Morbid fear of Islam -- all over again in Afghanistan

Submitted by Prashant (United States), Aug 19, 2021 at 01:38

Dear Dr Pipes, In my above letter to your forum in 2016, I challenged the notion of Islamophobia. At that time I suggested that it was not Islamophobia that the world sufferred from. It was a morbid fear of Islam that the world was experiencing. What I suggested then, is coming out to be true in Afghanistan today.

The entire world is watching the events in Afghanistan as a coward and scared cat. If we can call Islam a expansionist political force, this is the first victory of Islam against the world. Let me explain.

All of us had seen Talebans in action till 2001. Their brutal killings of men and their beating of women on the streets is well known to us. Their support of Bin Laden is well known to us. Their murders of people in large stadiums --as if killing people was a spectator sports-- was described by Khalid Husseini in his famous novel The Kite Runner. None of us can feign innocence because millions of us read that novel in tens of languages of the world.

And, for most of the decade of 2010s, we lived through the tyranny of ISIS which is not ideologically too far from the Taleban's. We all saw Nadia Murad winning the Nobel Peace prize and read her memoirs in which she described the brutality on non-Muslim minorities by Islamic militants. So we know it all.

And, what we do not know already, we are seeing now. We are seeing that the Taleban captured Kabul without a fight. We saw the president of Afghanistan running away from his country because he had no courage to fight and he was afraid of the brutality that the Taleban could render upon him. We saw the citizens of Afghanistan running to their blocked Airport in the hope of getting into a crowded plane because there was no other place to go. We heard the last few Hindus and Sikhs of Kabul begging the Indian government to, at the very least, evacuate their women and children. The Jews of Banu Quraish had made the same appeal 1400 years ago!

Wow. Talebans have not changed much from their 2001 edition. They generously promised that women will be given their rights as prescribed by the Sharia. They also promised a general amnesty to every one (I guess in Afghanistan every one is guilty to begin with). They promised that every one can live with security under "Islamic" rule. They even allowed people safe passage to Kabul airport (Muhammad also allowed safe passage to Banu Quraish 14 centries ago).

And, the world is watching and hoping that the Taleban let dhimmmis live like dhimmis and do not kill them! We are parallelized and cannot do a thing.

It is another story that Talebans won their victory with virtually no military, no modern army, and no air-force. The truth of the matter is that the militaries of at least 50 countries of this world can neutralize the Talebans in 30 minutes or less. Everybody is scared in Afghanistan but no one is asking for help. They are not asking for help because they know that no help will come: every one is morbidly scared of the Islamic brutality. We know that we cannot fight a war at their level. We know that while our soldiers --who have children to raise and families to support--, will talk peace with the Taleban but the Taleban can behead them in return. This is exactly what Muhammad did to banu Quraish in Yatrib. And, this is exactly what was done to Daniel Pearl around 2001, and to Nadia Murad's people around 2014. This is recent history. This is not 14 centuries prior.

And, we are not asking questions. We are not questioning the Indian mullahs who are openly congratulating the Taleban for their victory and their kindness. We are not asking the proverbial good Muslims to come forward and scream. We are not asking if we indeed have some good Muslims and some bad muslims or we just have very silent Muslims and completely silent Muslims. This is the first direct and clear defeat of the world against a Muslim army in the modern era. And it was without being able to raise an arm. Humanity just surrendered again to an inhuman force.

Let there not be a voice without it being a call to action. The world should begin to assert that all countries currently occupied by Islam are illegitimate. They were unethically gotten and unethically kept. They will remain illegitimate until Islam adopts democracy and separation of Church and state. It does not matter what Quran or Muhammad said. The world should also assert that the Islamic greed to create additional Islamic states as in (the so called) Palestine and Kashmir are equally illegitimate. We should demand that good Muslims should start screaming against the hypocrisy of the Islamic world so we know that they exist. We do not want to fight Taleban's wars but we should not hesitate to speak the hard and honest truths.

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