Homo Occidentalus

"For you [the West], this spiritual region remains voluntarily opaque. You do not want to see it. You do not want to look at it. . . . People do not come to Islam as an alternative for their social misfortunes. People come to Islam in response to a call, a call which goes very far and very deep in the human soul. I do not know by which accident of history or by which misfortune 'Homo Occidentalus,' as you say, has lost this organ, which permits the perception of things that are spiritual. . . . All that he has left are elements of economic, political, and social analysis . . . things that are earthbound in some way."
—from Roxanne L. Euben, The Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism (1999)