Islam as THE Cause of the Sick Middle East

Submitted by Ron Thompson (United States), Jan 25, 2014 at 10:35

This is a powerful piece in listing the multiple and comprehensive dysfunctions of the Middle East. It only remains to name the cause of the illness.

It escapes my understanding why Dr Pipes still declines to name this cause after having written so many excellent pieces over two decades which invariably point directly to this cause, only to veer off at the last minute and name the cause as that mysterious entity, 'Islamism'. Perhaps it is significant, and a hopeful sign, that he doesn't dissipate his message by talking about Islamism in this, perhaps his bluntest article yet on the dysfunctions and lunatic violence of the Middle East.

What favor does it do the millions of Muslim victims and refugees of the internecine violence today, right now, to refuse to say to them, or on their behalf, that the religion, as preached, and practiced by the faithful followers of Mohammed, will always prevent them from achieving anything like peace, freedom, or prosperity?

As to the unending threat to Israel, the growing colonization o Europe by exclusivist, supremacist Muslim immigrant conclaves, and an embryonic, similar threat to America and anywhere else Muslims are immigrating in substantial numbers, I have a startling thought - what if, 5 or 10 years from now, it will have become clear that 9/11 was the Pearl Harbor of World War III?

Imagine that. World War III started and we did not recognize it for 15 or 20 years, when it had become a far more deadly and costly struggle than if we had understood its nature almost immediately after that bright September day, and if two Presidents in a row had not told us it had nothing to do with the "peaceful" religion of Islam.

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