“Inside the Brain of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” by Jonathan Kay — amounts
to a useful brief on “the thinking that pervades much of the Muslim
world,” thereby informing a more balanced appreciation of this
oft-neglected topic within the field of Christian apologetics.

Kay begins by acknowledging that it is not all that unusual for
accomplished people like the Iranian president to be captured by one
or more kinds of global conspiratorial mentalities. Another noteworthy
example is Toronto scholar Michael Keefer,  ¢â‚¬Å“a world-renowned scholar
of Shakespeare, Descartes and Marlowe. …

“But by far the biggest category of conspiracy theorist,” Kay
writes, is  ¢â‚¬Å“the  ¢â‚¬Ëœfailed historian. ¢â‚¬â„¢ He is someone who views human
history through a rigid and all-encompassing ideological template.
Some are Marxists. Others are Islamists, or Chomskyites, or radical
Tea Party conservatives, or white supremacists. …

“Because the engine of conspiracism is the psychic gulf between
what is wished for and what is, conspiracy theories are especially
prominent in Islamic societies such as Iran. This is because the
Koran, the associated doctrines of Shariah, and the entire arc of
early Islamic history have created the expectation that Muslims will
rule over infidels as conquerors – and that Muslim societies, having
been enlightened by the Seal of the Prophets, always would be more
militarily successful and technologically advanced than infidel
societies.” National Post, Sep 25 ’10, .

For extensive insights on this theme, see The Closing of the Muslim
Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist, by Robert
R. Reilly [*].

* The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created
the Modern Islamist, by Robert R. Reilly (Intercollegiate Studies
Institute, 2010, hardcover, 244 pages)

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