18 May 2013

Islam Vs. Islamism: A Case for Wishful Thinkers

“Our killer question is ‘How do you propose to defeat Islamism?’ Those who make all Islam their enemy not only succumb to a simplistic and essentialist illusion but they lack any mechanism to defeat it.”

This is what historian and Middle East analyst Daniel Pipes asks in his recent Washington Times article.

To support his argument, Pipes makes an unsubstantiated claim that a majority of Muslims are moderate and that Islamism is only, supported by 10-15 percent of Muslims…

So how and why did he come up with such numbers? Pipes uses different studies and surveys about which he himself confesses: “These ambiguous and contradictory percentages lead to no clear, specific count of Islamists.” Why then use such statistics? It is only to serve the major argument he made in my first paragraph. [PJ Media] Read more