MARTIN KRAMER: What happens when a really big reality (like 9/11) collides head-on with a really big idea (like Francis Fukuyama's "end of history")? In- evitably, the idea crumples to absorb the shock. Let us survey the wreck- age. In "Can Any Good Come of Radical Islam?" [September], Mr. Fukuyama and his co-author Nadav Samin concur that Islamism is a de- structive force that warrants com- parison with Communism and fas- cism. But, they write, it might also be a modernizing one-it might, despite itself, strip away the tradi- tional constraints that have pre- vented Muslims from modernizing. And if Islamism, in turn, can be stripped of its ideology, then per- haps it might turn out to be a bless- ing in disguise.

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