islam and the west:fight the radicals from common ground -- 1

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Three decades ago few would have predicted that the hottest topic of the early 21st century would be Islam.Now,not a single day passes in the western media without news or comment about islamist terrorism or calls for islamic reform. What's going on, exactly? Some hawks in the west talk about a" clash of civilizations."This is a perilously shallow idea.The world's 1.2 billion Muslim,some of whom live hapily in western societies,do not constitu a single entity thar sees itself engaged in a war of civilizations. Yet many muslims have deep suspicions and worries about the west .and the way the west detals wsth muslims deeply influences their thoughts.So it is imperative that westerners understand the nature of islam and its current crisis. Islam is smilar to judaism in many ways:Its a strictly monotheistic,law-base and communal religion. Morever, it teaches is followers that they have a special role in God's plan to guide the world.Early generations of muslims saw the fulfilment of promise in grandeur of the medieval islamic civilization. In the 16.th century, however,the islamic world began to lag behind the west. With the fall of the ottoman Empire,the last notable islamic power,in the early 1920s, the Muslims world,especially the the Arabic Middle East.entered into an acute state of crisis.Anticolonialist tendencies produced the ideology of radical Islam, Which is quite different from islam as a religion. The great British historian Arnold Toynbee astutely likened the encounter between the modern west and the Islamic world to to the relationship between the Roman Empire and the jewish people during the time of jesus.