New terminology will not help us. The truth will.

Submitted by Prashant, Apr 15, 2018 at 17:19

Dear Dr Pipes, I humbly submit that new terminology like 'western civilizationism' will not help us. Our planet is facing a unique problem. An expansionist political philosophy is trying to spread around the world and it is intentionally or unknowingly hiding under the umbrella of a religion. This philosophy is Islam. I have said it many times before but I would like to say it again: intertwining church and state harms both the church and the state and in Islam church and state are hopelessly intertwined.

Islam by its own doctrines requires that every Islamic majority region of the world is also a politically Muslim region where Muslims decide the fate and day-to-day life of non-Muslims. This belief is absurd but it is so deeply ingrained in the minds of Muslim people that they think that it is a requirement of God. As a result, Muslims see nothing morally wrong in the belief that the --would be-- Palestine can be a Islamic nation while just across the border Israel must give democratic rights to everyone. Ditto for Pakistan and India. Ditto for Malaysia and, a few hundred miles away, Mayanmar. Ditto for Islamic theocracies and Western democracies. It is perfectly moral for Muslims to leave the shores of an Islamic theocracy but demand universal democracy as soon as they catch a non-Muslim land. In some convoluted way it is all sanctioned by God Himself.

The problems faced by Western (majority Christian) Democracies are also faced by other (majority Hindu/Buddhist) Democracies and resistance to fundamentalist Islam is developing all around the world. We do not need to call this resistance 'civilizationism'. We only need to call it anti-hypocisy-ism'. You see, if people of Britain declare the UK a biblical theocracy and then demand democratic rights in India or USA or elsewhere, they should and would be opposed just as much as some of us are opposing the Islamists. Why waste a new term on a phenomenon if it does not describe the phenomenon completely.

No matter how deep they have to go with an eraser, Muslims need to erase the belief that they have any more privileges on this planet than athiests/pagans/agnostics/or anyone else. This planet needs to judge everyone by his character and nothing else. No crime against God is bigger than a crime against a human because God can defend Himself against any harm whatsoever but humans cannot. End of story.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".