At the other extreme you find Islam portrayed in academia as peaceful, tolerant, richly artistic, culturally significant, and so on. Of course, the Islamic studies departments in many American universities are splendidly endowed by predominantly Muslim countries. However, this seems to escape critical notice.

Given these contrasting portrayals of Islam, the need for balanced, reputable critiques of Islam is glaringly obvious.

I found just this balance in Bernard Lewis. Lewis, a British-born Jew who spent most of his life in the United States teaching at Princeton and Cornell, is arguably the most able interpreter of Islam to the West and vice versa. His books are filled with historical wisdom, and manage to come across as irenic in tone.

For example, Lewis sees the "by now widespread terrorism practice of suicide bombing [as] a development of the 20th century" with "no antecedents in Islamic history, and no justification in terms of Islamic theology, law, or tradition." He also says that the image of "the fanatical warrior" offering his victims the choice of the Koran or the sword is untrue. He even makes the bold claim that historically Muslim tolerance of unbelievers was far better than anything available in Christendom, until the rise of secularism in the 17th century."

This may come as a shock to some Christian readers; but Lewis has facts to back it up. He says, look at the Middle Ages and you will see undeniably barbaric practices levied on non-believers and heretics in the name of Christ.

In What Went Wrong? Lewis demonstrates how for the first thousand years of Islam (c. 622AD to 1600 AD), while the Eastern and Western Roman Empires weakened, it became the greatest military power on earth. Islam was also a foremost economic power, and had one of the most advanced societies in the arts and sciences, including mathematics.

But then it all began to disappear. As Lewis says: "Europeans were beginning to make significant progress in the civilized arts. With the advent of the New Learning, they advanced by leaps and bounds, leaving the scientific and technological and eventually the cultural heritage of the Islamic world far behind them."

I recommend reading the 165-page book to get the full story. But Lewis points to five critical factors in the decline of Islamic culture, showing how it failed to embrace modernity and drifted into the reactionary mindset from which it is yet to be delivered.

The first critical factor is Islam's negative attitude towards women. Its generally dismissive attitude towards women has barely changed from the dark ages. This has led to a failure to educate women, robbing Islam of the gifts and wisdom of virtually half of its global community. While it is true that in the West the subservience of women lingered in many quarters, since the Twentieth Century it is almost universally being abandoned. Not, however, within Islam.

The second critical factor is the slow disappearance of the practice of slavery. Arabs were among the most aggressive traders of African slaves, and despite 19th Century global opprobrium, slavery continued within Muslim communities. Today an appalling amount of human trafficking goes through the Middle East, and in many Muslim countries slavery continues. In contrast to the West, one searches in vain for a cultural or religious tradition of abolitionism within Islamic thought.

The third reason why Islam has lagged behind is its slow embrace of the rise of modern science. Western scientific texts were not translated into Muslim languages, causing the discoveries of the Renaissance, the technological revolution, and the scientific movement to pass Islam by. The practice of medicine therefore lagged behind. During the middle ages Islam made notable advances in sciences, including astronomy, optics and mechanical clocks. But modern Islam has little to offer the world in the realm of science.

A fourth critical factor Lewis cites was the cultural rejection of developments in music within the Islamic community. While military band music was imported from the West during the 19th century when Islam tried to modernize its military, Western music as a whole has fallen on deaf ears. With the rejection of Western music, much of which had religious origins, went a general rejection of Western culture as a whole: literature, art, and architecture.

Finally, the dismissive -- even hostile -- attitude within Islam towards non-Muslims has kept the worldwide Islamic community from moving forward and appreciating the diversity of cultures within its midst. Jews, Christians, Hindus, Zoroastrians, and a myriad of sects are regarded as "infidels", and converts from Islam to any of these religions are worthy of death. Negative stereotypes of these religious minorities persist, and seem to have been revived with a vengeance. Sadly, while Arab nations in joining the United Nations officially accepted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a requirement of membership, most have subsequently deleted these aspects of the Declaration that permit religious freedom.

The conclusion that Lewis makes is not just that Islam has fallen behind. He points to a failure within the Islamic world even to begin to ask the critical question: not who did this to us? But, what did we do that was wrong? Until the Islamic world begins to ask this question, Lewis says, it will remain a cultural backwater, or worse, a military threat to the rest of the world. Islam is in grave danger of presenting the suicide bomber as a metaphor for the whole movement, leading it to be imprisoned in a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, poverty and oppression.

Peter Moore is the Associate for Discipleship at St. Michael's Church, Charleston, South Carolina. He is Dean/President Emeritus of Trinity School for Ministry, and the founder of FOCUS, The Fellowship Of Christians in Universities and Schools. Currently he is working on creating a course in church history and missions through the lens of great personalities who advanced the Gospel through the ages. Audio CDs and a Study Guide will be available in 2015. Go to his website for further resources: www.petercmoore.com