When will people start to realize that Islam and democracy are totally incompatible? It's that simple! Clear thinking is what is needed, not all this academic hooey.
America's misreading of the Arab world—and our current misadventure in Iraq—may have really begun in 1950. That was the year a young University of London historian named Bernard Lewis visited Turkey for the first time. Lewis, who is today an imposing, white-haired sage known as the “doyen of Middle Eastern studies” in America (as a New York Times reviewer once called him), was then on a sabbatical. Granted access to the Imperial Ottoman archives—the first Westerner allowed in—Lewis recalled that he felt “rather like a child turned loose in a toy shop, or like an intruder in Ali Baba's cave.” But what Lewis saw happening outside his study window was just as exciting, he later wrote. There in Istanbul, in the heart of what once was a Muslim empire, a Western-style democracy was being born. Bernard Lewis Revisited: What if Islam isn't an obstacle to democracy in the Middle East but the secret to achieving it? by Michael Hirsh (Senior Editor of Newsweek)Mark Alexander
4 comments:
Duh...
Exactly, Rockmother! That was my reaction, too.
Mark - Do you believe that there is hope for reform in Islam or that democracy is possible? I don't.
Eleanor, I most certainly DO NOT! In actual fact, I have stated this repeatedly. Reform will NEVER happen.
Reform could take place in Christianity, because the Bible is not considered to be the actual words of God; rather, the Bible is 'inspired' by God.
The Qur'an, by contrast, is said to be made up of the actual and literal words of Allah; therefore, no reform can ever take place, because none of it can be changed. For to change anything would be considered heresy.
No, I certainly don't believe that Islam can EVER be reformed. People who are hoping for this are living with a vain hope. Pigs will fly first!
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