My reply to Debanjan Banerjee

Submitted by Kurt Basking (United States), Mar 7, 2010 at 02:01

Dear Dr Pipes: You have already replied to Debanjan Banerjee but you did not go far enough. Mr Banerjee's argument is so tired that it should be dead by now. Here are the reasons why past and current acts of violence by non-muslim powers and individuals are not equivalent to acts of violence by islamic terrorists:

1. Certain factions of Islamic societies are amazingly united in time and space for the Islamic cause. Typical Christians of today do not support the British colonizers of India just because those colonizers followed the Christian faith. While many modern day muslims support many current and past events just because they are tagged with the Islamic label. Have you met many Muslims who say any good things about Israel or Jews?

2. As Dr Pipes already replied, the west has evolved. Even if Christians of the past waged wars for the sake of their religion, those wars were not as frequent as the Islamic wars. In any case, there has been sufficient separation between church and state in most non-Islamic societies. Have you ever met a western army that won a certain land in a war and then vacated it and permanently gave up its claim on it? There are hundreds of such cases. Have you ever met an Islamic army that has won a piece of land and relinquished its claim on it? Some people still fantasize about the Islamic Spain of centuries ago.

3. The small time non-Islamic killers like Timothy McVeigh with whom Islamists compare themselves to absolve Islamic terrorists, never killed in the name of the Christian religion. In any case there are not too many global Christian/Hindu/Buddist/Jews militant organizations that vow to kill in the name of their respective religions. Most religious conflicts iiolving non-Islamic religions are local in nature and get quickly dissolved. Only battles involving Islamists are such that they become mothers of all battles for all time to come.

4. Violent agents who act on behalf of Islam have a lot more support among Islamic moderates than the agents of violence in other religions/societies.

5. Most Islamic societies provide no platform for dissent. A foreign or internal agent who wants to negotiate as an adversary has no one to turn to. A war is acceptable as long as peace gets a chance before or after it. Most Islamist fights go for ever and there is no platform for peace before or after them.

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