Experts on Islam pointing fingers at one another. Did political biases and wishful thinking among scholars cause them to miss the most significant new developments in Middle Eastern politics and society over several decades, and in particular fail to recognize the predictable threat to the West from extremist terrorists?
And in some pseudo-punditry, Nobel literature laureate V.S. Naipaul’s contentious comments on Islam:
“The idea in Islam, the most important thing, is paradise. No one can be a moderate in wishing to go to paradise.”
“The idea of a moderate (Islamic) state is something cooked up by politicians looking to get a few loans here and there.”
‘Are you surprised by Osama bin Laden’s support in Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Iran — countries you wrote about in your travel books on Islam?’
“No, because these are the converted peoples of Islam. To put it brutally, these are the people who are not Arabs. Part of the neurosis of the convert is that he always has to prove himself. He has to be more royalist than the king, as the French say.”
“There is a passage in one of the Conrad short stories of the East Indies where the savage finds himself with his hands bare in the world, and he lets out a howl of anger. I think that, in its essence, is what is happening. The world is getting more and more out of reach of simple people who have only religion. And the more they depend on religion, which of course solves nothing, the more the world gets out of reach. The oil money in the 70’s gave the illusion that power had come to the Islamic world.”
NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]
