This deserves to get tacked onto our conversation about service. And I’ll develop these threads further in the near future (at the risk of getting labeled as some kind of Islamist sympathizer or something equally stupid):

Islam, as a term, means essentially “submission” to the will of God. What I just discovered though is that it comes from the “triconsonantal root” S-L-M. According to Wikipedia, “The root itself translates as ‘whole, safe, intact’.”

Islam, therefore, the act of submission of one’s own will to the greater will of God in their tradition, shares the same root meaning as the Hebrew “shalom” and the Arabic “salam”, both of which mean “peace.”

The cultural meaning, then, seems clear enough: that submission, that surrendering yourself - in this case to the service of God - brings peace.

I believe this is the true philosophical root of what makes Islam as a religion dangerous to the West: that its central tenet is the dissolution of the individual will, and the surrender of all things to a higher order than can be found in earthly or temporal matters. How could such a philosophy ever be compatible with a dominant paradigm which rests upon making individuals feel incomplete, anxious and insecure, and then offering them a false sense of completion through the acquisition of products and corporate services? This is a major dichotomy which needs to be resolved on a higher level if there is to really be peace in the world.