Islam a Jihadist religion
Reader comment on item: The California Suicide Bomber[: Ra'ed Mansour al-Banna]

Submitted by Gloria Stewart (United States), Apr 4, 2005 at 15:16

The article in Time brings up a disturbing possibility - a probability, really. We have to put political correctness and wishful thinking aside and consider that the normative state of Islam is as a warrior religion. Just as water exists in different states, in its normal state it is a liquid. Islam in its normal state is a jihadist belief system - religion is too simplistic a term - that seeks to subdue the world in its name.

Both in the tone of the Koran and in its historical development, there is no reason to believe that Islam can be brought into the modern democratic world. Those who are moderate will always be swimming against the tide, and will themselves be a sermon away from extremism.

Islam today is not simply behind time times. The Amish are behind the times; Islam is in the Middle Ages, with no historical experience of a Renaissance, a Reformation or an Enlightenment.

Bringing democracy to the Muslim world as we are trying to do in Iraq is a noble experiment, perhaps one of the most noble in recent history, but it is probably doomed to failure.

Gloria Stewart

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened for relevance, substance, and tone, and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome, but comments are rejected if scurrilous, off-topic, vulgar, ad hominem, or otherwise viewed as inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the Guidelines for Comments. For informational purposes, we identify countries from which comments are sent.