From Bernard Lewis, "What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East." It's worthy of note that Lewis goes on to point out that new ideas inspired by the Enlightenment eventually did make their way to the Middle East. Still, on a cultural level this is instructive:
"Muslims have always given considerable attention to what in Western parlance might be classed as both political science and constitutional law. For Muslims, it was part of the dively ordained Holy Law that dealt with the ruler and the relationship between him and the body of believers that constituted his subjects. Westerners have become accustomed to think of good and bad government in terms of tyranny and freedom. In Middle Eastern usage, liberty or freedom was a legal not a political term. It meant one who was not a slave, and unlike the West, Muslims did not use slavery and freedom as political metaphors [JK: i.e. it literally meant legal slavery, or its absence].
For traditional Muslims, the converse of tyranny was not liberty but justice. Justice in this context meant essentially two things, that the ruler was there by right and not by usurpation, and that he governed according to God's law, or at least according to recognizable moral and legal principles. The first of these raised important questions concerning succession, which became increasingly urgent after the abolition of most of the monarchies in the region. The second was sometimes discussed in terms of arbitrary versus consultative government. Both remain critical issues at the present day."
"It's worthy of note that Lewis goes on to point out that new ideas inspired by the Enlightenment eventually did make their way to the Middle East."
The final irony being that in part the Enlightenment was inspired by a portion of Islam which was suppressed in Muslim Nations but took flower in Europe.
http://www.heggy.org/culture_of_compromise.htm
I believe the spread of a religious culture based on strict orthodoxy, or the textual reading of scripture, was one of the reasons for the failure of the concept of compromise to catch on in our culture. If we were to talk to Ibn Rushd or Al-Gaheth (a renowned Mu’tazalite literary figure), we would find it easy to explain to them and they would find it easy to grasp the notion that all thinking, all dealings, must be characterized by a spirit of compromise, with all its implications. That would not be the case if we spoke with proponents of the orthodox school, strict textualists like Ahmed bin Hambal, Ibn Taymeya, Ibn Qiyam al-Juzeya, Mohamed bin Abdel Wahab or with the dozens of their contemporary counterparts who preach a dogmatic adherence to the letter rather than the spirit of religion, slamming the doors shut in the face of rationality. Attempting to explain the notion of compromise to members of this school would be as much of a lost cause as Ibn Rushd’s vigorous defense of the primacy of reason eight centuries ago. Actually, it would be even more of a lost cause because, although Ibn Rushd was vanquished by the textualists in the Arab/Islamic civilization, his ideas took root in the Christian culture. There is no doubt that the ideas of this great Islamic philosopher prevailed over those of Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, thanks to his many disciples in the University of Paris at the time and the so-called Latin Averroists. Perhaps history will one day admit that an Arab Muslim was behind the victory of reason over dogma at a time the prevailing culture in Europe was inimical to intellectual initiative and freedom of thought. Had the outcome of the battle for the hearts and minds of the Europeans favoured the other camp, Europe today would have been at the same stage of development and enlightenment as Africa.
We also ran Heggy's article here:
http://windsofchange.net/archives/002966.php
A full set of his Winds Guest Blogs can be found here.
Rushd was only one small piece of the puzzle. But he does deserve honorable mention.
Islamic dogma is increasingly being seen as a problem and 'moderate islam' - such as it may be, doesn't quite represent a solution.
A clash of civilizations - Sam Huntington's much maligned idea - looks increasingly plausible, indeed even inevitable, with each passing day. In a frontal head-on assault, islam would (and should) lose. Its the more insidious, gradual spreading of islamic roots in the west, often abusing the generous right to freedom of religion granted there, that represents the more serious threat than anything the middle east can do.
:-)