I think anyone who received last week's Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) linkurl:newsletter;http://www.esof2006.org/blog_list.php4 would have been forgiven for wondering why the main article was entitled ?What is Islamism?? ESOF is a science meeting and its emailed newsletters are presumably designed to build interest levels prior to the event. Previous editions had covered fairly routine territory?lasers, neurons, galaxies, microbes, science journalists and the origin of the universe?which made the appearance of Islamism as a subject all the more remarkable. Reading on, I saw that the newsletter carried a brief summary of the article, which referred to 'a highly militant mobilizing ideology selectively developed out of Islam?s scriptures, texts, legends, historical precedents, organizational experiences and present-day grievances?' but made no mention of science. Intrigued, I paid a visit to the ESOF website. It wasn?t much help either, listing the author?s name as Sadik Al-Azm, but little else. So I tracked down the ESOF...
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