Aren't We Supposed to Be Fighting Against Those Who Are Against Freedom of Thought and Speech?
The New York Times has reviewed Daniel Pipes's Militant Islam Reaches America, the argument of which the reviewer summarizes as:
Since the aim of all Islamists is to install autocratic, anti-Western theocracies in their quasi-secular countries, it does not matter whether they espouse peaceful or violent methods. Democracy for them is simply another means to an end. Once in power, he warns, Islamists would reject democracy, oppose other theological and intellectual views, restrict rights for women and religious minorities, ruin the economies of their countries and oppose Israel, world Jewry, the United States and the West.
I fear it is a bit more complicated than that. It seems to me that indicting people for what they may plan to do is dangerously close to prosecuting thought crimes. It should be pointed out that Pipes clearly distinguishes "Islamists" from the broad majority of Muslims, but his conclusions still include racial and religious profiling and "tightened" borders, which, the reviewer points out, he may not have fully thought through:
...his prescriptions for what he calls the world's most dangerous movement barely mention the need to defend America's secularism, or the extent to which secular laws, values and traditions are under attack not only by militant Muslims but also by the Bush administration and its allies on the Christian right.
9:41:30 PM 
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