Ban Islam

[abujamal]

This article's conclusion by Daniel Pipes is reflective of the failed strategy of the West's attempt to defeat Islam from within while acknowledging the impossibility of taking on Islam head-on as it would not differentiate between "Friend and Foe" and "Reformers and Extremists" and lead to the open declaration of war on the Ummah and Islam as opposed to the undeclared one at present.

The likes of Suhail Webb, Tariq Ramadhan and Hamza Yusuf along with all the others in the government's "raddical middleway project" will be releived with this strategy which otherwise would force them to choose which side they are on making it difficult to keep up the pretence, even though they have exposed themselves already.

Ban Islam?
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
August 29, 2007

Non-Muslims occasionally raise the idea of banning the Koran, Islam, and Muslims. Examples this month include calls by a political leader in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, to ban the Koran — which he compares to Hitler's Mein Kampf — and two Australian politicians, Pauline Hanson and Paul Green, demanding a moratorium on Muslim immigration......

My take? I understand the security-based urge to exclude the Koran, Islam, and Muslims, but these efforts are too broad, sweeping up inspirational passages with objectionable ones, reformers with extremists, friends with foes. Also, they ignore the possibility of positive change.

More practical and focused would be to reduce the threats of jihad and Shariah by banning Islamist interpretations of the Koran, as well as Islamism and Islamists. Precedents exist. A Saudi-sponsored Koran was pulled from school libraries. Preachers have gone to jail for their interpretation of the Koran. Extreme versions of Islam are criminally prosecuted. Organizations are outlawed. Politicians have called for Islamists to leave their countries.

Islam is not the enemy, but Islamism is. Tolerate moderate Islam, but eradicate its radical variants.

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/4868

[p]

i am sure that Mr Pipes is even more confused. he wrote in his response to the 2004 Rand report Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies that the US should not deal with the modernists, but should deal with the secularists.

[abujamal]

Pipes knows Islam is the target but acknowledges there is no way to defeat it by openly stating it but he has like in the article below. In response to comments by his readers that Islam itself was the enemy and not a "radical version", he confirms by stating:

"if one sees Islam as irredeemably evil, what comes next? This approach turns all Muslims - even moderates fleeing the horrors of militant Islam - into eternal enemies. And it leaves one with zero policy options. My approach has the benefit of offering a realistic policy to deal with a major global problem (ie Islam).....

...Americans have acquired an impressive knowledge of Islam. Contrary to the incessant bleating by apologists for militant Islam about American ignorance of this topic, my readers know what they are talking about...These readers, surely, are not typical of American opinion, but their informed antagonism to Islam bears remarking."

These are the comments he was responding to:

* Islam has always been on the warpath. "The violent conquest against the infidel was present at [Islam's] inception," writes one respondent. It "is based on war, conquest and forced conversion," asserts another. "The war, declared by Muhammad in [the year] 600 . . ., continues to this day," notes a third.

* Militant Islam is Islam. The readers insist that the evils I attribute to a modern, radical utopian ideology inheres to the faith at large. What I call militant Islam, they say, "should properly be called, 'real Islam.' " One writer asks, "what exactly is it that the Wahhabis and other Islamic extremists are doing that is not in accord with Muhammad's doctrine?" He then replies: "The answer is they are behaving very true to Muhammad's doctrine!"

* Mild Koranic verses were abrogated. They argue that the Koran contains contradictory passages that Muslim scholars handled by deciding that chronologically latter verses superseded earlier ones. Specifically, the conciliatory verses I quoted ("There must be no coercion in matters of faith!" and "O people! We have formed you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another,") were voided by one of the aggressive ones I cited ("Then fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them. And seize them, beleaguer them and lie in wait for them").

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/440