What we call Islam is a mirror in which we see ourselves
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1570236,00.html
Six views of the west's problems with the Muslim world reveal as much
about those who hold them as the conflict itself
Timothy Garton Ash
Thursday September 15, 2005
The Guardian
Sitting in the capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran, with a metal
arrow on the ceiling of my hotel room pointing to Mecca and the
television showing a female news presenter in full hijab, I feel
impelled to write about our troubles with Islam.
Four years after the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on New York
and Washington, which were perpetrated in the name of Allah, most
people living in what we still loosely call the west would agree that
we do have troubles with Islam. The vast majority of Muslims are not
terrorists, but most of the terrorists who threaten us claim to be
Muslims. Most countries with a Muslim majority show a resistance to
what Europeans and Americans generally view as desirable modernity,
including the essentials of liberal democracy.
Timothy Garton Ash
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/2cc6a786ff8c7302
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