Letter: Don’t Downplay Muslim Militancy
Shlomo Pill's lecture at Emory went too far in presenting Judaism and Islam as politically comparable.
I found the article on Shlomo Pill’s presentation (“Pill: Islam, Judaism Rooted in Political Separation,” April 6) to be beyond belief. Democratic societies in the Middle Ages? Recall elections?
Maybe those terms meant something different in the old days than they mean today.
But the hardest thing to swallow is the claim that Islam works pretty much the same way that Judaism does. To offer a meek “some modern Islamic states use force” just doesn’t cut it. And, frankly, ignoring Islamist militancy is downright dangerous to the continued existence of Western civilization.
The Islamist militants truly want to rule the world, as evidenced not only by Islamic State attacks in the Middle East, but also by the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls, Sunni and Shia Muslims killing each other during their respective religious celebrations, Coptic churches being burned in Egypt, and anti-Jewish invective spewing from schoolrooms, mosques and media outlets throughout the Middle East.
Certainly, not all Muslims are Islamist militants, but it is not surprising that many Muslims do take pride in the achievements (sic) of the militants in combating atheistic, immoral Westerners.
Illiteracy and poverty are endemic in the Muslim countries of the Middle East, where corrupt rulers have long exploited their people, distracting them from their own miserable lives by inciting them against the Jews, Israel and modern civilization.
We Westerners have abetted those rulers, fearing that we will be labeled Islamophobic if we speak out against political Islamism.
Isn’t it time for Muslim rulers to be told to stop funding Islamist militants?
Isn’t it time to demand that oil-rich countries contribute to the resettlement of many of the world’s 66 million people displaced by militant Islamists’ actions?
Isn’t it time to tell Muslim rulers to end the refugee limbo to which they have condemned the Palestinians?
The first step toward bringing the Muslim Middle East into the modern world may very well be the admission by Muslim rulers that the nation-state of the Jews belongs in the Jews’ Middle Eastern ancestral homeland.
— Toby F. Block, Atlanta
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