Not the end of history
After the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe the late 80s, Francis Fukuyama came out with a book called “The End of History” where he argued that liberal democracy and free market capitalism are “the most fundamentally satisfying form of government and method of organising the economy” and thus the final stage of human government. Subsequent events reopened the question of whether unfettered capitalism is in fact a Good Thing, and as we move towards an acceptance that maybe some regulation and some intervention are good too, few people still claim that we’ve reached the final stages of any aspect of human history.
On our trip to Spain last year, there was a similar triumphant note in any retelling of the Reconquista: Granada was the last bastion of Islam in Spain, and with Boabdil’s surrender of the Alhambra in 1492, Catholicism became the dominant religion. So it was for the next 500 years, and so, it seemed, would it be forever. The cathedral in Cordoba was the most striking example of dominant Catholicism: a mosque that had been converted into a Catholic church.
It should have been obvious to me that it ain’t over yet. This article talks about how Islam is literally retaking the ground it lost to Catholicism 500 years ago.