comments on 'Islamic London: "Run, Hide, Tell".

Submitted by Prashant (United States), Feb 5, 2018 at 20:24

Dear Dr Pipes, Regarding your blog entitled Islamic 'London: "Run, Hide, Tell"', in addition to describing the problem we need to think about the possible solutions. One obvious solution is to restrict the entry of those people in a country who refuse to adopt the local culture and maintain their own religious/cultural/political identity. President Trump proposed this solution but it is not clear if democratic governments can successfully enact such laws. And such laws can even be illegal and unethical.
Whether we like it or not, we are forced to entertain those Muslims who stubbornly refuse to integrate with us and maintain their distinct identity for the selfish Islamic political purposes.

I have one other solution. For a minute fantasize that every Islamic country on this planet had been a modern, secular, pluralistic democracy. Imagine if a priest from India could freely preach Hinduism and some rabbi from Israel could preach Judaism in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Would Islam remain such a problem if this fantasy could come true?

There in lies the solution. Every democratic country must do propaganda against Islamic theocracies and medieval Islamic politico-legal systems. We owe it to humanity that we do this propaganda relentlessly and continuously until freedom of thought finds its way into Islamic societies. And if Islam must change to make this goal possible, so be it.

Every Muslim who claims to be an intellectual needs to be called out by name to answer if they have done any thing to demand that Islamic theocracies should become a genuine modern democracies. It is not enough that UK/India/USA/France/Israel remain good democracies. KSA/Pakistan/Morocco/Algeria/Egypt need to become genuine democracies. And let me call some people by name. What has Farid Zakaria done to demand that KSA should give democratic rights to foreign visitors? What has Arsalan Iftikhar done to demand that Egypt no longer need to be an Islamic state? What has London's mayor Sadiq Khan done to demand that Pakistan drops the qualification 'Islamic' from her name? These are all prominent Muslim people living in western democracies and they might have done a lot toward this noble cause, but the world needs to know. And if they have not done enough or cannot do enough then they are neither modern nor intellectual.

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