Dangerous ignorance

Submitted by Ron Thompson (United States), Mar 9, 2015 at 22:35

It's difficult to comprehend the intellectual contagion that allows so many otherwise rational people quoted by Dr Pipes to deny what seems ulttraobvious, that ISIS barabarism comes straight from the heart of the scriptures of Islam and the example, by words and deeds. of Mohammed. It is downright scary that all those he quotes are at a 'leadership' level.

But perhaps one reason for this flat out Denialism of the inextricable relationship betwen Islamic violence and Islam is the idea that ISIS's ideology is only an "interpretation" of Islam rather than a logical conclusion and apotheosis of its tenets. For while this beief that Islamic terrorism would yield to a "reinterpretation" or "modernization" of the religion is not a flat out Denial of the relationship beween the spread of Islamic terror and Islam itself, it does seem a rather close First Cousin to the outright and willful fantasy that Islam is a 'religion of peace'.

Dr Pipes is worrried whether it will take another 300,000 deaths to cause the fanatical denialists to admit that Islam gave birth to and nourishes the zealotry of el-Queda, ISIS, and Boko Harem. But I wonder a little if it will take another 3,000,000 deaths before we get some leaders who can ask, is it not just a 'perversion' of islam, but Islam itself which has given birth to Islamic terrorism?

A related and sinister additional question is, if people won't question Islam itself because they fear that it would turn 'moderate' Muslims into violent fanatics, does this mean they secretly or unconsciously fear that they weren't really moderates? This is a possibility that doesn't have to be faced as long as the myth of a moderate Islam is maintained, an Islam which will save us from having to face the question that perhaps we should have faced at least 40 years ago after the Islamic rejectionist summit on the Palestinian question.

Put another way, is the belief in the solution of a perennially about-to-emerge 'moderate' Islam really all that different than the belief that Islam has "nothing to do with" ISIS?

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