Replies

The Westerner, in the view of ‘Adil Husayn, a leading Egyptian writer, is "nothing but an animal whose major concern is to fill his belly."5 Immoral, consumerist, and threatening, he deserves to die.

hmmm consumerist west? Maybe, but at least we do not consume such ridiculous rhetoric regarding our enemies. Americans would be ashamed of themselves if the thought of calling Middle Easterners that way crossed their minds.

Will this myth that Islam failed in the 19th century or that they had some sort of superior culture in the middle ages ever get debunked by the professionals?

1)We turned them back at the battle of Lepanto centuries before that.

2) The intellectual achievements of Islam were those of the conquered peoples and as soon as a generation or two passed these acheivements wained. Islamic cultural acheivements are based in the culture of Hellas, the eastern Roman Empire and Persia. They are not Islamic, Arab or even Turkish in origin or inspiration. Even at the time of Suleman, the gifted players in the Ottoman Empire were Europeans that were captured as boys, mostly in the Balkans. With the exception of the "damascus" steel technique, a technique that predates Islam, all of their military technologies were direct copies of western ones. Often their master shipwrights, smiths and gunsmiths were in fact westerners.

Finally, most of this "legacy" is merely the transmition of Ancient Greco-Roman knowledge to late Medieval Europe.

This notion that there was this golden age of islam that rivaled the achievemnts of the west is just so much multicultural BS promulgated by leftists in academy. What is particularly noxious here is the attempt to exclude the accomplishments of the ancient world from a consideration of European Civilization. This is not the case - a millenium before the Prophet the Greek produced a cultural achievement unmatched by few civilaization. Perhaps only the Chinese can claim parity; Islam most certainly cannot do so.

This business is as loony has the Nazi's imaginary pre-christian, aryan golden age or Pol Pot's ancient golden age for the Khmer. This reading of history betrays a basic knowledge of fact and an incredible philsophical naivete.

the Arab media turned on bin Laden when he began looking like a loser

Remember that video of Bin Laden when his beard was all grey and he looked weak and ill? I'll bet that's when he began to lose his mythical god-like status. He began to look like the tired, old limp-wristed self-absorbed swine that he is in real life. Also, watching the Afghanis celebrate his departure was priceless.