Moderate Muslims and pseudo-dhimmitude

Dr. Nokes at Unlocked Wordhoard comments on moderate Muslims who seem to express "sotto voce" dissent in response to the extremism and violence of some of their co-religionists. Dr. Nokes suggests that their position vis-a-vis their more radical brethren is a kind of pseudo-dhimmitude (see Nokes' post for a definition of "dhimmi"):

I started thinking about the concept of dhimmitude, a new idea for me, and I began to wonder about the constant complaints of Western media that moderate Muslims often fail to speak out forcefully against violence. Occasionally, they do, as CAIR did on this issue (yes, I know that CAIR tried to recast the issue as one of "incitement," but given how often CAIR speaks with a forked tongue, I think their press release was about as strong as we could hope for). Nevertheless, if moderate Muslims are in the majority, they certainly seem to speak sotto voce compared to the amplified voices of their more radical compatriots.

I think often this leads non-Muslims in the West to assume that there really isn't any such thing as a "moderate" Muslim -- just violent, death cultists who occasionally restrain their rhetoric when on TV. Perhaps a better way to construct our thinking would be to temper it with the idea of dhimmitude, in which moderate Muslims take on the de facto position of dhimmi within a more totalitarian Islamicist community. Since my understanding of dhimmi is that the term properly only refers to non-Muslims, let me call this community the pseudo-dhimmis.

The whole post and the thoughtful comments are well worth a read.