Islam: A Defective Civilization?

PRESIDENT BUSH CLEARLY HAS NIGHTMARES about the current war on terror turning into a war with Islam. On the military plane, this is unlikely so long as we do nothing stupid, but on the philosophical plane the question has already been forced in a lot of people’s minds: Is Islam a fundamentally defective civilization and are the advanced nations of the earth therefore doomed to find it a source of trouble? One cannot help noticing that if we take “civilization” in the sense established by Sam Huntingdon’s excellent The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, it appears that they are the problem child of the planet. The alternative, of course, is that the trouble Islam appears to cause is the product of pure politics and not of religion per se. After years of politically-correct West-bashing sapping our spirit, it is probably salutary for us to assert our superiority if it is warranted, so let’s take a look.