Sunday, February 12, 2006

Warren Again

"Twenty-seven years ago, as Ayatollah Khomeini took power in Iran, the first “Islamist” regime since the foundation of Saudi Arabia, you said it was a good thing. Islam had to find its way into a new balance between “piety” and “modernity”, and the Persians were just the civilized people to find this way. I agreed we needed both piety and modernity, in East as in West, but held little hope for “a new balance” from the ayatollahs of Iran. I reminded that many welcomed Lenin as a “reformer”, then Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse-tung, Pol Pot. But these, you said, were all atheists; they did not have the conscience of an ancient and honourable religion to restrain them. In time we both came to see that Revolutionary Iran was a new and vicious engine of totalitarianism. And you called it, “heretical to Islam”."

And you're surely read about "Incompatibilities" also?