Fjordman: To President Obama: Regarding Islam and Science - Jihad Watch - 0 views
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Montreal Werner on 15 Oct 09I've recently re-read the bestselling book Guns, Germs, and Steel by the American evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond. What strikes me is how Diamond, with his emphasis on geography and diseases, fails to explain the rise of the West and especially why English, not Arabic, Chinese, Sanskrit or Mayan, became the world's lingua franca. His most important flaw is his failure to explain how the Middle East went from being a global center of civilization to being the global center of anti-civilization it arguably is today. This was not caused by smallpox or because zebras are more difficult to domesticate than water buffaloes; it was caused by Islam, which remains the main cause of the backwardness of this region.