Islam is fragile

One of my recent pieces at Jihad Watch was about a new Orwellian-named government unit here in Malaysia, namely something called a 'Faith Rescue Unit'. After the Malaysian authorities learned that there was a handful of Muslims (11 out of more than 100 present) at an interfaith dinner at a Kuala Lumpur-area church earlier this month, they swung into action to minimize the chances of a re-occurrence. Hence the creation of the aforementioned 'rescue unit'. After all, we can't hazard poor Muslims getting help from Christians, who might then feel grateful and might even think of Christians/Christianity in a positive light. For Muslims, that's intolerable. Hating Christianity is hard-wired into Islam and is indeed a very 'Quranic' value.

It's not the first time Muslims have been so paranoid in 'protecting' Muslims from infidel religions or culture.  Islamic governments like Malaysia's heavily restrict competing belief systems, censor books, movies, and TV shows, block websites (including my own), and ban 'harmful' practices like yoga. And of course, Muslim governments outlaw prosetlyzation of Muslims and apostasy from Islam (which Mohammed himself made a capital crime).

So what makes Muslims so terrified of the competition?  Why do Muslims invariably shut down the free market of ideas as soon as they are in a position to do so? It's very strange paranoid behavior, especially for the followers of an ideology invariably described by Muslims as the 'perfect deen' (religion) for all people for all time. Their words say one thing, and their actions quite another.

The only reasonable conclusion is that Islam, like ceramics, may be hard, but it is also brittle and inflexible. One crack in the edifice can lead to total failure. It goes a long way in explaining why Muslims either modernize with great reluctance, or more often, militantly oppose all manner of modern innovations -- which explains the near-total lack of scientific research and innovation in the entire Islamic world for many centuries now.

Muslims know, deep down, that Islam cannot long survive contact with modern life or 21st century civilization.