Jihad Watchers still suckers for the mojo of the Better Cup of Mo

The Better Mo in this case being Zuhdi Jasser.

For example, a highly esteemed and intelligent veteran Jihad Watcher named "Wellington" described Zuhdi Jasser as "[a] sincere but confused Muslim..."  

And of course at the time, no other Jihad Watcher in that comments field corrected him; but in fact one relatively new (but quite active) Jihad Watcher praised him:

Ashley says 
Mar 14, 2019 at 10:29 pm 

 Bravo, Wellington.

Then on another thread, in another year, at Jihad Watch, we had another relatively new (but quite active) Jihad Watcher show her naivete not only about Jasser but also about two other Better Cops:

StellaSaidSo says
 Feb 23, 2018 at 4:28 am

... the ‘reformers’ are either deceiving themselves, or deliberately deceiving us. 

Notice how she starts out robustly; but then she has to effectively ruin it:

I think Raheel Raza is sincere, and Tarek Fateh, and maybe Zuhdi Jasser...

Don't you just love that "and maybe Zuhdi Jasser"...?  One deadly equivalent analogy would be a vetter at an airport responding to a high threat level for a possible terrorist plot basically giving the green light to a Muslim because he's wearing blue jeans and smiling, and so therefore "maybe" he's not part of the terror plot.

 – but sooner or later they must surely come to the conclusion that, if some of it is a crock, chances are that all of it is a crock. The journey towards apostasy takes hours in some cases, and years in others.

Here, Stella is making the mistake of speculating that because they could become apostates (based in part on her somewhat circular supposition that these "sincere" "reformists" are such because they have the potential to become apostates), that future-based speculation should retroactively inform our present judgement -- generously -- of these supposedly sincerely reformist Muslims.  I.e., she's setting up an implicit framework for erring on the side of generous trust of Muslims, rather than suspicion. Why is she doing that? I think because deep down inside, she feels anxiety about where her increasing knowledge of the horrors of Islam is leading her, and she needs to avoid becoming a "racist Islamophobe" -- and along come the Better Cop Muslims to save her from this awful propensity.

Then -- again from another Jihad Watch comments thread, in another year -- we have Wellington again engaging in a long, detailed argument (beginning with this comment) with another Jihad Watcher (one "rubiconcrest") about Zuhdi Jasser.  Wellington begins promisingly:

You may, rubiconcrest, respect Zuhdi Jasser for his courage but I do not respect him for putting forth a false narrative, as he has done sundry times, i.e., that Islam is something inherently good and can be reformed. 

Might as well respect a Marxist or Neo-Nazi for their courage in arguing for an “enlightened” and “reformed” version of their respective belief of choice. Would you do this? If not, why not? Because you think Islam is not as bad as Marxism or Nazism? Actually, it is worse when considering the time horizon in which it has been able to hide its malevolence.

But then, in the voluminous unpacking of this which Wellington articulates following this, he indulges in a maddening circumlocution around the most essential point: our inability to read Jasser's mind coupled with the devastating problem of taqiyya (not to mention the excruciatingly relevant facts that Jasser is intelligent, has been a Muslim all his life, and has thought hard about, and published books about, the problem of Islam in our time).  Wellington's missing the point is no surprise to me, given my previous run-ins with him.

Meanwhile, in my Jasser-hopping Googling, I was pleasantly surprised to find a couple of comments I lodged over 5 years ago under my nickname at the time, "voegelinian" (and of course none of the veteran Jihad Watchers gave me even the faintest whiff of a high five).

I first quoted "David Kopel":

David Kopel says
 Aug 24, 2014 at 11:24 pm

Nevertheless, when we don’t attach any guile to him, Jasser seems like quite an intelligent and reasonable person. He may a bit of a pollyanna on the subject of modernizing islam, but he’s not insincere. Why not give him a break? [my bold emphasis added]

Then I responded:

voegelinian says
 Aug 25, 2014 at 2:41 pm

You’re looking at Jasser from a micro perspective — as one individual. I’m looking at him from a macro perspective, in terms of the effects his punditry has — including softening up gullible Infidels to reinforce their already existing semi-conscious feeling that “most Muslims can’t be all evil, the only real problem is a certain percentage of them” — the meme which has been killing us, is killing us now, and portends horrific terror attacks in the future which the Muslims planning them will only be able to get away with if they can work stealthily within a society that generally trusts Muslims.

One Jihad Watcher, one "Brennan Kingsland" (a nonce-nick, of course), later in that same thread put the issue in a nicely pithy way:

Even if Dr. Jasser IS sincere, that’s not a risk any correct-thinking person would wish to take.