Daniel Pipes Quotes
If radical Islam is ever to be shunted aside it will be by other Moslems with alternate interpretations.
Daniel Pipes, Editor, The Middle East Quarterly, Policy Planner, U. S. State Department (Republican), Speech, The Nixon Center, October 25, 2004
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Over a century ago, modern Islamists were critical of the Wahhabi sect for their extremism. Unfortunately, the Saudi Arabian royal family whose absolute control of the kingdom could be threatened by an extremist religious movement, cut a deal with the Wahhabi that not only gave them control over all religious and legal interpretations of Sharia in the kingdom, but also gave them large amounts of money with which the Wahhabi expanded and exported their extremist brand of Islam to many other counties—including the United States. A large part of the Islamic terrorism of the end of the 20th century into the 21st was caused by fanatics who had been exposed to Wahhabi schools (madrassas), mosques or materials which are virulently anti-Christian and ant-Semitic. Muslim intellectuals like Muhammad Abduh had warned about extremism in general and Wahhabi extremism in particular.
Essentially, he is advocating a reformation of the Islamic religion, much like that which has taken place in Christianity and Judaism. However, while most Muslims of the world are not extreme fundamentalists, most of the existing clerics (as did their Christian and Jewish counterparts years ago) turn any attempt at reform into blasphemy and sin. Throughout much of the Islamic world, Muslims who argue publicly for reform are at risk for their lives as the existing Muslim clerics generally encourage attacks on reforms or turn a blind eye to efforts to suppress reform.
She had been covering Muslim nations and leaders for a long time and saw the relationship between the contemporary domination of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism long before most.
Most Americans and Europeans and their governments feel that Muslim leaders and organizations have not done very much in terms of “drawing the line” and publicly condemning terrorism. However many of the critics did not understand the intimidation that exists in most Islamic communities where the fascist fundamentalists target any Muslim public critics as heretics and apostates themselves. Many have been killed or injured in assassination attempts.
Islam is a religion, like many Christian sects, where conversion of non-believers is a religious duty. When many of the European day-to-day customs, conflict with Islamic custom or prescription, decadence and the desire to change it becomes a very predictable result.
6th Baron Byron. This is one the earliest references to the ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi Islamic sect which dominated Saudi Arabia Islam in the late 20th and early 21st century and which inspired terrorism against the West and Israel. When Byron wrote this canto the sect was just a decade old and had already taken over Mecca by violence. Byron was prophetic.
Son of Reverend Billy Graham. While parts of the Koran do preach violence, parts of the Old Testament also do, as do parts of the New Testament such as the Book of Revelations.
She was originally Egyptian but because of her criticism, her citizenship was actually revoked.
There were many who disagreed about the commitment to non violence. For example, they advocate Sharia (Islamic) fundamentalist law where a Muslim who converts to another religion is executed and adulterers are stoned to death. So their ends are very violent and intolerant. In the past they have espoused and committed violence as a means. Many believe that recent claims of non violent means are just tactical deceptions which are authorized as a methodology in the Koran.
Daniel Pipes is an American historian, writer, and commentator. He is the president of the Middle East Forum, and publisher of its Middle East Quarterly journal. His writing focuses on American foreign policy and the Middle East.
