The Irresistable and Toxic Lure of Utopia

Submitted by Pied~Piper (United States), Jul 7, 2010 at 01:02

With all due respect to Obama and with equal respect to and in addition, admiration for Dr. Pipes, I totally disagree with the premises of both as presented in Dr. Pipes' article.

I guess it has to do, ultimately, with where you stand on the Islam/Islamism issue.

If you believe that Islamism is a deformation of true Islam and that if only this nasty Islamism could be somehow quashed, why, we'd all (Christian, Jew and Moslem) be able to clasp hands together, march onward and forge a better tomorrow for the world.

If, on the other hand, you believe as I do, that Islamism is simply the other side of the coin of "true" Islam, that Islamism and its progeny (Al-Qaeda et al) are the logical end result of "true" Islam, well, you tend to come to very different conclusions.

I urge all those interested in the subject of "Science and the Arabs" (an oxymoron if there ever was one), to read the sadly ignored masterpiece by Toby Hull (The Rise of Early Modern Science) for a superb discussion of this issue.

In it, he investigates the reasons why modern science not only did not take root in the lands of Islam and China, but he explains too why it couldn't have (and still can't).

As an educator in the Middle East at a "renowned" university for the last THIRTY years, I will simply say here without further elaboration (it would take a book or at least a long article to fully explain myself) that there is no way the Islamic nations will ever come even close to becoming participants in the modern world, least of all in the sciences.

It's just not going to happen and anyone who thinks it will, is simply a utopian.

The Dar al Islam will forever by mired and trapped in the past and enslaved by it.

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