When the little waves of change come to us, we need to recognize them

Submitted by Prashant, Oct 6, 2018 at 11:11

Dear Dr Pipes, In our world we are creating a climate where fundamentalist Islam cannot survive. It is true that the politically correct main-stream media and politicians in free nations ignore the problems with modern and historic Islam. It is also true that selfish Islamic politicians, clergy, and societies keep blowing the trumpet of Islam with incessant zeal. But what is even more true is that common people on the social media are standing up to the hypocrisy of modern and historic Islam like never before.

The world is realizing that there is nothing so sacrosanct in Islam that Muslims get to maintain theocratic states while everyone else is required to be democratic. People are seeing through the unsymmetrical Islamic recommendations about inter-faith marriages. People are also noticing the extant to which Islam tries to control the lives of people. And people are writing about the fact that this kind of control cannot be achieved without state helping the religion. And that brings us back to the fact that for hundreds of years Muslims have advanced their religion with the help of the state. I do not think that that day is too far when we start seeing newspaper editorials addressing these issues.

Small waves of change are already visible. I recently wrote on your site about article 12 of Bangladeshi constitution. Whether practiced or not, it contains a good recommendation. Discussion in Morocco about holocaust education is also a step in the right direction. This year's Nobel Peace Prize shared by Nadia Murad draws people's attention to the fact that perhaps Islamic scripture leaves too much room in its recommendations for exploitation of non-Muslim men and women by political-Islam.

We need to recognize these waves of change and speak about them consistently, politely and loudly. Socio-political Islam needs to be separated from the religious and spiritual Islam. Socio-political Islam needs to be abolished. Where Mohammad went wrong was when he thought that religious ideas adopted by him were so good that they were justified to be imposed by force. That thought process needs to be decried and eliminated. Muslims need to literally go back to Medina and come back as monks and nothing but monks (something that they never did before).

The early waves of change will soon become storm of change. Why create a nation that will become illegitimate as soon as it is born? If Kashmir and (so called) Palestine have to become Muslim theocracies, why even talk about their freedom? However if Kashmir and Palestine want to become freedom loving democracies, that freedom may be worth talking about.

This is the direction we need to go and we are going.

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