy my friend Big W a cuppa joe and a dish of your hot apple pie!