Tocqueville was proven correct about his assessment of Islam that he wrote 160 years ago

Submitted by Rich (United States), Dec 13, 2006 at 12:06

On page 322 of Andre Jardin's Biography of Alexis deTocqueville, published in 1984 by Farrar, Staruss Giroux, Tocqueville wrote (sorry if I did not quote the source properly) in 1840:

"I studied the Koran a great deal, mainly because of our position vis-a-vis the Muslim populations of Algeria and throughout the Near East. I must tell you that I came away from the study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Mohammed. As far as I can see it is the principal cause of the decadence so visable today in the Muslim world, and, though it is less absurd than the polytheism of old,its social and political tendencies are in my opinion infinitely more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself."

Preceeding this quote, the author states that "...Tocqueville was interested above all in studying the moral influence that a religion exercised on a society. The Christian spirit of American society made democracy possible there, while the Muslim morality that so profoundly impregnated minds and manners crushed man with its materialism and fatalism."

George Bush should have read the book before they decided that the Middle East should be democracized :).

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