Posted 4/25/2003 11:27:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Moderate Islam Watch

Jonathan Powers' disappointing artlcle in the Arab News at least ends on a positive note, but probably isn't worth reading unless you want to see the vast gap between moderate Arab thought and reality.

Powers started by taking on Samuel P Huntington's concept of the Clash of Civilizations, it was a weak attempt and woefuly inadequate.

I wish he had spent a few more words explaining just where these rapid changes in the Islamic world are taking place and what the changes are.

Islam, as Christianity before it, is evolving at a rapid pace. St. Thomas Aquinas advocated putting heretics to death and the Protestant reformer Jean Calvin had one outspoken dissident executed. And it is only a generation ago that political observers used to note that the Catholic countries of Southern Europe and Latin America were constitutionally and philosophically unable to take to democracy. But Islam is changing very fast. It is more than beginning to think about democracy.