How come one billion muslims are subjugated by the west?

Submitted by Gopal (United States), Feb 2, 2011 at 23:03

Dear Dr Pipes:

Your reader Mansoor from Pakistan again repeated the same argument that is used by Muslims over and over again but does not hold much water under close scrutiny. Mansoor, like so many other people, blame the West for the problems in the middle east. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. The number of Islamic countries in the UNO is fairly large. An unprecedented amount of oil wealth is flowing into the region. Islamic countries and people are uniquely unified behind their cause. If everything is so favorable to Islam then how come a few western countries which have all sorts of democratic freedoms and virtually no dictatorships can exploit a billion muslims?

The Mansoors of the Islamic world refuse to acknowledge what is so obvious to the rest of us: Exploitation shrinks when freedom of expression spreads and exploitation spreads when freedom to express shrinks (and there is no freedom of expression in the Islamic world). The way human mind is constructed, compulsion beyond a certain limit becomes counter productive and no law -- not even the law of God-- can be imposed on people without full consent.

Monsoor should reflect inward instead of blaming the West for problems in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.

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