by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n
Middle East Quarterly<\/em><\/p>\n A review of\u00a0The Crisis of Islamic Civilization<\/em>\u00a0by Ali A. Allawi (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009. 304 pp.).<\/strong><\/p>\n Allawi, who at various times was Iraqi minister of trade, minister of defense, and minister of finance following Saddam Hussein’s overthrow, ends\u00a0The Crisis of Islamic Civilization<\/em>\u00a0with a plausible conclusion \u2014 that, by nature, Islamic civilization must either subsume or be subsumed \u2014 but only after long swathes of tangents, contradictions, and loaded assumptions.<\/p>\n As for the latter, Islam’s purported golden age plagues Allawi, evinced by his obsession over “what went wrong?” He flatly rejects any answer that even remotely involves Islam\u00a0per se<\/em>\u00a0as “patently absurd,” arguing that Islamic civilization was at the vanguard of human progress in the medieval era. Of course, the oft-repeated and (overly-dramatized) question of “what went wrong?” is moot. It falsely assumes that if Islamic civilization was at the vanguard of progress in the medieval era, it should be so now.<\/p>\n Begrudging the West’s meteoric rise, this position ultimately implies that Islam’s birthright was somehow usurped. Yet just because Muslims refined the astrolabe \u2014 which, as with most Muslim accomplishments, was in the service of Islam (to fix prayer times), something even the most radical Muslim happily permits \u2014 does not mean Islam was destined to split the atom. Nothing went wrong. This becomes clear when one ceases comparing Islam to the West \u2014 ceases comparing apples with oranges \u2014 and compares Islam to itself, appreciating the many constants.<\/p>\n Numerous pages are devoted to exploring the thoughts of progressive Islamic thinkers, only to reveal their aberrancy vis-\u00e0-vis Shari’a norms and thus their failure to resonate with the Muslim masses. Indeed, Shari’a is the insurmountable wall, the dead-end that repeatedly foils Allawi’s strategies or sophistries by his own implicit demonstrations.<\/p>\n Apologetics abound: Allawi minimizes the Islamic conquests; he trivializes the issue of blasphemy and apostasy charges, blaming the Western media for “sensationalizing” them; he portrays the\u00a0dhimmi<\/em>-status (existence as a subjugated religious minority) as something almost admirable; and there is a curious chapter questioning the West’s apparently overdeveloped notions of human rights: “Muslims must themselves decide what human rights mean in Islam.”<\/p>\n Most vexing are the contradictions and circular arguments. Allawi criticizes the Western notion that Islam’s position on usury hampers Muslim economies by boasting that “the arts of commerce and enterprise were honored and celebrated in a religion founded by a Prophet who had been a merchant.” Yet he bemoans modern Mecca’s transformation into a “tawdry shopping strip” \u2014 obliquely finding Western influence.<\/p>\n We are told “the moral drive which generates the actions of the ethical human being cannot be left unregulated and entirely answerable to reason or whim. The Sharia \u2014 in the broadest sense of the word \u2014 becomes the means to effect a true and lasting guidance for the ethical individual.” Sentences later, this is reversed: “The outer rules of the Sharia \u2014 whether modernized or not \u2014 or the acceptance of modern norms or values by a rationalizing Islam do not provide the moral compass which can keep Muslims on an even keel.” It is almost impossible to discern what his position is, what he espouses, what he condemns. He vacillates frequently \u2014 now condemning the Islamic world, now praising it and condemning modernity.<\/p>\n Allawi is fully aware of the crisis of Islamic civilization: Certain fixed aspects of Shari’a are simply at odds with modernity and globalization, and he (wittingly or unwittingly) ultimately demonstrates this. However, due to sympathy or affinity \u2014 and, above all, confusion over the significance of Islam’s golden age \u2014 his book roams freely.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Iraqi minister’s new book quivers and\u00a0vacillate\u00a0on Islamic culture. by Raymond Ibrahim Middle East Quarterly A review of\u00a0The Crisis of Islamic Civilization\u00a0by Ali A. Allawi (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009. 304 pp.).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[227,565],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-m2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4643,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/civilization-vs-trivia\/","url_meta":{"origin":1366,"position":0},"title":"Civilization vs. Trivia","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 9, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Sometimes life's choices are simple. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Last week, the carnivore Saddam Hussein faced the world in the docket. There was none of the usual Middle East barbarity. The mass murderer was not hooded and then beheaded on tape, in the manner of al Qaeda.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2004"","block_context":{"text":"July 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/july-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1695,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/so-what-happened-to-iraq\/","url_meta":{"origin":1366,"position":1},"title":"So What Happened to Iraq?","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 19, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Six years ago, the conventional wisdom was that Ayad Allawi, then prime minister of the appointed Iraqi Interim Government, was a puppet of the United States. Last month, though, the Allawi-led Iraqiya alliance won, by a narrow margin, more parliamentary seats than any\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2010"","block_context":{"text":"April 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/april-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2581,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-puzzling-approach-to-the-muslim-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":1366,"position":2},"title":"Obama’s Puzzling Approach to the Muslim World","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 26, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media President Barack Obama and I have one thing in common shared by few Americans: we were brought up by at least one parent \u2014 biological or step is irrelevant \u2014 who was born and raised in an Islamic milieu. Intimately aware of the inevitable effects\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":641,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/calls-to-destroy-egypts-great-pyramids\/","url_meta":{"origin":1366,"position":3},"title":"Calls to Destroy Egypt’s Great Pyramids","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim FrontPage Magazine According to several reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt's Great Pyramids \u2014 or, in the words of Saudi\u00a0Sheikh Ali bin Said al-Rabi'i, those \"symbols of paganism,\" which Egypt's Salafi party has long planned to\u00a0cover\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egypt"","block_context":{"text":"Egypt","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/egypt\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1144,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/offensive-jihad-the-one-incontrovertible-problem-with-islam\/","url_meta":{"origin":1366,"position":4},"title":"Offensive Jihad: The One Incontrovertible Problem with Islam","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media A\u00a0recent\u00a0MEMRI\u00a0report titled \"Arab Columnists: Stop Talking About Offensive Jihad,\" alludes to the ultimate problem between Islam and the non-Muslim world: offensive jihad, or\u00a0jihad al-talab\u00a0\u2014 the Islamic imperative to subjugate the world. 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No one quite knows all the causes of the unrest in Tunisia, now spreading to Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, or how this will all end, and whether this seemingly middle-class revolt dovetails to the 2009 demonstrations in Iran\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Foreign Policy"","block_context":{"text":"Foreign Policy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/foreign-policy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1463,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions\/1463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}