following every lethal attack by religious fanatics, from the well-drilled group who planned the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001 to the individual who drove into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge last month, the question is inevitably asked: what’s wrong with Islam? And it usually doesn’t take long for an answer to come. The youngest of the Abrahamic religions is fundamentally backward. Unlike Judaism and Christianity, it is argued, modernity has passed Islam by – or it hasn’t arrived there yet – leaving the Muslim world wallowing in a self-inflicted torpor, shaking itself awake only to indulge in fitful outbreaks of fanaticism.
06 April 2017, The Tablet
The surprising roots of Islamist terror
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