The Dish

MEMO TO FORTE II

Daniel Pipes has an eloquent rebuttal to David Forte’s recent piece in the current National Review. My only quarrel with Pipes is that, from everything I have read these past few weeks, his notion that only 10 – 15 percent of Middle Eastern Islam is fundamentalist is, if anything, optimistic. Like Pipes, I agree that there is little propaganda value in this. But it’s important to know the enemy we are confronting. Fundamentalism is a deep and dangerous part of it. I wish this were not so, and have respect for sincere and moderate Muslims. But I also have respect for Germans. And in the early 1940s, the vast majority became Nazi criminals. The same process is at work today; and blindness toward the grim reality of it will help no-one.