http://lordrunningclam.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] lordrunningclam.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] richardf8 2003-09-15 06:35 am (UTC)

What about John Walker's Blues by Steve Earle? Or any number of songs by Cat Stevens (now Yusef Islam) who might be the most relevant artist of all to this sort of thing.

There must be something deeply attractive about Islam because practically everywhere it was introduced it drove out the existing religious philosophy. Throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, Southern China, Northern India, Indonesia. For 1000 years there has been a tension in Europe between the Muslims to the south and the Christians to the north, with the lines of tension running through the Balkans and Spain (until 1492). The last gasp of the Roman Empire was when Constantiople fell to the Saracen Turks in 1453. There are serious historians who think that, had a couple of battles during the middle ages gone the other way, Europe would be primarily muslim today.

Those who study it seriously seem to convert in large numbers. Were I an Muslim I wouldn't be worried about spreading the faith by violence. I'd spread the faith through emigration, which seems to be happening pretty much everywhere already. There is an almost inevitibility about it's spread that they should find very comforting.

For myself, I've skimmed the Koran and didn't find it particularly attractive, but hey, that's just me.

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