There are two fallacies in Pipes' analysis:

Submitted by Tanru (United States), Apr 13, 2004 at 17:43

First, acquiescing to the notion that Muslims can only be ruled by Muslims is to submit to dictatorship and enslavement of non-Muslims wherever Islam becomes a majority. It means a loss of human rights and dignity. It means defeatism and fatalism to an ever advancing medieval barbarism. It reverses modern history which has in fact seen Islam rolled back at Tours, at Vienna and from Spain and the Balkans.

And second, it fails to recognise what has been happening since the 1970's at least and what became painfully obvious with 9/11 and that is that Islam is now a threat everywhere on the planet. We can expect a constant stream of bombings and trouble if Islam is not brought under control. And contrary to Mr. Pipes' long held view, "moderate" Islam, if it exists, is not going to rise to the rescue of the West. Muslims do not believe in restraining other Muslims, and certainly not by force, except as a matter of self-preservation.

"Moderate" Islam is a delusion. It has been said that Muslims mistake compassion for weakness. I think Mr. Pipes mistakes intermittent centuries of decadence and indolence for moderation. He looks for a "reformation" of Islam such as happened to Christianity. Reformation, however, is a return to first principles ["sola scriptura" as someone else pointed out]. In the case of Christianity, it was a return to the peaceful message of Jesus Christ and a disavowal of temporal power leading to secular government and pluralism. For Islam it is a disavowal of lethargy and a return to Muhammad's jihad. 9/11 IS the announcement of the Muslim Reformation. And it must be ended one way or the other.

Islam at its core is an ideology of government with some religious trappings. Islam does not exist apart from government. That is, even when Islam exists side by side with other religions in a democratic secular society, Islam is a top-down heirarchical structure unto itself within the larger society, with the ultimate goal of taking it over like a cancer. And woebetide it if Islam reaches 51%.

The key to separation of church and state in predominately Christian lands was invented by Jesus Himself when he said, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's" and "My kingdom is not of this Earth". Therefore it was possible to remove the power of people who had set themselves in the place of God without conflicting with religion.

[I posted this in response to this article when it was brought to the attention of freerepublic.com before it was on your site.]

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".