Distinction between "Moderate" and "Radical" Islam
Reader comment on item: Is Islam the Problem? Is It the Solution?

Submitted by Fredric Fastow (United States), Mar 1, 2006 at 10:07

Dear Mr. Pipes:

This regards your slogan, "Radical Islam is the problem, moderate Islam is the solution."

My father, who served in the Mideast in WWII, recently gave me a small book, "Persian Gulf Command," by Joel Sayre (Random House, 1945). It is a collection of articles written for The New Yorker Magazine and it documents how the US Army delivered vast amounts of war supplies to Russia by building ports, roads, warehouses and factories in Iran.

Page 10, in the context of a description of an old railroad that, among other things, carried "pilgrims bound for the holy city of Qum," contains this:

"... that Qum prayer train mustn't be monkeyed with. Religion is something these people over here don't kid about. Back in the nineteen-twenties, they stoned an American vice-consul to death in Teheran just for taking a snapshot of a sacred fountain. We've got enough wars on our hands already without getting mixed up in any holy ones."

Sayre makes no discinction between "moderate" and "radical" Islam. Around eighty years ago (well before Israel existed to furnish an excuse to be anti-West) "they" killed an American, apparently spontaneously. Sayre seems very accepting of it, too. I'd be interested to know what you read into this passage.

Sincerely yours,

Fredric Fastow

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Daniel Pipes replies:

In the 1920s there was barely anything like radical Islam as it exists today. By moderate Islam I am referring to something that is only now being formulated and only one future day will potentially become a force.