Wrong Prince Salman - My Correction to Myself

Submitted by Ludvikus (United States), Jan 28, 2015 at 16:30

Dear Daniel Pipes,

I'm very sorry for a serious error I'v made. It was late at night, I wasn't paying careful attention, and wrongly imagined that you were writing about the Saudi Prince Salman who now is King of Audi Arabia.

Barain, of course, as I know you must know, has a very long and fascinating history. And so the Prince's view on Islamic fanatical extremists deserves to be much more carefully analyzed. It not only has an Arab history, it also has a Jewish, Greek, and Persian history. So there is grounds to distinguish it from the Saudi Arabian mainland country which is far larger and tide to its Wahabbi roots.

I therefore withdraw my erroneous observations regarding this Prince Salmone of Bahrain who is far more reasons to be progressing than the new King Salman of Saudi Arabia. For one thing, its his fellow countrymen's ancestors who were responsible for removing, breaking, and/or returning the Blacxk Stone of Mecca - a historical fact that should support its national independence for some time.

So for historical reasons, I accept on face value the goodwill of Prince Salman's renunciation of what you call "Islamism." But I think you are to generous in your drawing of this distinction. I imagine you now living at the time of the Protestant Reformation and attacking "Protestent-ism" as an Ideology , and you're not even Eramus, a good catholic, but an outsider, whay not a Jew? The point is that Protestism, granted in hindsight, is a religion, and not an Ideology. I think you should leave it to Muslims to defend their religion againsts its ... Cults. Why don't you call thes "Muslim Cults"? That seems more legitimate. I know you are not a Racist. But I think you are being condescending to the 1.6 Billion Muslims by refusing to call these practices Islamic and its practicianers Muslim; a nice consequence of that would be the ability to admit that one is an "Islamophobe": wht not fear Islam if it is Islam which produces the muders in Paris and beheading of Western journalists and a Japanese citizen?

Again, the people who should defend Islam are Muslims - not Christians, Jews, or Secularists, or Agnostics, or Atheists, etc.And those who would charge you of Islamophobia should be asked how many terrorist acts, and beheadings of humans must one witness for the blame is placed at the "feet" of Muslims and the practicianers of Islam?

In the case of the Nazis we have the story of "First they came for the homosexuals, and I said nothing. Then they came for the Jews, and I said nothing. Now they came for me."

Regarding the Islam and the Muslims of Europe, I understand that the so-called new Antisemitism has been ignored as performed by mostly the non-Christians and non-Jews (so who are they?). Now it's no longer anti-Semitism - because not merely Jews had been massacred in Paris.

In brief, on this point - on Islam as opposed to Islamism - my views are closer to Geert Wilders, Europe's most important contemporary politician. Freedom of Religion does not prohibit you for stating that you want less, not more, Muslims in the United States. The difference is that its much more inclusive that Wilder's recent comments for which he's now being criminally charged.

Incidentally, those how would fight you under the banner of Islamophobia would charge you of Racism. But that's common Ordwellian Doublethink on the part of the defenders of Islam, Neither and African American, nor a Jew, could change parents, or ancestors. But one could easily change one's religion. Furthermore, in the United States, religious practice will always be tolerated, whe it's done in the pricacy of one's home, Church, Synogogue, or Mosque. However, a justified fear of Islam is that in a few years, all Western cities will hear the call to prayer, five times a day, every day, from the neighborhood loudspeaker on top of a Minaret that's part of a Mosque. I can imagine, however, a Supreme Court case supporting a Zoning Law ordinance that prohibits such public expressions, and thereby limiting the loud ringing of Bells from a Catholic Cathedral. I'm in Manhattan, but I've never heard the Bells of a Christian Church in my memory. How come?

There was a time when American Westerns (movies) depicted masked gun-totting robbers who wore handerchiefs over their faces. But it has never become a practice for people to cover themselves in a Niqba:

https://www.google.com/search?q=niqab&biw=796&bih=584&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=zFDJVPqNKKPe7AakpoCQCA&sqi=2&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ

Will we one day require a Fashion Police division of the NYPD to ticket such women? How are we going to defend the country against such Un-Americanism? We need Superman - because no one really wants, if he or she is in his or her right state of mind, another McCarthyism Era. So the issue is complex, and does boarder on our enshrined Bill of Rights. But there are no absolutes - and one is prohibited from falsely shouting fire in a crowed theatre, causing a stampede, and loss of life, and then invoking the claim of the Constitutional Right to Freedom of Speech. This reminds of the Murderer who killed his parents and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds of Orphanhood.

It's time for you to "Call a Spade a Spade" (no racist pun intended). But Islamism = Islam, and Islamists are Muslims, countrary to Turkey's Demogogue President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's claim that "Islam is Islam, and that's it." Yes, I recommend that you give your Islamism the famous "Duck Test" of Inductive Reasoning":

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test

---

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".