I wish I could share your optimism.

Submitted by Peter Herz (United States), Mar 2, 2011 at 20:17

Dr. Pipes:

I'm not one to tar all Muslims with the terrorist brush. I know there are Muslims who offered to guard Coptic churches in Egypt, and some Muslim Kurds who visited sparsely attended churches in northern Iraq, got themselves photoed listening to the litrudy, and sent the pictures to former Assyrian Christian neighbors to try to persuade them that it was safe to return. Maybe such people are multiplying. Maybe those who are sick of the would-be Secular and Islamicist Mahdis who dominated the past sixty or seventy years in the Middle East are coming into their own.

But I'm not absolutely sure. The mob in Bengazi pinned a Star of David on their effigy of Qaddafi before burning it, and public opinion in those countries seems to favor imposing Sharia--presumably including laws of Dhimmitude to be applied to non-Muslim minorities (and apostasy laws to be applied to the small, ex-Muslim Evangelical churches that have begun sprouting here and there).

Hence, my response to the Democracy Talk going on now is that I'll believe it when I see it.

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