THE DARK NIGHT OF ISLAM: Michael Knox Beran writes:

The last six months have proved a climacteric in the history of Islam. An astonished world has witnessed the deposition of rulers in Egypt and Tunisia, revolts in Syria and Libya, the intensification in Iran of a struggle between President Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei, and the United States’ imposition on Osama bin Laden of a wild but under the circumstances salutary justice.

Yet however tumultuous the events may be, Islam seems unlikely to undergo the reformation its most generous hearts and intelligent minds desire. The revolutions in the Arab states more nearly resemble the abortive ones of 1848 than the successful ones of 1989: Only the identity of the ruling cabals is likely to change. Osama is dead, but his cult and myth live on. He has already been enrolled by many Muslims in the register of their martyrs, while others piously approach his house in Abbottabad as they would a reliquary shrine.

Read the whole thing. It’s also worth flashing back to a question Mark Steyn asked in 2005: “What if we’ve already had the reformation of Islam and jihadism is it?”

It wasn’t just Seventies Bryn Mawr Muslims who were “moderates”. So were, comparatively, Muslims all over the world. The Sudan’s always been a nutty joint but you’d have had a harder time convincing anyone to jail an English schoolmarm over a teddy bear 50 years ago: The Prophet’s authoritative cuddly-toy suras date back all of 20 minutes. In 1950, a young Pakistani emigrating to Scotland or Canada would have received an education different only in degree, not (as now) wholly foreign in kind and ever more resistant even to the possibility of assimilation. One can detect similar trends in Indonesia, Singapore, the Central Asian stans, the Balkans – and among the de-assimilationist third generation Muslims in western Europe.

Even in photos, backward runs the progress until reeled the mind. Where it all ends knows (somebody’s) God.