The Reality of Present-Day Islam

Submitted by Robert Arsenault (United States), Jul 30, 2002 at 22:30

The only comment of Mr. Pipes' that strikes this reader as absurd is the contention that the ultimate message of 9/11 would be to 'modernize this civilization.' Repairing Islam's failings is not the responsibility of the west; let Muslims correct their own society if they don't want it to be destroyed.

The ultimate message of 9/11 is that our society has been incorrect in going down the PC path, telling itself that all differences are wonderful things. For every call to tolerance, let there be an equally loud call to remind us that there exist things in this world we must never tolerate. We have to keep ourselves safe by identifying and eliminating that which threatens us. Comedian Dennis Miller may have said it best: 'When some people kill 3,000 Americans, my first instinct isn't to feed, clothe and understand them.'

The actions taken at LAX by a Muslim with no detectable terrorist history demonstrate conclusively that we will never be able to positively identify those Muslims in our midst who aren't interested in violence. Therefore, we can never place unqualified trust in Islam's fabled beauty and peaceful nature.

The statement 'Islam is Evil' is not the same as 'Islam has always been evil,' in that it only refers to the present tense. Mr. Pipes has been one among a select few willing to mention that many present day 'moderate Muslims' have no qualms about funding those willing to carry out the violence, the new Harvard graduate among them (it is his financing of violence, not his speech, that must be curtailed). The current climate is relevant in ways that Islam's past is not when considering statements about Islam's current state.

If the existence of truly moderate Muslims renders the statement 'Islam is evil' untrue, it should be pointed out that the existence of said moderates is much like the existence of antimatter: we're told it's there by some very bright people with sound reasoning to support their conclusion, but we live our lives without ever encountering it, watching instead for the ordinary-matter boulders falling around our heads.

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