Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians Read Free Page B

the 1960s Sexual Revolution. But they picked up another aspect of the 1960s—the hyper-criticism of the West and its values by leftist Western intellectuals. Muslim opinion about the West soured and eventually turned hostile.
    Consider the life and times of Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966)—the one Muslim who probably did the most to revive Islam in modern times. Qutb popularized the idea that Muslims had turned away from Islam and that they must resurrect jihad and hatred for non-Muslim “infidels.” Formerly an Egyptian teacher and writer who had exhibited few radical tendencies, Qutb traveled to the United States only to return to Egypt an avowed enemy of all things Western. Qutb was a little ahead of the curve—he was disgusted by the sexuality and materialism of mid-twentieth-century America. One can only surmise what he would have thought of American popular culture after 1968 (two years after he was executed by the Egyptian state for his incessant calls to jihad.) There are certainly millions of Muslims today who bring Qutb’s critical attitude to the Western culture of 2013. In Qutb’s 1964 book, Milestones —a revered classic among Islamic radicals—he argued that, while Muslims should emulate Western science and technology, they must reject Western culture and social norms. Instead, Islam and its way—the Sharia—must rule the Islamic world, and then the world. But first it must rule its own domain. According to Qutb, the overwhelming majority of Muslims in his time were not even Muslim—they were essentially apostates.
    The West had earned Muslim respect in the era of Western might and confidence. But by the 1970s, Western intellectuals were pushing once-Westward-looking Muslims back to Islam. Consider the realm of historical studies alone: Christian Western civilization is now portrayed as the root cause of all the world’s woes. Islamic civilization is now portrayed as just another noble victim of Christian depredation. The objective history of the relationship between Islam and the West has been turned on its head: Christian Crusaders have become greedy imperialists invading peaceful Muslim lands—without any mention of the fact that those “Muslim lands” were Christian lands centuries before Islam seized them by the sword and slowly decimated their indigenous Christian populations. Western academics and intellectuals make it a point to praise Muslim achievements, even where there are none—like President Obama, who ordered NASA to make Muslims “feel good about their historic contribution to science. ” 23
    Far from appeasing angry Muslims, such self-loathing and sycophantic behavior has prompted even more revulsion to Western culture in the Islamic world. Long gone are the days when the West, confident and proud of its own ways, attracted Muslims to its civilizational achievements. Now, apologizing for its “sins” and demonizing its own Christian heritage while whitewashing the cultures and histories of others, the West only pushes Muslims back to reclaiming their Islamic heritage.
    Consider what a difference this turn in Western culture has made in the Islamic world. In the nineteenth century, when the West was unapologetically hegemonic, Muslims not only respected the West, but they also tried to emulate it. The reason for this admiration is simple: Islam, the quintessential religion of might makes right, teaches respect for power. When the West did not equivocate over its principles, Muslims saw power and confidence in those principles and found them worthy of copying. Such emulation went on until roughly the mid-twentieth century; it explains why much of the Muslim world Westernized and secularized, leading to a Golden Age of tolerance for Christian minorities. When the West, or at least popular culture in the West, became spiritually bankrupt and began apologizing for itself, Muslims, disgusted, turned back to Islam and its way, the Sharia—all, of course, to Western approval and