Also...

don't miss John C. Wright's discussion of why Islam is not exactly famous for producing a bumper crop of science fiction writers.

A tradition whose last big contribution was the invention of the zero is a tradition that is in decline. I still think the jury is out on whether Islam is ascendent (as the panicky headlines constantly bray) or is, in fact, extremely brittle and behaving like a sun about to go nova. Radical Islam has never seemed to me to be a sign of strength, but merely of flop sweat panic. Like Nazism, it has worldly strength and can do a lot of damage if it acolytes acquire the tech (and they must acquire it because Islam is pretty worthless in the whole "technical innovation" department: that's why they had to steal planes). But at its core it is hollow.

Or so it seems to me.