[G]enerally speaking, Muslim tolerance of unbelievers was far better than anything available in Christendom, until the rise of secularism in the 17th… - Bernard Lewis

Nasr had thought through the question posed after 9/11 by the British American historian Bernard Lewis: “What went wrong?” Lewis saw everything as a clash of civilizations, and it was he who coined that term. He believed that Arab countries were sick: “either we bring them freedom or they destroy us.” If Nasr agreed with Lewis about the decline of Islamic civilization because of intellectual stagnation, the kind that had sent him into exile, he disagreed virulently with the idea that Muslim society was intrinsically retrograde. He saw the way forward very differently: salvation did not have to come from the West. Islam’s transition to modernity would come from within; renewal was possible. He knew it because he was a product of that intellectual journey and was walking in the footsteps of nineteenth-century progressive Salafist thinkers like Muhammad Abduh, those who took inspiration from the wisdom of the prophet’s companions to forge a way forward in the modern world.

In the 19th century you had two important events in Europe: the unification of Italy and the unification of Germany, and both of these had a tremendous impact in the Arab world. They saw in this, a model for what they should be able to do, and they tried for a long time to do it. Nasserism is probably the final phase of that movement and, as you know, it failed. Now all the Arab states are independent but no union of Arab states has ever worked. They always fall apart through internal dissension.

You know the expression "My country, right or wrong." Well, these days, Americans are apt to think, "My country, wrong."