Two different people?

Submitted by Ron Thompson (United States), Nov 9, 2014 at 15:15

This article and the dialogue with Geert Wilders seem to be by two different people.

I have read very few indictments of Islam over the past 25 years as powerful and comprehensive as Dr Pipes' discussion of the threat of Islam not only to Free Speech but to the continued existence of Western Civlization as we know it today.

Nor have I seen a better discussion of the internal threat from a neurotic form of Multiculturalism that fails to apply any judgment standard at all to other cultures, or from the awkwardly named Left-Fascism, a kind of anti-Westernism that is absurdly and pathologically critical of the West, while giving, as said, a free pass to every other culture, especially to Islam. (Although here I would include fundamentalist Capitalism which sees no problem with any degree of economic inequality, and no particular problem with Islam, as a third internal threat).

Of course in my first reading I missed that Dr Pipes did not name what he was eloquently describing as Islam, but only as "Islamism", a distinction which none of the adherents of the Islamic State would accept, nor would, as he famously said, Erdogan of Turkey. Nor would the peoples of the core States of the Middle East, who, in poll after poll, overwhelmingly support the harshest interpretations of Shaira law and islam regarding blasphemy and apostasy.

I therefore agree with Geert Wilders that while Islam might get slightly less worse it cannot get better.

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