Saturday, August 07, 2004

Azar Nafisi on Islamism

From The Dialogue Project's Introductory Essay:

"Islamism has become the biggest threat to the development and survival of democracy in the world today. The Islamist threat lies not only in its potential for terror-based violence, but in the appeal and mass embrace of its ideological and cultural claims. Islamism's combination of visibility, virulence, and aggressive self-righteousness has allowed it to become the dominant lens through which the West judges the Muslim world and the Muslim-majority countries judge the West. Their ideology has come to underlie much of the international discourse on the 'East-West' relationship. "