NICHOLAS X. RIZOPOULOS
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unbelief that threaten from all sides," while "Western civilization ...
spreadls] idolatry around the world in the form of secularism."
This may be a fair representation of certain aspects of what Doran
describes as the ongoing and "profoundly serious civil war over Arab
and Muslim identity in the modern world." That said, the fact that the
anti-modernist forces in this civil war have found it convenient to adopt
a hysterical brand of anti-Americanism (and anti-Zionism) as part of
their propaganda arsenal by no means guarantees, as Doran apparently
believes, that if only "the United States were to effect the removal of
Israeli settlements from the West Bank and alleviate the suffering of the
Iraqi people some of that outrage would certainly subside."
Nor, I'm afraid, would that "outrage" disappear
if
Karen Armstrong
had her way-so that the (according to her, utterly mistaken) notion
"that Islam is an essentially violent and fanatical faith [no longer per–
sisted as] one of the tenets of the West."
It
may, or may not, be entirely
true that "the reality of Islam ... has
always
been very different from
the Western stereotype
I
a nd
I ...
certainly
not addicted to violence and
warfare" (my emphasis). More problematical is her comment to the
effect that "although Muslims later li.e., after the Arab conquests of the
early medieval periodl put an Islamic gloss on these wars ... they had
no religious significance ... land Muslims] had
no
dreams of world con–
quest" (my emphasis). It may also be true that "basically, the Koran's
view of warfare is
very
similar to the Western theory of the 'just war';
... I
thatl aggressive warfare is
always
forbidden; ... [and thatl until
the twentieth century Islam had a far better record of religious tolerance
than did Western Christianity" (my emphasis). Suppose Armstrong is
also right in arguing that most Westerners, even highly educated ones,
are hopelessly untutored when it comes to Islamic history, culture, or
Muslim notions on the separation of church and state; that Americans
are largely mistaken about the "true" nature of Wahhabism (or other
reform movements); that we were sadly confused when we thought we
saw evidence of factional religious fanaticism, and hate, in the horrific
unfolding of the Iran-Iraq War; and that bin Laden-and his "extremist
cohorts"-quite simply "hijacked ... one of the world's great reli–
gions." Yet the question remains: how did this "hijacking" come about,
and (better yet) why did it succeed? Are we really so totally mistaken in
seeing
some
connection between bin Laden's political appeal to the
"Arab Street" and his religious message, "hijacked" or not? Better, per–
haps, to listen to that wisest of Western historians of Islam, Bernard
Lewis, cogently arguing (in the January issue of the
Atlantic Monthly)
that "underlying much of the Muslim world's travail may be a simple
