Abdel-Samad: The Pending Collapse of the Islamic World

http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=8696

Hamed Abdel-Samad wrote the above article. I checked the info provided about him: "Hamed Abdel-Samad is a German-Egyptian political scientist and author. He has worked for the UNESCO in Geneva, the department of Islamic Studies at the University of Erfurt, Germany, and the Department of Modern History at the University of Munich. Mr. Abdel-Samad is the author of "Mein Abschied vom Himmel" (Farewell to Heaven), 2009, Fackelträger Publishing house, Cologne — and "Der Untergang der islamischen Welt" (The Collapse of the Islamic World), 2010, Droemer Publishing house, Munich. He studied in Egypt, Japan and Germany."

I read his article, at least the first part (the second part will be published tomorrow), and he sounded like a Moderate. Could this be a moderate writing from within an Islamic nation I wondered? So I looked him up and discovered he is like all the other real moderates, living outside of any Islamic nation. I didn't expect anything else. I have given up my quest for a moderate Muslim living inside of an Islamic nation.

I appreciated the above article. Abdel-Samad has read Samuel P. Huntington which any truly educated person who writes about the Islamic world would have read. He concedes the clash. He doesn't shy away from it as the Lib-Left does. He doesn't deny it? It exists. In regard to the previous things I've written about Islamism, the Islamists are just as I have said they were. They do indeed want to conquer the world. Abdel-Samad, however, thinks they haven't the slightest chance of accomplishing their aim. They will go on being just as destructive as I believe they have been and intend to be, but they are a declining species. They are dwindling and don't even know it. They have neither the tools nor the means to accomplish their goals.

Perhaps Abdel-Samad has also read Francis Fukuyama, but he doesn't mention him. Fukuyama would agree with what Abdel-Samad has written. Fukuyama resigned from the "Neocon movement" because of its activism. He didn't think the Islamists would succeed, and Fukuyama is no activist. He thinks Liberal Democracy will win out over every competitor, including Islamism because nothing else can compete economically, and what Abdel-Samad says is consistent with the Fukuyama view.

What would Abdel-Samad think of Terry Jones' evaluation of Islam? If we could get Abdel-Samad to take Jones seriously (Abdel-Samad is an intellectual and Terry Jones is not), he might agree that Islam is dangerous near-term, but he wouldn't agree that Europe (and he works in the same European nation that Terry Jones spent 20 years in as a missionary) is in danger of being overrun by Islam. Abdel-Samad writes, "Regarding Islam, I think that in its present condition it may be many things, except for one -- that it is powerful. Indeed, I view today's Islam as seriously ill -- and, both culturally and socially, as in retreat."

One can see an off-hand reference to the Ground Zero Mosque as he writes, "The Religiously motivated violence, the growing Islamization of public space and the insistence on the visibility of Muslim symbols are merely nervous reactions to this retreat." That is an interesting opinion, and he may be right, but there is no evidence that he is. And even if he is, that belief would offer no guidance in regard to the Ground Zero Mosque. Should we as a nation indulge them in their paranoia or not? Should we encourage their belief, mistaken though we might believe it is, or should we resist this belief -- as well as the tantrums that like thwarted toddlers they throw? Perhaps Abdel-Samad will tell us tomorrow.