The Closing of the Islamic Mind

The Daily Standard ^ | 10/11/2001 | David Brooks

[Dan Day]

This is an excellent article, and the two linked essays are superb reading as well.

[ppaul]

Thanks. Great stuff.

BOOKMARKED.
BUMP.

[ppaul]

Click above banner to go to site.

[Cool Guy]

Bookmarked and Bumped! Please read the linked essays.

[mercy]

A bump except for the title. They don't have 'minds'. Why do you think they pray so much? They need to get their regular fixes of demonic instruction. The Islamic mind is just a machine operated by a ghost. Another ghost.

[Travis McGee]

Great essay!

[dennisw]

The truth about Jihadist Islam is exposed more and more to the sunlight. Many threads on FreeRepublic are doing so.

[truth_seeker]

Islamic Mind = Oxymoron

So much writing going on, trying to find a reason for their cultural, moral, human failures. It is, in a word, mindless.

[dennisw]

btttttttttttttt

[dennisw]

I like Naipaul. Great writer. A truth teller.

[Travis McGee]

I hope the truth is spreading far beyond FR.

[SauronOfMordor]

One of the main things that must drive Muslims crazy is that the only Islamic countries which are not in poverty are the ones with oil, that Islam does not work in a modern, technological society. The concepts of "future" and "progress" may have something to do with this.

[2Trievers]

BTTT

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

I hope the truth is spreading far beyond FR.

Don't bet on it.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

One of the main things that must drive Muslims crazy is that the only Islamic countries which are not in poverty are the ones with oil, that Islam does not work in a modern, technological society. The concepts of "future" and "progress" may have something to do with this.

I think it is pretty clear that Islamic culture is economically oppressive, as by you observation, although this may have as much to do with the whim of the ruling elites as the religion.

However, it is my understanding that Islamic teaching actually prohibits profiting from sales. I could be wrong about this and a more informed freeper might be able to shed some light.

[goldstategop]

I don't think that's an accident. The only Islamic country to successfully master modernity separated Islam from the state and adopted wholesale Western law, customs, and even the Latin alphabet! Kemal Ataturk's revolution in Turkey was extraordinary and his acceptance that his country's identity and future lay with the West was and is unique in the Islamic world. Its interesting Ataturk's reforms weren't copied elsewhere and that perhaps is the key to the misery and stagnation that's engulfed the rest of Islam ever since. And the failure of other Islamic countries to turn modernity into an asset has led to a rejection of the idea that progress is a necessary and inevitable outcome of the human condition. In particular Islamist Nazis have taken this victimhood mentality by blaming the West for Islam's backwardedness and in an ironic twist have used the West's own instruments of progress to destroy the advertised superiority of a culture and way of life they find completely unbearable. The West is faced then with people who view themselves as a failure and who seek to validate that view by taking down those they believe are responsible for that condition. What is particular striking about this point of view about Islamic man as articulated by Islamist Nazis is how much it shares in common with the self-hatred of leftist Western intellectuals for the success of the West. This is not a state of mind the West can address or cure; it will have to simply defend itself from both its external and internal enemies the best it can. Whether the Islamic world is capable of surmounting its victim condition and stop hating the West and become an adult and accept that it alone can change the state to which it has condemned itself is the issue that will define the rest of the 21st century and perhaps decide the fate of the world itself.

[beekeeper]

A perceptive assessment. One of the best I have seen. Thanks.

[Centurion2000]

bump for later reading

[SauronOfMordor]

However, it is my understanding that Islamic teaching actually prohibits profiting from sales.

Islam is against the charging of interest on loans. This makes banking and credit more complicated. My understanding of Islamic banks is that they're more like mutual funds with check-writing priviliges

[PJ-Comix]

The weird thing is that a thousand years ago the Islamic world was at the forefront of culture and innovation. In fact, the ancient Roman and Greek texts came to us because they were translated into Arabic and then re-translated back again. Something happened in the Islamic world in the last few centuries to cause their world to remain in the past while the West vastly surpassed them. Perhaps they couldn't adapt to the Industrial Revolution.