Reading your insightful article brings to mind Tolstoy's famous question: "How, then, shall we live?" Unfortunately, for all too many disaffected Muslims, the question has become: "How, then, shall we die"? There is a sad irony in this type of thinking. I do not believe it is a necessary consequence of, or expected development from, medieval Muslim culture. From my understanding of Islam, it is not a form of religious entropy, predetermining the individual to dissolution. That the culture of death has now taken such a strong hold on the minds of so many Muslims still requires a comprehensive explanation.