Response to 'The Clash to End All Clashes'

Submitted by Mixture V ranks (United States), Feb 8, 2006 at 18:39

Dr. Pipes always writes lucidly and knowingly on the subject of Islam. I would disagree with him here in that Salman Rushdie's book, while available internationally, was open only to those who read it. The cartoons published in Copenhagen were in a newspaper of mass circulation and available to any who merely looked at the newspaper. This puts a slightly different twist on this situation as opposed to the one which angered Khomeini in the late 80's.

We now have the president of Iran publicly calling for the final war against Israel. Iran has a large group of suicide bombers, battalions of men and women, who are ready to die for Allah. (I'm not just sure what the ladies get as rewards. 72 hulks??) This, too, is different than the Khomeini-Rushdie episode. The situation now is much more intense and far more widespread than the Rushdie episode was regardless of what various 'moderate' Muslims may be saying for public consumption.

We must remember that Al-Ghazzali, Islam's great 11th-century theologian, said that the lie must be used in place of truth wherever it serves a better purpose for Islam than truth would. Truth does not occupy a revered place in any Arab culture and never has. Islam does not permit it to do so.

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