Defending Islam should be the job of Muslims and not ours

Submitted by Prashant (United States), Jul 23, 2022 at 20:29

Dear Dr Pipes, Perhaps Islam is completely innocent and has an airtight defense but, I believe, defending Islam should be the job of Muslims and of no one else. If Islam indeed has a true defense, it will come out on its own and shine.

If we measure Islam by measures shared by modern humans, Islam falls extremely short. Its history is laden with murders, deception, and subterfuge. When I think of Islam, I do not see the (so called) Palestinians who are trying to free Israel of Jews. What I see, instead, are the civilizations destroyed by Muslims where no one is left alive to tell a tale. Think of Persia. What is left in Persia today is just 99% Islam. What was in Persia before Islam was a thriving empire that interacted with India in the East and Greece in the West. And, let us talk about Afghanistan. It was a Buddhist civilization that acted as India's conduit to China. And, if we look at today's 99% Islamic Pakistan, it used to be a seat of Hindu-Buddhist learning where scholarship used to thrive. And, if we look at Today's Kashmir, it was the cradle of a lot of Hindu philosophy. And, I know that just 5 to 7 years ago, Yezidis were being brutally killed by Muslims in Syria. And, I also know that the percentage of population of non-Muslims in the entire middle east is declining.

Let Muslims defend Islam. No one else has to. I want Hindus, Buddhist, Christians, Jews, and atheists to relentlessly evangelize their more peaceful and superior philosophies to Muslims. There is no reason to let an as-undemocratic-a-philosophy-as-Islam take over the world without substantial intellectual resistance. The age when men could be murdered in trenches and their women sex-slaved are long gone.

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