Has Islam failed as a socio-political system?

Submitted by Prashant (United States), Mar 19, 2016 at 21:49

Dear Dr Pipes,

it is not very uncommon that we hear Muslim people, politicians, and religious leaders extol the virtues of Islam and claim that Islam is the best religion of the world. Recently a CNN story of a Syrian refugee family's travel from Syria to Europe was in news. In the pictures accompanying the story the family appeared to be a practicing Islamic family. This was just one of millions of Muslim families who have left the comfortable confines of Islamic lands to non-Islamic regions of the world. Why don't we ask this question every day? Why don't we ask if Islam has failed as a social, economic, and political system? Millions of Syrian refugees left Syria for Europe. They begged hard to get into Europe. They suffered tremendous pains to become Europeans.

Why Islamic countries do not add to their strength by inviting their weak and tired brethren to take shelter within their boundaries? And, even more importantly, why don't Muslim refugees seek shelter in other brotherly Islamic states? Don't these millions of people provide daily proofs that Islam has failed as a social, political and economic system.

Millions of Muslims from Bangladesh make home in Hindu-majority India as illegal immigrants. From Bangladesh they travel thousands of kilometers north and west to come as deep into India as New Delhi. But I have never heard about even one of these millions of people continuing their journey for a few hundred more kilometers into Islamic Pakistan and make a comfortable home there? When Tunisians run away from Tunisia they go north to Italy and France but they never try to go east or west into Saudi Arabia and Morocco?

The answer is that everyone likes freedom and democracy but not every one is willing to admit. Will some of your Muslim readers answer this question? Will some professors and other wise people attempt an answer?

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