Criticism of Islamism - Hopes For World Success and Mass Conversion

Hopes For World Success and Mass Conversion

The anti-Islamist website islamistwatch.org quotes disapprovingly from a book of pioneer Islamist author Sayeed Abdul A'la Maududi that Islam is

a comprehensive system which envisages to annihilate all tyrannical and evil systems in the world and enforces its own programme of reform which it deems best for the well-being of mankind.

Enforcing an Islamist program around the world would be greatly facilitated by mass conversion and according to Olivier Roy, "today's Islamist activists are obsessed with conversion: rumors that Western celebrities or entire groups are converting are hailed enthusiastically by the core militants."

Critic Daniel Pipes has also noted Islamist contempt for, and ambitions to convert, other cultures and religions, criticizing specifically the contempt of Islamists in the United States for the country they have immigrated to. He quotes, for example, the wish of one Islamist living in the U.S. that North America turn "away from its past evil and marching forward under the banner of Allahu Akbar ."

Aside from the complaint that pushing for mass conversion of non-Muslims to a different religion and culture is intolerant and aggressive, Olivier Roy argues it is simply unrealistic. "he age of converting entire peoples is past," as we live in an era where religious belief is considered a personal matter. Likewise, a strategy to gradually convert non-Muslims "until the number of conversions shifts the balance of the society," is also problematic. Conversion to Islam "in a Christian environment ... generally indicates a marginalized person, a fanatic or a true mystic," in any case people with little desire or ability to join or build "a mass movement."

Pipes also argues many prominent conversions to Islam appears to be part of a "recurring" pattern, rather than a mass movement. As he puts it, "Islam - in both its normative and Nation variants" has become established "as a leading solace for African-Americans in need", specifically after trouble with the criminal justice system, and includes a "well-established" oppositional "pattern of alienation, radicalism and violence."