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.