Don't remember his name but he commanded a small carrier in the Atlantic during WW2. He said that if a soldier prays before going into battle he is going into battle with the wrong mind set. A soldier should take charge, not leave it up the fate/beard in the sky.
He has a point. In Islam, the idea of "It is the will of god" is very strong, stronger then in most faiths. It is a fatalist attitude. Whatever happens has been pre-determined and it is useless to go against it.
It is kinda funny to see then Muslims use it when they go into war. Since Muslims always loose unless they fight each other (which is another kind of loosing), obviously the loosing is the will of god. Notice how the phrase "if Allah wants it" is rarely used AFTER the lost battle.
But are Christians and Jews really that different? Yes. A lot of the advancement in the west has been due to religion taking a back seat. Take Einstein, religious but doesn't let it control him. The west still has various religions but the advances were strongest when church and state or at least science and culture were separated.
Not that this has nothing to do with the faiths themselves. Fatalism is determined by environment. In Europe, the environment allows people to take charge. There are flooded areas but they are small and so you can build small raised areas to build your house on. And now your house doesn't flood away every year, you can start building dyke's. You can influence the environment in small ways, allowing you to build up to big ways. There is a reason the greatest land reclaimers are the dutch where doing it with primitive tools was relatively easy AND rewarding.
Fatalism is a survival strategy when your entire dependence is on a river that may or may not flood and which you can do nothing about. When a dry spell doesn't mean a lesser harvest but mass starvation. when all your work is wiped out in front of your eyes, it helps to think that it is all part of some divine plan. Raising your hands in anger at the gods... doesn't work for to long before you die of a heart attack. Just accept it, bury the death and move on.
And when YOU do that, when you have given up, it becomes VERY hard to accept someone else can move on. That is why in ghetto's there is enormous peer pressure NOT to succeed but to fail. Because if someone else CAN make it, then you are a bigger failure.
And that is another aspect of Islam. The world moved on and in general they can't move on. Look at Turkey, flexing its wings because it thinks that massive growth when you came from nothing has meaning it KNOWS it is completely at the mercy of the west. Every time a Turk answers his cell phone, uses his computer, powers a light, it is western tech. And despite billions invested from oil rich nations, this hasn't really changed.
Why? Because Islam never had a renascence. They never had an enlightenment. Individuals have moved on and learned to seperate faith from daily live but as a group, in general, it hasn't. And it is causing massive culture conflict.
Note the huge problems Israel is having because by its nature it has to be friendly to ultra-orthodox Jews.
In most of the west, the religious freaks have isolated themselves and good riddance. There is no Amish TV channel trying to win heart and minds. More or less, the US can ignore them. Good luck doing that with Islamic extremist. Note how the revolutions so far have not yet lead to a progressive government. Moderate muslims is about as good as it gets and moderate is a very inaccurate term. It completely depends on how extreme the non-moderates are.
Mind you, nothing of this is new. We had Darwin on trial. It is just annoying to have to fight the same battle over and over again. And last time we didn't insist on importing Hillbilly's by the truck load.
Culture clash sounds so harmless but it is the root at many of the worst moment in human history.
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