How do you come to that conclusion?

Submitted by Noah Wilk (United States), Feb 5, 2007 at 19:18

Dr. Pipes - with all due respect, you seem to be skirting the issue. You wrote:

"I have supplied names of moderates many times - indeed, have a whole bibliography devoted to this."

That's all well and fine. However, I would like to point out (as I have on other threads) that the numbers (of examples of moderate Muslims) are so small as to register as nothing more than an anamoly, an aberration, in the larger phenomenon that is Islam. They're too small to even be called a minority. More like a blip on the radar.

Rounding down, there are about 1 billion Muslims in the world. Even if you had listed 100,000 moderates in your bibliography (I doubt it's anywhere near that), it would still amount to only 0.01% (one one-hundreth of one percent) who are reform-minded. I'm afraid I am just not seeing how this can be a meaningful number, especially since we have not seen Islam reform itself in over 1,400 years. What makes you so confident than a mere fraction of a percent can effect such sweeping changes, when we see no evidence of such reform?

Next, you wrote:

"On your final point, just as I would have favored of destroying the Nazis but not the Germans, so I would crush the Islamists, not the Muslims."

Again, that sounds nice and I'm sure that makes people feel good, but is it realistic? We did not defeat Nazi Germany or Japan in WWII until we had broken their national resolve. Are you trying to tell us that we could have defeated the Nazis by targetting only their tanks and troops in the field and not their cities? Because I doubt any military historian would agree.

And what do you propose we do with the "Islamists" as you call them? Politely ask them to segregate themselves from the so-called "moderate" Muslims so that we can conveniently massacre them? In all honesty, how do you consider that possible considering how entrenched the "Islamists" are in Muslim society? House to house fighting with hundreds of millions of unidentifiable enemies? Especially when you consider how many Muslims are complicit with or at least sympathetic towards the "Islamists".

Again, you don't explain how to crush the "Islamists" without also crushing Islam in general.

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