03 January 2011

Don't blame the West

The 'root causes' of Islamist terrorism do not lie in poverty or western imperialism, but an age old conflict between reason and revelation.

.... The Islamists' answer, obviously, is that no accommodation is possible. Hence, they ultimately seek the transformation of the West to accommodate Islam. Chandra Muzaffar, a widely respected Malaysian Islamic scholar, writing in a 2006 book, The New Voices of Islam, captures this spiritual aspiration: "Islam and the post-Enlightenment secular West are diametrically opposed to one another.

Muslims will then realize that unless they transform the secular world of the West, that vision of justice embodied in the Koran will never become a reality." The challenge for Islamists, obviously, is whether they can achieve that transformation better through demographic domination over the next few decades or through violence. [Ottawa Citizen] Read more [via The Iconoclast]