Mas será do Islão?

Não sei se estas linhas, escritas pelo economista Brad de Long pouco depois do 11 de Setembro, ajudarão a responder inteiramente à questão do Lutz, mas talvez dêem umas pistas:

If we have thought about it, we have given thanks that we have been spared the burden of living in the Age of the Protestant Reformation. But now we fear that we have been doomed, instead, to live in the Age of the Islamic Reformation. The parallels are striking: a dominant clergy and aristocracy that seem to have lost their way and succumbed to materialism; a rising literate middle class; the mass distribution of personal copies of the Holy Book so that people can read it and think for themselves; and then terror, as those who have convinced themselves that they bear the will of God take action, and people fight and die. In Europe it lasted for more than 120 years--with one third of the population of Germany dying in the 30 Years War--before nearly everyone learned that reading ones private copy of the Holy Book did not make one the vessel of the will of God, and that waging Holy War was not a way to save the souls of others, but a way to lose ones own.

Afinal, eles só estão atrasados uns quatrocentos anos, não é verdade?