What is the solution?

Submitted by Roger Rick (United States), Jun 23, 2005 at 11:11

Mr. Pipes and Mr. Gerecht (whose name, incidentally, means "just") seem to agree that the ultimate goal is a Western style democracy, regardless of how to get there. In this regard, both are remarkably close to the Bush administration which also believes in the proposition that democratic societies are more peace-loving than totalitarian regimes.

Gerecht, of course, advocates the more painful cure which would qualify it for the label allopathic, rather than homeopathic - painful for the people living in dysfunctional Islamic societies, but also potentially painful for the rest of the world as Iran's quest for nuclear weapons may suggest.

Born in Germany, I tend to draw parallels between militant Islam and the Nazi ideology. Both targeted the Jews for extermination, the Islamists because the Medina Jews refused to be assimilated, the Nazis because of one of Hitler's many inferiority complexes. It is worth noting that Hitler came to power in a democracy, although he never won a majority of votes. True to Gerecht's prediction, Germany is a more stable democracy today than it ever was - but at what a cost to European Jews and the other 50 million victims of the war!

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