Set Islam free from its captivity by militants

Submitted by J Joel (United States), Jul 31, 2002 at 13:59

Dr Pipes, you are absolutely correct. Islam itself is by no means an evil religion. There have been many societies on earth where Muslims and non-Muslims lived together in peace and where Muslims bravely fought for non-Muslim nations. For instance, Tibet had a Muslim minority that suffered side by side with the Buddhists under Red China and fled together with the Buddhists to India. Some versions of Islam are very enlightened, including many Sufi sects and many traditionalist orthodox Muslims. Most enlightened of all have been the Mutazilites, who combined scripture with reason and who were largely responsible for the flourishing of Islamdom in the Middle Ages.

But today, Islam is dominated by extremist, fundamentalist sects that hate Western society and wish to destroy Jews, Christians, Hindus, secularists, and others. These Islamists conveniently ignore all of the enlightened verses and teachings of Islam. These groups, including the Wahhabis and the Deobandis, have a lot of money, because they are supported by the oil-rich Gulf states.

Militant Islam needs to be annihilated. This war on terror must include not only Iraq, Iran, and Syria, but eventually Pakistan and the Gulf states and even Sudan. Only then, when the power base is destroyed, will Islam be set free from its captivity by these militants.

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