My friends seem to cringe when I write about Islam. They are afraid I will anger a deranged religious nut.
In San Francisco, I probably have more to fear from a deranged Lefty Fundamentalist of the sort who attacked Elie Wiesel.
I have a view of Islam that separates out Arab Islam from the rest of Islam. It is Arab Islamists who are revanchists, believing there was once a great day of Arab culture. There never was such a day. The Turkish Empire and the Persian Empire with the help of some Kurds are the great features of Middle-Eastern Culture. The Arabs have given us nothing besides poetry...which I can't read to appreciate.
Mark Steyn has added another very relevant point (America Alone is his most recent book). Arab Islam conquered by military might and kept the defeated people as dhimmi...tax paying serfs (including Jews escaping from Roman Catholic Spain and Portugal). The consequence is a thousand years of Arab Islamic welfarism. Arab Islamist have no idea how to make a living and be productive.
This is still true today. Most
Arabian peninsula Arabs live off the teats of oil. The Egyptians try to
survive on tourism, American foreign aid and the Suez Canal. The
Palestinians of Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank are pathetic suckling
pigs at the brain dead body of the United Nations. Then there are the
Syrians. Totally incompetent, hoping to control the Christian and
Maronite communities of Beirut to support them.
I am slightly more than an armchair writer on this subject. I'm more like a football fan who plays touch football. I've had many Arab employees, a few Arab friends, been to a few Arab lands and several more Islamic countries.