Monday, September 20, 2010

View from the West

Prof. Fouad Agami, always a contrarian, has numbers that tell a surprising - and optimistic -story:
The truth is that the trajectory of Islam in America (and Europe for that matter) is at variance with the play of things in Islam's main habitat. A survey by Elaph, the most respected electronic daily in the Arab world, gave a decided edge to those who objected to the building of this mosque—58% saw it as a project of folly.

Elaph was at it again in the aftermath of Pastor Terry Jones's threat to burn copies of the Quran: It queried its readers as to whether America was a "tolerant" or a "bigoted" society. The split was 63% to 37% in favor of those who accepted the good faith and pluralism of this country.

This is remarkable. The ground burned in the Arab-Islamic world over the last three decades. Sly preachers and their foot soldiers "weaponized" the faith and all but devoured what modernists had tried to build in the face of difficult odds. The fury has not burned out. Self-styled imams continue to issue fatwas that have made it all but impossible for Arabs and Muslims to partake of the modern world. But from this ruinous history, there has settled upon countless Muslims and Arabs the recognition that the wells are poisoned in their midst, that the faith has to be reined in or that the faith will kill, and that the economic and cultural prospects of modern Islam hang in the balance.

To this kind of sobriety, Muslim activists and preachers in the diaspora—in Patterson, N.J., and Minneapolis, in Copenhagen and Amsterdam—appear to be largely indifferent. They are forever on the look-out for the smallest slight.

3 comments:

NormanF said...

Yes Ya'acov... like teddy bears named Mohammed.

KILL ALL INFIDEL TEDDY BEARS! DEATH TO TEDDY BEAR MAKERS!

That's how insane Islam has become.

Anonymous said...

"To this kind of sobriety, Muslim activists and preachers in the diaspora—in Patterson, N.J., and Minneapolis, in Copenhagen and Amsterdam—appear to be largely indifferent. They are forever on the look-out for the smallest slight."

Shouldn't this sound familiar to us Jews? This paragraph could easily be written to describe the hysteria of professional Jewish activists as opposed to the silent and sober majority on any number of things. Two quite topical issues come to mind: Obama's Middle East policy (which most American Jews support - 55% in April) and nuclear Iran (which most Israelis are not scared of - 81% in 2009).

Regardless of religion or nationality, most people are reasonable - those who aren't are just louder.

PS Fouad is Lebanese, not Egyptian. Therefore his last name is Ajami. Exactly like that part of Yafo.

Anonymous said...

Anon

slights to Jews and slights to Muslims play in front of distinctly different historical backgrounds.

i.e. for Jews it seems to me to be pretty reasonable to be paranoid - I can't see anything remotely in that category for Muslims to be paranoid about i.e. Muslim/Christian relationships over the centuries seem to me to have been quite tit for tat -

Silke