Unequal deals

Submitted by Prashant, Dec 17, 2016 at 22:34

Dear Dr Pipes,

In response to your reader DP's question to you as to why population of Jews has declined less in Morocco, Turkey and Iran compared to othe rIslamic nations, it is hardly a consolation that Jews's numbers has declined less in these countries. The truth is that population of all religious minorities has declined in all Islamic countries. And a worse truth is that non-Muslim citizens of Islamic countries have suffered and been persecuted in their native lands (recall the recent plight of Yezidis in regions or Syria).

The fact remains that Muslims and non-Muslims share this planet. It is absurd that non-Muslims give a better deal to Muslims than they get back from them. Every non-Islamic country that I know of --including the authoritarian countries like China, Cuba and Venezuela and right-leaning countries like India and United States-- treat their minorities better than the Islamic countries treat their minorities. When Muslims are in trouble in their native lands, they run to non-Muslim regions of the world to survive. The most important examples Islamic exodus to non-Muslim regions are the recent flow of Syrians into Europe and the flow of mainly Muslim refugees from the then East Pakistan into India in 1970-71. God forbid, if non-Muslims have to run away from their native lands, Muslim nations will the least preferred destination for them (will a displaced Yezidi like to seek shelter in Iran?)

So, I repeat, in this shared planet non-Muslims cannot afford to offer a better deal to Muslims than they get back from Muslims. It is time that our world starts talking about authentic secular democracy in the Islamic nations (because it will be absurd to suggest that we establish Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist, theocracies to match the Islamic theocracies. Every Islamic nations needs to be a genuine secular democracy with no restriction on thought, expression on apostasy. Every time we talk about Islam, we need to think about democracy and secularism. This is a modern requirement who time has now come.

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