Decline of Islamism

Submitted by Prashant (United States), Nov 12, 2019 at 18:21

Dear Dr Pipes, In his above letter Mike Ramirez expressed genuine doubts that Islamism is in decline. We can never be sure if Islamism is in decline as long as we keep hearing calls for violence from Islamic organizations and these calls keep getting response from Islamic people. In one of your essays you wrote (I am paraphrasing out of my memory) that it is OK for Islamic interests to write letters to editors with whatever message they have but it is not OK for them to resort to violence. I think that is the right attitude. For Islamism to end, we have to cut the channels that feed its violent manifestation. End of ISIS is a good sign. PLO does not exist any more (or does it?). Al Qaeda is weaker now. Is Hamas starving for funds? The good news is that people all over the world are talking about the Islamic historic love of violence. We have to reach out to young Muslims. We have to reach out to Muslim mothers. No mother should waste her child in wanton violence. No young man/woman should end his life just for the desire to subjugate others. If we repeat this kind of message billions of times so it reaches every Muslim hundreds of times, it will not be ignored and violent Islamism will end. That is what we need to do.

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