The original terrorist

Submitted by Prashant, Jul 5, 2017 at 13:51

Dear Dr Pipes,

Thank you for picking up the story about Indian PM Narendra Modi's visit to the ME when he chose to visit Israel but skipped the, so called, Palestine. Narendra Modi is a courageous man and no one should make the mistake of assuming that he does anything thoughtlessly. If Modi did not visit Ramallah, he, surely, had a message for the world community of nations.

In our modern age when an unprecedented number of people are moving from one country to another or visiting various countries as immigrants, businesspersons, workers and tourists, there is no room left on this planet for religious theocracies. In fact, not only there should be no equivalence between Palestine and Israel but also there should be no equivalence between the Islamic religious theocracies and the democratic nations of the world.

A lot of people make the mistake of assuming that all wars of independence are created equal. This assumption needs to be challenged. If the goal of your war of independence is to create a despotic theocracy, then you don't have a legitimate war. If the goal of Palestinian independence were to create a modern democracy committed to freedom, science, creative arts, and economic prosperity, what could be wrong with that kind of a democracy? Nothing. But the hidden goal of Palestinian demand for independence is to grab more land for the cause of Islam. Similarly the goal of Kashmiri fight for independence in India is to create an Islamic nation that will harm the interests of its minorities from the moment of its birth, and, thus, will be considered illegitimate by many.

Prime Minister Modi has once again sent a very strong signal to community of nations to drop the equivalence between genuine pluralistic democracies and violence theocratic states. The world should listen.

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