Thanks for the article 'Dhimmis No More'

Submitted by Prashant, Dec 8, 2017 at 11:29

Dear Dr Pipes,

I am happy and thankful that you used the term 'ethnic cleansing' in reference to the declining population of Christians in the Middle East. A problem can be addressed at its smallest and most specific context or at its widest and most general context. Ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East is neither limited to the Christians nor to the Middle East. As you correctly pointed out Hindus in the Indian subcontinent, Christians in Nigeria and Indonesia, and Jews in all Islamic countries have been the victims of faulted and wrong Islamic doctrines. Yezidis as recently as within the last five years suffered violent elimination at the hand of ISIS in Syria. Turkey for all its modern outlook of the last century is still over 99% Islamic. When a minority gets killed or exiled from a Muslim country, we hardly hear any talk of protest and objection in the Islamic societies all around the world. For example, no Muslim organization, to my knowledge, spoke on behalf of the Yezidis in any significant way. It can be safely assumed that Islamic societies are not interested in the issues of human rights and democracy if they lead to defending non-Muslim minorities.

How far we have to go to find the cause of mistreatment of minorities in the Islamic societies throughout history including today? I think the Quranic injunction that allows Muslims to rule nations and treat non-Muslims as subjugated people is wrong; it does not matter whether it came from God or was man made. How should dhimmis be treated or are treated or were treated is a wrong questions to ask. The very fact that Quran or other Islamic scriptures mention the word dhimmi, is objectionable. Unless these references are removed or made ineffective, Islam will remain a thing that needs to be fixed, modified and improved.

Read chapter 9 of the Quran. There is enough in that chapter using which a tyrant can justify his atrocities on his non-Muslim enemies. Chapter 9 should not be judged by its best possible interpretation. It should be judged by its worst possible interpretation because a tyrant is more likely to use the worst possible interpretation. For this reason Chapter 9 should be bracketed and set aside.

How should non-Muslim world react to all this? All religious scriptures --Islamic or otherwise-- contain material that modern people will find objectionable. It is not possible to remove all those passages without violating the integrity of the original text. As log as we are allowed to question those texts, there is no need to remove or erase them. Non-Muslims should not demand that Quran be edited.

Non-Muslims need to demand something else. This is a matter of practice and not principle so it can be implemented. There is no justification that Islamic lands do not follow the principle of separation of church and state. Even if a country is 100% Islamic, it should be a pluralistic, secular, constitutional democracy unless it is willing to completely and permanently isolate it with the rest of the world. If I choose to visit this country, I should not be a dhimmi ruled/welcomed or unwelcomed by Muslims. I should be a person welcomed or unwelcomed by another set of people. That is it. So it obligatory for the non-Muslim world to treat Islamic theocracies as inferior and pressurize them to adopt secular democracy and separation of church and state. There should be no two opinions about it. If we do not do so, we will be tacitly approving the Islamic doctrines that lead to our own ethnic cleansing.

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