When Islam Breaks Down

City Journal Spring 2004 | When Islam Breaks Down by Theodore Dalrymple: "

Theodore Dalrymple

My first contact with Islam was in Afghanistan. I had been through Iran overland to get there, but it was in the days of the Shah?s White Revolution, which had given rights to women and had secularized society (with the aid of a little detention, without trial, and torture). In my naive, historicist way, I assumed that secularization was an irreversible process, like the breaking of eggs: that once people had seen the glory of life without compulsory obeisance to the men of God, they would never turn back to them as the sole guides to their lives and politics." . . . [read it, it's good]