http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_2_when_islam.html Thomas Dalrymple, 'When Islam Breaks Down'
Ironically, this is in a jounal of the Manhattan Institute, a neo-con think tank.
His analysis of fundamentalist Islam's place in the modern world is eerily similar to that of fundamentalist Christianity. I don't think Dobson, Robertson, Falwell, etc. would appreciate his following comments about the necessity of the separation of church and state:
...In the West, the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, acting upon the space that had always existed, at least potentially, in Christianity between church and state, liberated individual men to think for themselves, and thus set in motion an unprecedented and still unstoppable material advancement. Islam, with no separate, secular sphere where inquiry could flourish free from the claims of religion, if only for technical purposes, was hopelessly left behind: as, several centuries later, it still is.
The indivisibility of any aspect of life from any other in Islam is a source of strength, but also of fragility and weakness, for individuals as well as for polities. Where all conduct, all custom, has a religious sanction and justification, any change is a threat to the whole system of belief. Certainty that their way of life is the right one thus coexists with fear that the whole edifice—intellectual and political—will come tumbling down if it is tampered with in any way. Intransigence is a defense against doubt and makes living on terms of true equality with others who do not share the creed impossible.
more....
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