August 17, 2006
-
the real problem with islam…
If Western prejudice represents the core problem facing Islamic communities, then why do the two million (or more) Muslims in the United States count as the wealthiest, most successful believers anywhere on earth? Why do the one million Arab citizens of Israel enjoy by far the best standard of living and the highest levels of education (according to UN figures) of any Arabs in the Middle East? Logical analysis suggests that more devout Muslims who wear traditional robes and head coverings fare worse than their assimilated counterparts not because they provoke more prejudice from their neighbors, but because they have isolated themselves more fully in a deeply dysfunctional, even demented, medieval culture.
The core problem involves the Koran’s teaching that Mohammed represents the last prophet, that his revelations amount to the ultimate “seal of knowledge,” and that a just, well-ordered world will place his faithful followers in positions of greater power, prosperity and peacefulness than their infidel neighbors. For anyone who takes Islamic teaching seriously, the current state of the world offers a glaring, painful example of cognitive dissonance: the backwardness, poverty, and endemic misery of Muslim societies—particularly compared to the privilege and prosperity of the West—either undermines the validity of the Holy Koran, or proves that evil infidel conspirators have upset the natural, proper, and Godly order of things. In the 1930’s, the passion behind Nazism arose from a burning sense that the German people had been gypped, that the infamous “stab in the back” of the Versailles Treaty had deprived the nation of its rightful position of world leadership. Islamo-Nazis feel an even more galling sense of injustice, oppression and unfairness, since hostile forces have, in the view of the devout, denied them the chance to live out their divine endowment of world dominance.
