ABSTRACT
In the latter part of the 19th century, a more sophisticated theology of cultural and political decline would be articulated: Christian nations were strong because they had abandoned Christianity to become more Muslim in their beliefs and practices than Muslims in theirs. Muslim civilization has a more persuasive history than most to fall back on; so persuasive, in fact, that the past has been seductively over-idealized enough to become a trap. Deep in Muslim consciousness was that idealized vision of those few years in the past, in early Islam, when everything was right. Many were the unconverted Jews and Christians who contributed to the Muslim appropriation of the rational disciplines of high civilization. In becoming Muslim, converts assimilated not just a religion but a civilization and the historical heritage it embodied, going back to the Prophet receiving his first revelation in the cave at Hira.
