I admit to being skeptical too...to say the least!

Submitted by Robert Miller (United States), Nov 24, 2004 at 02:48

Hi Daniel,
Fine article as usual BUT...
It is painfully obvious that most of the `moderate' Muslims you cite exist here in the USA (Manji is Canadian). This is telling since the vast majority of the Muslim population live outside the US. Meanwhile,the West, particularly Europe, is seeing an influx of Muslims who were indoctrinated in traditional Islam and are anything BUT moderate. In addition, as you yourself have noted, the main funding for mosques and madrassahs in the USA ( and thus control over what is taught and who teaches it) still come from..Saudi Arabia.

The Q'uran and the Hadith are what they are. As the late Sheik Yassin once said, the Q'uran and the Hadith are the fundamentals of Islam and those who folow their teachings are by definition fundamentalists! The hatred and bigotry contained in the Q'uran and the deification of Mohammed and his deeds as the Islamic paradigm is an inherent part of the religion, as is Jihad. That ain't changing anytime soon.

What I think we really have here is what I call the 20/60/20 ratio. Twenty percent of the Islamic population living in `Dar Harb' ( the non-Islamic world, literally the place of struggle) are active Islamofascists and extremely dangerous. Sixty percent are more or less passive...some may give a bit of money to Jihad, under the guise of `charity', sign a petition here or there, some may not. But THEY WILL GO WHICH EVER WAY THE WIND BLOWS. Talk to any Jew or Armenian Christian who lived in Iran before the Ayatollah and saw what happened there almost overnight. If Islamofascism starts gathering more momentum in America and Europe, they will support it. If it doesn't, they won't. And twenty percent of the Muslim population are decent people who are horrified at the way their belief system has been hijacked. And they are looked on, in varying degrees of intensity, as traitors by the rest.

I understand your position as a public figure. But it is we in America who must make the hard decisions necessary to deal with this menace. Europe will be Muslim or fight a civil war within our lifetime, and some people, notably in Britain and the Netherlands are starting to realize it. Unless we want that here, we need to take drastic steps. Rather than just recognizing `moderate' Muslims, we need to vigorously address the 20% or so who are not. We need to severely limit if not halt entirely immigration into America from the Islamic world and ban the foreign funding of Islamic institutions. We need to infiltrate the mosques, madrassahs and Islamic organizations in order to determine who is dangerous and who is not, and deport those who are perilous to our security as a nation. In short, we need to treat militant Islam EXACTLY as we treated communism during the fifties. If nothing else, eliminating the foreign element will give American Muslims the breathing space they desperately need to come up with a reformed Islam capable of living in peace with other cultures. I really believe they have a good shot at it provided we are diligent.

Best Wishes and take care,
Robert Miller

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".