Islam is at a dead end and has declared war on us

Submitted by Garrett Stasse (United States), Aug 14, 2002 at 14:49

Dear Mr. Pipes,

Perhaps because I view Islam's situation as an American who is imbued with freedom and the technology to foster it, I agree that Islam might be facing changes that could result in a very different social-political-religious construct.

However, I see no short-term way to achieve these changes. Fresh ideas are foreign to Islam; there are no free media; Islamic education, such as it is, foments ignorance, obedience and frustration; intellectual inquiry is feared and brutally supressed; rigid oligarchies control every political, economic and social aspect of Islamic nations (save for Turkey) using a sheen of Islam as their moral justification to rule.

Islam is at a dead end and has declared war on us preserve its gains. How else do we explain why Muslim scholars endorse suicide bombings and the underpinnings of bin Laden's assault? I predict a bloodbath of monumental scale before we in the West see anything near peace again. Arab petrodollars sustain an ideology that is pledged to our destruction. The "moderates" of which you speak are a flimsy bulwark against militant Islamists who see our demise as the only way to save themselves.

There are precious few avenues to achieve the kind of changes Islam needs to function in this world. I see no way to promote moderates other than to display a strong military that is determined to protect us. We then must expose Islam as a refuge for cowards, an ideology that snuffs out enterprise, free thought and intellectual honesty. It's that or a lifetime of fear, death and destruction.

Garrett Stasse

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