Michael J. Totten reported from SULEIMANIYA, IRAQ: "When I went to the Middle East for a six-month extended visit I wanted to see if I could find a genuinely moderate Islamist political party, one that not only practices democracy but also believes in it." From his post:

Middle East Journal, Moderate Islamists Found

There was a slight chance Hezbollah might fit that description. Lebanon’s Party of God has mellowed somewhat with age and participates in elections. But Hezbollah, unfortunately, is psychotic as ever. Hassan Nasrallah and his goon squad are instinctively belligerent and authoritarian even if Lebanon’s post-war democratic culture keeps them in check. Hezbollah is liberal and even pacifist compared with Hamas and Al Qaeda, but they nevertheless are a violent warmongering proxy militia for two despotic regimes in the Middle East.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is better. They aren’t armed, they don’t even try to kill Israeli soldiers (let alone civilians), and they at least pretend to be opposed to terrorism. But they are only moderate compared with their violent fellow Islamists. Ideologically they don’t differ much.

The Kurdistan Islamic Union, though, does seem to be genuinely moderate. Its leaders appear to have more in common with conservative Christian Democrats in Europe than with any terrorist organization or Middle Eastern religious dictatorship.

He met with Ali Muhammad, Director of the Suleimaniya bureau of the KIU, Iraqi Kurdistan’s third largest political party. I will highlight Mr. Muhammed's text with red to make it easier to follow the shifts between his words and my commentary on them. I am pulling out only certain selections of interest; for the whole article click here.

"The West is a successful civilization," he said. "But we think it is too materialistic and technological. If the Islamic East united with the civilized West, all of humanity would benefit.”

Of course, if such a merger did occur, then we would have a culture with no need for material things or technology. Such a culture did exist once before, in 722 A.D.

"Islam is the medium between socialism and capitalism. In socialism everything is soulless. In capitalism there is a huge gap between the rich and the poor. In Islam we can possess things, but not with such a huge distance between the rich and the poor.”

Yes, in the United States approximately 13% are poor and 87% are not. In Saudi Arabia the average income for ALL Saudis including the Princes and Oil Sheiks is $13,000 - just below the American Poverty Line. The entire country of Saudi Arabia lives below our poverty line - if the income was distributed evenly. Since the Princes do not share equally with their subjects, one can imagine the huge distance between the rich and the poor in that extremely religious Islamic land.

BTW, those living below the poverty line in the US have:
color televisions, 91%
microwave ovens, 74%;
VCRs, 55%;
clothes dryers, 47%;
stereos, 42%;
dishwashers, 23%;
computers, 21%;
garbage disposers, 19%

In Saudi Arabia, those who live below the poverty line have:
camels, 2%
tents, 92%
sand, 98%
sandals, 43%
color televisions, don't make me laugh%
computers, ROFLAO%;
garbage disposers, 99.9% (goats)

Also BTW, of all Arab countries, the one with the highest Human Development Index is the Occupied Palestinian Territories. That's right. Those poor Palestinians under the thumb of the brutal Israelis live better than any Arab citizen in any Arab country! Take that you leftist anti-Zionist pigs.

"We think about Western Civilization as part of the whole human experience. We would like to help you reform it, but we do not want to destroy it. We are not violent. We support civil mechanisms for change.”

But this is no different than "moderate" Muslims in Denmark who do not want to destroy Western Civilization but merely to change it non-violently. Like:

Planck's Constant - banning pork in PUBLIC schools, Excerpt:

That should have been the story. How Europe and America are kowtowing to Muslim sensitivity when it is our culture and civilization that they should accommodate. From this affair we have learned that Danish school children cannot have pork in the schools. Soon it will be movie posters that cannot show women's ankles or advertisements for bras. If the Muslims are not expelled from Denmark they could reach a majority and turn that country into a fundamentalist Islamic Republic!

Even fake piggies are not immune:

The Age, Piggy banks 'offend UK Muslims'

British banks are banning piggy banks because they may offend some Muslims.

Halifax and NatWest banks have led the move to scrap the time-honoured symbol of saving from being given to children or used in their advertising, the Daily Express/Daily Star group reports here.

Muslims do not eat pork, as Islamic culture deems the pig to be an impure animal.

Salim Mulla, secretary of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, backed the bank move.

"This is a sensitive issue and I think the banks are simply being courteous to their customers," he said.

Always On Watch - Censorship--In One Form Or Another, Excerpt:

the Tate gallery in London withdrew an installation by the avant-garde artist John Latham depicting the Koran, Bible and Talmud torn to pieces. The museum explained that it did not want to stir things up after the London bombings. (A few months earlier, to avoid offending Muslims, a museum in Goteborg, Sweden, had removed a painting with a sexual motif and a quotation from the Koran.)

So there is in fact such a thing as a moderate Muslim. Totten concludes: "If all the world’s Islamists were like these mellow Kurdish Islamists there would be no Terror War and there would be no talk of any clash of civilizations."

Leaving aside for a moment that the Kurds were pleasant to Mr Totten because of the age old rule: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend", the danger to western civilization is not from Islamic Terrorists, these are easy to understand and fight against. The real threat to western civilization is in fact the moderate Muslim. That seemingly nice cab driver who doesn't blow up schools and hospitals but who wants us to accommodate his religion. To remove all depictions from libraries and museums that are offensive to HIS eyes, to remove food in schools that are offensive to HIS tongue, to remove all music offensive to HIS ears. And once he has accomplished this, we can all live in harmony in HIS world.

So in the photo above, don't bother looking for Waleed, the moderate Muslim. He will not swim in pools with women, go to zoos, sporting events, or games, go fishing, dance happily with his daughters, drink and be merry or have fun -- for all these things are Western abominations.