Leave them be...

Submitted by Justin H. (United States), Jan 13, 2006 at 09:11

I have a great deal of respect for Dr. Pipes. He is a gifted, credible, and remarkable scholar (as is Judith Kipper, also of the Middle East forum). However our political views are very different, although I worry as much about a nuclear Iran as the next guy. I consider myself to be both a politically liberal American and a realist.

The bottom line is this: winning hearts and minds in the Muslim world is easier said than done, as America's debacle in the Iraq war (which I vehemently oppose) shows us. We should simply let Muslims be. In our actions, we are telling Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians, Lebanese, etc. that Western culture is superior to Islamic culture. Even as a secular, Jewish American, I can tell you that this is not true. While the West was mired in the dark ages, Islam created an empire that lasted for over 1,000 years. If not for the likes of the Moors and the Abbasids, the works of Aristotle and Plato would have probably perished. Muslim societies also made great advances in science, philosophy, and other disciplines.

Therefore, in the eyes of all the great Muslim peoples around the world, when Westerners attempt to change their societies, it comes across as ethnocentrism. Furthermore, by promoting "democracy" in Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, we are actually enhancing the spread of Islamism. That, of course, will only harm American interests in the Middle East, where we are quite unpopular as it is. America is, however, quite popular amongst Iranian youth (who comprise two-thirds of the population of about 69 million). Yet, even here, change must come from the bottom up (meaning Iranian students and intellectuals), rather than from the top-down (meaning the hard-liners at the Pentagon).

We must learn from the mistake we made with the invasion of Iraq.

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