Many not-so-small examples

Submitted by Sue Donim (United States), Sep 17, 2006 at 11:18

While the author's distress at being so close to the incident that he describes is clear, I do not believe that it is appropriate to conclude that s/he condems all of Islam based on this incident alone. This is just one tiny incident close to home that supports the obvious conclusion from historical and current events.

After paying little attention to the troubles of the Arab and Persian worlds for most of my life, I, like many others, have become a very interested observer of all things Muslim. It now seems to me that there is not much that happens in the Muslim world that would support an optimistic outlook on Islam's integration into the modern world in the next few generations.

From the 18th century Egyptian who was finally put to death for suggesting that Platonism might have something to offer Islam, to van Gogh's death in the Netherlands, to the silly response to the Danish cartoon, to the hyper-sensitive reaction to the Pope's academic discussion, the Islamic world (as a whole) fails to behave in a civilized fashion at almost every turn.

The "West" or "Christian" world is not without its faults. But at least we confront them: we have a long history of self-examination and self-reformation. For Islam, religion stopped with Mohammed ("There shall be no Prophet after me") and, apparently, science and philosophy stopped around 600 years later (http://www.amaana.org/ISWEB/contents.htm).

That puts the West about 1000 years ahead of the Muslim world.

And it shows.

Every day.

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