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[quote=Anonymous]OP here. I just want to publish a section from Hamza Yusuf Hanson's lecture here because it's the most fascinating part. Yusuf speaks of Arnold Toynbee, who he said predicted the problem with zealots in Islam back in 1947!! Toynbee explained in 1947 why the world has zealots today. Yusuf uses this to lay the groundwork for WHY we must have Islamic reform!
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Yusuf: "I would like to honour a graduate of Oxford and an Oxford don who I really like, and that is the great Arnold Toynbee. Arnold Toynbee studied at Balliol College (and I'm speaking about Arnold J. Toynbee, not the great economist of the 19th century who also has that same name). Arnold Toynbee wrote an essay in 1947 called - he wrote a series of essays in a book called Civilisation On Trial'.
 
One of the things that he said in th at book*[4] is that when civilisations are confronted with challenges, they tend to respond in different ways and their responses will determine their success or their failures; but he said one of the common characteristics of a civilisation when they're under great stress is to find what he called 'bug-bears' - people to blame for their problems - and he mentions now the capitalist west, it uses communism: he said "in the divided world of 1947, communism and capitalism are each performing this insidious office for one another. Whenever things go awry in circumstances that seem ever more intractable, we tend to accuse the enemy of having sewn tears in our field and thereby implicitly excuse ourselves for the faults of our own husbandry. This is of course an old story; centuries before communism was heard of, our ancestors found their bug-bear in Islam. As lately as the 16th century, Islam inspired the same hysteria in western hearts as communism in the 20th century.''
 
It's very interesting in this same essay he actually argues that Islam is also going to become a problem again and he address what is very fascinating to me; the fact that Islam *[5] is 'up against the wall' these of the western civilisation, and because it's up against the wall it responds in one of two ways. He calls one of the responses 'herodianism' and the other 'zealotism.' Herodianism, he said is mimicry; it's attempting to find the secret of the people that have conquered you and to become like them: this is the Japanese response to the post-world war situation, where the Japanese now have better Rock and Roll than the Americans! They can imitate Elvis Presley - even their Prime Minister when he came to America, he wanted to go to Graceland! That was the first place that he asked George Bush to go to and he actually did go and visit because apparently he is a great fan of Elvis. They have some of the finest classical musicians... This is very common for conquered peoples to imitate those who have conquered them. This is why Native Americans are often the last people to wear cowboy clothes; literally wearing the Levis and the cow - they will embellish it with traditional beads and things but this is something that happens.
 
But he says that the other response is 'zealotism', which is an attempt to fall back on the past in this rigid nostalgic structure and he identifies three places*[6] where he feels that this will be the biggest problem for the west in dealing with the Muslims: Saudi-Arabia, Afghanistan and Yemen; and it's quite stunning that he did this in 1947, and I would attribute that to the Oxford education! (laughing)"
- See more at: http://sheikhhamza.com/transcript/Rethinking-Reform#sthash.eNnYi1WD.dpuf[/quote]

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