Convincing Palestinians that they lost is a good idea

Submitted by Prashant, Aug 27, 2017 at 10:40

Dear Dr Pipes,

Any Indian Hindu who believes that Hindus and other sister religions and cultures did not lose to the Islamic forces in what is now Pakistan or Afghanistan can be considered ignorant of history or living in a fool's paradise. It does not matter how barbaric the Islamic attacks on western regions of the Indian subcontinent were, the hard fact remains that the then Indian lost the war to the attacking Islamic armies.

In the same vein, it will be perfectly fine to convince the Palestinians that their war against Israel is over and they lost. It should not matter how just or unjust the war was. The world history is full of examples of just and unjust wars. Often times, maintaining status quo is more important than undoing all past injustices. We cannot return Mecca to the pagans and we should not feel the need to return Jerusalem to Muslims even if it belonged to them (sorry for the tough call!)

In this sense, it is perfectly fine if Palestinians are made to agree that they lost the war and stop fighting. If they had tried peaceful methods in the fourth, fifth and sixth decades of last century, they would probably have been happier today but they chose not to.

But, continuing this argument, a Palestinian defeat even if accepted by all parties is not an end by itself because Palestinian war is only a proxy war by fundamentalist Islam against a currently recognized proxy enemy (Israel). There are other wars that are still going on. Islam's war on the Indian subcontinent has been continuing for the last 1000 years and is still going on. In 1947, Islamic forces carved Islamic Pakistan out of constitutionally and culturally secular India. Today Pakistan's population is 99% Muslim. And the war is still continuing in Kashmir and the Islamic agenda is to create a Islamic nation in Kashmir. And, a similar war is going on at every other border that Islamic theocracies share with a non-Islamic society (Northern Nigeria, North and South Sudan, Mali, Cechnya, Turkey, the Balkans are all different fronts of this never ending war).

Islamic wars are continuing all around the planet. The goals of these wars to make more and more of the planet Muslim and capture more of the currently free land for Islam (sorry for saying it so bluntly).

If everyone in the world becomes Muslim by peaceful convincing and conversions, no harm in that. Let me repeat, there is no harm if everyone becomes a Muslim as a result of free will. But, unfortunately, free will is compromised in the context of Islam continuously and incessantly.

The battles that the world has to win are not Indian victory in Kashmir or Israeli victory in Palestinian. The true issue at stake is to bring free will to Islam. It is as simple as that. If Muslims love democracy as much as they do in every democratic society of the world, they ought to unequivocally admit that Islamic non-separation of church and state is toxic to the idea of peaceful existence of human beings. I apologize again for saying it so bluntly. This is the war that free people have to wage and win.

Luckily, we do not need any guns to win this war. This is the war of ideologies. It can be won by computers, pens, and the media. It needs to be fought every day until won.

First, we need to oppose those pseudo-intellectuals among us who just cannot see things clearly or wont speak honestly about what they see. So the first group that needs to be challenged is that of people and politicians who think that democracy is worth fighting for in the countries that are already democratic but is not worth fighting for in the nations that are currently under Islamic control (for example Kingdom of Saudi Arabia). Without beating about the bush, countries like Pakistan, KSA, Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Egypt ought to be constitutional and pluralistic democracies. To be very blunt leftist politicians in every society must be held accountable for thinking democracy and diversity is important in their countries but not in Islamic theocracies.

Second, we need to highlight the Islamic hypocrisy as often as we can. Unequal distribution of democracy between Islamic and non-Islamic nations is just the beginning. There is more to it. Any right that a Muslim enjoys and that is not available to a non-Muslim --within the doctrines of Islam-- needs to be questioned. Islam thrives on forced or unforced conversions. It is perfectly acceptable if Islam does not like when someone converts out of Islam but anything more than that --like laws against blasphemy and apostasy-- need to be questioned and challenged.

Third, we all know that 'different but equal' is a good goal that does not work. Everyone knows that men and women are different and God assigned them different roles and responsibilities. But any permanent policy that forces different treatment of man and woman is subject to exploitation and may cause harm because even divine laws are implemented by humans. So it is simple and better to completely drop the 'different but equal' doctrine when it comes the genders of human beings.

These three points are a good start. Islamic doctrine and practices need to be relentlessly questioned on these lines. It is possible that Islam is right on all these three counts. But it needs to be challenged until we discover the right answers. This process will cause no harm to Islam. Instead, it will create a beautiful Islam that emphasizes peaceful monotheism and encourages people to pray often as spiritual beings, do pilgrimage, and reflect during fasting. This version of Islam will be free from interference from politicians, priests, dictators, and warlords.

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