I hope you find real South Asian Islamists to attack

Submitted by Schills (United States), Jul 5, 2012 at 19:13

DNM,

While your paraphrase suits your interests of "trolling," it is not what I wrote. I wrote that Dr. Pipes had written Islamist leaders are generally not educated in the traditions of Islam. I provided you with the link. Here is the exact quote for your benefit and anyone else reading,

The distinction becomes sharpest when one compares the two sets of leaders. Traditionalists go through a static and lengthy course of learning in which they study a huge corpus of information and imbibe the Islamic verities much as their ancestors did centuries earlier. Their faith reflects more than a millennium of debate among scholars, jurists and theologians. Islamist leaders, by contrast, tend to be well educated in the sciences but not in Islam; in their early adulthood, they confront problems for which their modern learning has failed to prepare them, so they turn to Islam. In doing so they ignore nearly the entire corpus of Islamic learning and interpret the Koran as they see fit. As autodidacts, they dismiss the traditions and apply their own (modern) sensibilities to the ancient texts, leading to an oddly Protestant version of Islam.

http://www.danielpipes.org/366/islam-and-islamism-faith-and-ideology

When I wrote that the general opinion has been that Arabs are not fit to govern themselves it was in the context of discussing Arabs and democracy. The discussion has been and always was about democracy in the Middle East. I provide you with articles regarding the United States and United Kingdom's position that there was an "Arab exception" to democracy. The only twists and turns are the one's you are inventing.

I have been advocating for democracy and the democratic participation of all non-violent actors in the Middle East. I hope you are able to find actual Islamists to attack in future instead of inventing them. Best of luck to you.

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".