‘While many non-Islamic countries in Asia, Latin America, Eastern and Southern Europe, as well as some in sub-Saharan Africa have made important progress, most Islamic countries have stagnated or even moved in a reverse direction. That this divergence has taken shape in the last fifty years indicates that its causes are not intrinsic to the nature of Islam. The crucial development has been the rise of Islamic religious fundamentalism, which achieved a breakthrough in the year 1979, with the simultaneous occurrence of the revolution in Iran, the occupation by jihadists of the Great Mosque in Mecca, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.’
It might be an interesting lecture except the assumption that the recidivism is not intrinsic to Islam is mistaken. ISIS comes directly out of the religion. Just as the Inquisition came directly out of Catholicism.