jbdp@jenny.UUCP (Julian Pardoe) (08/03/85)
I read `Islam (long but informative)' with great interest. It is certainly not fair to judge Islam by the likes of Khomeini. I'm sure you could find examples of evil men who acted in the name of any religion you chose. Heavens, Christianity has certainly had its fair share. Likewise quoting from the words of the prophet and the holy book (be it the Quran or the Bible) does not prove that a religion is always and only a force for good. Faith can strengthen the good man in his fight against evil, but it can also provide the bad man with the certainly that the evil he does is really good. I'm suspicious of the claims of this or that religion: I judge a man not by his proclaimed faith but by the way he acts. By their fruits shall ye know them. What puzzles me and what I hope one of you bright people out there can tell me is what went wrong. For several hundred years (I wouldn't like to give exact dates) Islam was perhaps the most powerful culture west of China, the best organized and the most scientifically and culturally advanced. It kept the kept the torch of western learning alight at a time when Christian society was in the depths of ignorance and barbarism. Yet, by the nineteenth century Islam was quite unable to resist the scientific and economic power of the Christian world and its capitalist values. When and why did things go wrong? -- Julian Pardoe