A few quick notes.

1 - I am having some serious bouts of skepticism about "memes." Last year, David B submitted two posts on memes where he expressed his own problems with "memetics." My own personal interest in intellectual ideas & talking to people makes me very wary of high fidelity of the copies of a given meme (people have a hard enough time communicating prosaic social information, let alone more esoteric concepts). Yes, I know that one can transmit general axioms on how to produce the meme-but I am skeptical most people have a clear tendency to think axiomatically, or the ability to make the "correct" inferences.

2 - This gets to my opinions about Islam. I have been a priori open to "clash of civilization" arguments because I feel empirically they have some support in the specifics. But, I have qualms about generalities about the "nature" of Islam. This goes back to my issues with the fidelity of transmission of ideas, people seem to be able to spin anything into anything, within their own preconceived parameters, that is, religious ideas tend to be justifications for their own personal inclinations, rather than the other direction. I am well aware that early in the 20th century thinkers would assert that "Confucianism was the reason East Asian societies were backward," while today, scholars will declare that "Confucian values lead to success!" Empirical evidence can result in a plethora of conjectures, but how to falsify or validate them?

3 - So, to the specifics, the idea tht "Muhammed was his own Constantine" is used to show how Islam differs in nature from Christianity. I have made the argument that the fact that the Koran is the literal word of God, rather than the impressions and interpretations of various humans, makes Islam qualitatively different in its axioms. Nonetheless, if my skepticism about the ability of humans to infer correctly the intent of those making axiomatic assertions holds, this might be irrelevant to how most Muslims practice their faith.

4 - But then I see this in the Muslim Under Progress Blog:

His call on Muslims to "revise God's word" must also be rejected. Sorry, but problems with the transmission and authentication of text in the Judeo-Christian tradition cannot be simply transposed onto the Islamic tradition.

Hmmm...OK, one far more learned in the One True Faith is saying that Islam has some axioms that one can not just re-work themselves in a Judeo-Christian fashion. Given that, is that relevant? Can the human mind develop an ingenius "work around" to dovetail Western liberalism with the Eternal Uncreated Koran? (remember that the Roman Catholic Church was hostile to "liberalism" until well into this century)

5 - Over at ParaPundit I express skepticism that defeating Islam on the plains of battle will have any impact on demoralizing the faith of the believers. My rationale is based on historical evidence from the various Abrahamic faiths-when True Believers lose, they lose not because of their God, but because of their lack of faith. So their solution is more faith in the face of defeat. This is in contrast with pagan groups, where defeat on the plains of battle is evidence for the weakeness of a totemic god against another totemic god. On the other hand, Islam's own problems in mixing faith & state, for instance, Iran, seem more likely to lead to an emergence of "post-Islamic identity."

More after full digestion.