NIALL FERGUSON: Just over three centuries ago,
the fate of Western civilization hung in the balance.
ln 1683, just outside the Austrian capital Vienna,
two armed forces were pitted against each other...
...the Muslim East...
...against Christian West.
The resuIt of this confIict wouId be decisive for the West,
and uItimateIy fataI for its enemies in the East.
The Siege of Vienna was one of many attacks that, throughout history,
Western civilization has faced from its enemies in the East.
But, for most of the past 300 years, give or take the odd temporary setback,
the West has always won.
Why?
In this series, I'm identifying six unique factors,
I'm caIIing them the kiIIer appIications - that put the West on top.
The first was the competition between Europe's warring IittIe kingdoms
that propeIIed them ahead of China's monoIithic empire.
In this fiIm, I'm turning to kiIIer app two - science -
and, in particuIar, the science that heIped the West to win at war.
But I'm aIso asking, if we Iose our scientific pre-eminence,
couId the West be consigned to history?
(INDISTINCT SPEECH OVER RADIO)
Without superior science, there would be no Western superpower today.
But it wasn't always like this.
1,000 years ago, it was the Muslim world that was at the cutting edge of science.
Building on Greek and lndian foundations, Muslim mathematicians invented algebra.
Libraries like the House of Wisdom in Baghdad had no equal in the West,
and Arab science meant improved navigation and weaponry.
So, how did the Muslim world later come to lag so far behind the West
when it came to science?
And how did a scientific revolution help Western civilization take over militarily,
as well as academically?
To answer those questions, you need to take a trip back in time...
(SLOW TICKING)
...back more than 328 years
to the Iast time an IsIamic empire menaced the West,
and you need to foIIow an Eastern invader
aII the way from IstanbuI to the gates of Vienna.
(GIVES ORDER)
(DRUMMING)
(BAND STARTS)
lt was to be the battle that decided the fate of the West.
On one side was the Ottoman Sultan's army,
led by Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Koprulu.
On the other were the defending forces of Leopold l,
Holy Roman Emperor and the Habsburg ruler of Austria.
This was the turning point in a clash of civilization
that had begun when lslam first burst from the Arabian desert in the 7th century.
ln July 1 683, with the Ottoman army surrounding Vienna,
the prospects for the Christian defenders looked bleak indeed.
(BELLS RINGING)
Bells rang out in Vienna and all across Central Europe,
summoning the faithful to pray for divine mercy.
(BELLS RINGING)
You can get an idea of the desperate yet defiant mood in Vienna
from the graffiti in the oId beII tower of the cathedraI.
This says, ''Mohammed, you dog - du hund - go home!''
But it wasn't the Muslim Turks who'd turned tail.
To the disgust of many,
the Christian Emperor Leopold decided that discretion was the better part of valour,
and stole away.
By the middIe of JuIy,
the Turkish armies had come to within 450 paces of the city waIIs.
The fate of the West hung in the baIance.
It was one of those moments when it couId aII have gone horribIy wrong.
An Ottoman victory seemed inevitable.
But then, fatally, Kara Mustafa hesitated.
His men had marched far beyond their naturaI range.
SuppIies were running short.
What's more, even if Vienna feII, he had no pIan for its Iong-term occupation.
How Iong wouId they have to stay there, so far from home?
WouId the army actuaIIy survive the winter?
He might win the siege, but couId Kara Mustafa win the peace?
Kara Mustafa's hesitation gave the West vital time to gather allies
and work out a military strategy to repel the Ottoman horde.
A relief force of 60,000 men now advanced on Vienna
under the command of Jan Sobieski, the King of Poland.
Sobieski was portly and past his prime, but intent on glory.
On 12th September 1683,
the Christian army came charging down these hiIIs above Vienna,
as one Turkish eyewitness put it,
''Iike a fIood of bIack pitch coming down the mountain,
''consuming everything it touched''.
(BOOMING EXPLOSIONS)
At 5.30 in the afternoon, Sobieski entered the tent of Kara Mustafa,
but it was deserted. He had fIed. The siege was over.
The West was saved.
Sobieski was exultant, telling the Pope, ''We came, we saw, and God conquered. ''
Captured Turkish cannon were melted down
and turned into the main bell of St Stephen's Cathedral.
''The Boomer'', as it was known,
was emblazoned with the heads of six Turks.
For his part, Kara Mustafa paid a high price for failure.
He was executed on the orders of the Sultan -
strangled with a silken cord.
For the Ottoman Empire, it was the beginning of the end,
a moment of imperiaI overstretch with disastrous consequences.
It was actuaIIy the first time the Ottomans had had to accept a peace treaty
from victorious Christian adversaries.
From that point on,
from the Iate 1 7th century untiI the empire's dissoIution in the earIy 20th,
Turkish power in Europe was inexorabIy roIIed back.
At the same time,
the Austrian Empire rose to a position of splendid predominance in Central Europe.
The raising of the Siege of Vienna was a pivotaI moment in the rise of the West.
In the years that foIIowed, there was an upsurge of Western interest
in the science of warfare and of government.
Indeed, if there was one reaI difference between the West and the East,
it was the wideIy varying degrees
to which science was systematicaIIy pursued and appIied
in the fieId of power poIitics.
Why did the IsIamic worId get it so wrong? And why did the West get it so right?
7 0 years after the Siege of Vienna,
two men came to personify the widening gap
between Western civilization and its biggest rival in the East.
ln lstanbul, Sultan Osman lll presided over an ever-weakening Ottoman Empire...
...while in Potsdam,
the Prussian King, Frederick the Great, embarked on a programme of reforms
that would ultimately give not just Prussia, but the entire West
an unassailable advantage over its rivals.
Frederick the Great lived here, just outside Berlin,
in a palace he designed himself.
He called it Sanssouci, ''without a care'',
but Frederick was anything but careless when it came to running his country.
In 1 752,
Frederick wrote the first of two poIiticaI testaments intended for his successor.
In it he said, ''The ruIer is the first person of the State.
''He's paid weII in order to maintain the dignity of the office.
''But in return,
''he's required to work diIigentIy for the weIIbeing of the State.''
In other words, Frederick firmIy subordinated
his own personaI gratification
to the interests of the Prussian State.
The simple design of this modest palace,
maintained by an astonishingly small retinue for a major European monarch,
served as an example to the entire Prussian bureaucracy.
Following the King's example,
the office-holding class worked in an environment of discipline,
routine and zero tolerance for corruption.
There could scarcely be a greater contrast than with the stultifying atmosphere
in which the heirs of the Sultan were raised here
at the Topkapi Palace in lstanbul.
7 0 years after the disastrous defeat at the Siege of Vienna,
Sultan Osman lll's life was one of cloistered indulgence.
And this is it, the ''ha-rem'',
or harem, as we wouId say, aIso known as ''the cage''.
It was here that Osman spent his time,
stuItified with sex and Turkish deIight,
and whoIIy untutored in the business of government.
By the time he finaIIy became SuItan at the age of 57,
he'd spent 51 of the previous years here, banged up with the concubines.
He'd deveIoped such an aversion to women by that time
that he devised a speciaI way of keeping them out of his way.
He wore iron-soIed shoes.
At the sound of the imperiaI footfaII, the Iadies were supposed to scuttIe away.
Half a century of dodging concubines
was hardly the best preparation for government.
Here in IstanbuI, this degeneration of Ieadership became systemic
untiI it began to infect the entire cuIture of government.
The schooI here at the Topkapi PaIace
had once been considered the best in the Empire
and it was here that taIented Christians who'd been ensIaved
were trained to serve the SuItan.
The resuIt of this creaming off of taIent
had been a civiI service that was meritocratic and non-hereditary
at a time when no such thing existed in Europe.
And yet, graduaIIy, things began to change.
Native-born Turks gained admission to the civiI service,
and promotion came to depend more on bribery and favouritism than on merit.
Expenditure ran ahead of tax revenue.
lnflation surged.
Corruption was rife.
Centrifugal forces were strengthening.
And there was religious strife too between fundamentalists and Sufi mystics.
This was a threadbare empire.
Here in the Ottoman Archives in IstanbuI,
you can get the impression of a system of government on the sIide.
Now, I don't want you to get the idea that I can actuaIIy read Ottoman caIIigraphy,
because I can't,
but I can teII neat handwriting from sIoppy handwriting.
So, Iet's take a Iook at this Iand register from 1 458,
which is meticuIous, absoIuteIy beautifuI, aImost a work of art,
and compare it with another Iand register
from aImost 250 years Iater in 1694.
This one's, frankIy, a bit of a mess.
It's fuII of crossings out, there are Iots of smudges.
It seems to have been done in much greater haste, with much Iess care.
I suppose they may have been getting more efficient,
but they certainIy weren't getting more orderIy.
ln comparison with the decadence of Osman lll's administration,
Frederick the Great was committed to the rational rule of Prussia.
And you can see just how weII run it was
by coming here to the secret state archive,
where you'II find the minutes, perfectIy preserved, of Frederick's cabinet,
page after page of royaI decisions and Ietters.
August 1 756 was an especiaIIy busy month for him
because that was the month when he ordered the invasion of neighbouring Saxony
at the beginning of the Seven Years' War.
WeII, it was this kind of cIockwork organisation
that reaIIy set the West apart from the rest,
and it was the Iack of it that condemned the Ottoman Empire to inexorabIe decIine.
For Frederick, the ruIer was the servant, not the master of the state.
''I can have no interests,'' he decIared, ''which are not equaIIy those of my peopIe.
''If the two are incompatibIe,
''the preference shouId aIways be given
''to the interest and advantage of the country.''
In other words, the state wouId be strengthened rather than undermined
by education, cuIture and toIeration.
And to ram the point home,
he set out to construct a whoIe series of spectacuIar buiIdings.
While his private palace may have been modest,
these grand public buildings were intended as political statements.
One of the first edifices
in what Frederick thought of as a kind of forum in the heart of BerIin
was this wonderfuI theatre, the State Opera House.
UnIike any other in Northern Europe,
it wasn't connected to a royaI paIace or court.
It was a compIeteIy freestanding institution.
The aim was not royaI gratification, it was pubIic enIightenment.
Next to the opera house, Frederick built a Roman Catholic cathedral.
Although he himself was agnostic,
Frederick was prepared to tolerate religion
provided it didn't interfere with the political life of the nation.
PeopIe in Prussia were free to pray as they pIeased
as Iong as their beIiefs didn't stand in the way of scientific enquiry
and technoIogicaI progress.
This was a secuIar state.
Power had been taken away from the pastors and priests.
(CALL TO PRAYER)
ln stark contrast, the Ottomans'progress was severely hampered by religion.
ln the words of one Muslim cleric,
''lt is rare that someone becomes absorbed in this foreign science
''without renouncing religion and letting go the reins of piety within him. ''
Muslim scientists couldn't even access the latest research from Europe,
because their religion now prevented them from reading printed books.
For the Ottomans, script was sacred.
There was a religious reverence for pen and ink,
a preference for calligraphy over printing.
Scholar's ink, it was said, is holier than martyr's blood.
lf the scientific revolution was a kind of network of scholars all over Europe
corresponding and publishing,
then the Ottoman Empire was effectively offline.
ln 1 51 5, a decree of Selim l had threatened with death
anyone involved in the development of printing.
This taboo lasted into the 1 8th century.
This faiIure to reconciIe science and IsIam was to prove fataI.
By rejecting the printed book
and insisting on the Iaborious work of the caIIigrapher,
the Ottomans were cutting themseIves off from Western knowIedge
and hence from progress.
In fact, the onIy work of science to be transIated into Ottoman
in the 1 7th century
was a treatise on the possibIe cures for syphiIis,
which I suppose gives you some idea
of the priorities of the SuItan's court.
ln Ottoman schools, science yielded to narrowly religious study.
Nothing iIIustrates better the contrast
between the cuItures of Frederick and Osman
than the fate of an observatory that was buiIt here in IstanbuI in 1577
by the renowned astronomer Taqi aI-Din.
Taqi al-Din was a religious man, who taught in an lslamic school,
but he was also a scientist of astonishing breadth and inventiveness.
Like earlier Persian philosophers,
he held rational investigation of the natural world
to be compatible with lslamic faith.
From his observatory, as well as from the Galata Tower,
Taqi al-Din studied the solar system.
The author of numerous treatises on astronomy, mathematics and optics,
he also designed his own highly accurate astronomical clocks,
and even experimented with steam power.
But on 1 1 September 1 577 Taqi al-Din made a momentous mistake.
A comet observed in the sky over lstanbul caused panic.
Asked for an astrological opinion,
Taqi al-Din predicted that it might signal
a forthcoming Ottoman military victory over the Persians.
UnfortunateIy, Taqi aI-Din got it wrong
and, as a resuIt, he and his observatory were bIamed for the defeat.
An irate SuItan gave in to reIigious pressure
and in January 1580, just three years after its compIetion,
Taqi aI-Din's observatory was destroyed.
The powerfuI MusIim cIergy had effectiveIy snuffed out
any possibiIity of Ottoman scientific advance
at the very moment when the Christian churches in Europe
were reIaxing their grip on free pubIic enquiry.
All across Europe by the late 1 7th century,
rulers were actively promoting science.
ln 1 662, the Royal Society of London received its charter from King Charles ll,
a model for similar institutions in Paris, Vienna and Berlin.
Among the society's founders was Christopher Wren,
architect, mathematician, scientist and astronomer.
When CharIes II commissioned Wren
to buiId this observatory at Greenwich in 1675,
it wasn't a matter of royaI prestige or personaI interest.
He understood that science was in the nationaI interest.
What made the RoyaI Society so important
was that it promoted a new kind of scientific community
which aIIowed ideas to be shared and probIems to be coIIectiveIy addressed.
A cIassic exampIe is Isaac Newton's theory of gravity,
which he couId never have come up with
without the prior work of RoyaI Society founder Robert Hooke.
Even geniuses can benefit from teamwork.
(SLOW TICKING)
ln the West, science and enlightened government worked in tandem,
and no monarch understood this better than Frederick the Great,
who offered scientists cash prizes for solutions to unsolved problems.
Yet ruIers Iike Frederick were interested in science
for more than pureIy inteIIectuaI reasons.
They saw that scientific knowIedge couId be cruciaI to Western miIitary power.
What began as schoIarship wouId end as conquest.
ln the middle of the 1 8th century,
Frederick the Great of Prussia personified the nexus
between science and military power.
The centre of his sphere of operations was Potsdam.
Today it's just another dowdy suburb of Berlin.
ln Frederick's time, however, most of the inhabitants of Potsdam were soldiers.
Almost all the buildings in Potsdam
had some sort of military connection or purpose.
Today it's a bank, but in Frederick's day that was the guardhouse...
...and this Baroque beauty was the miIitary orphanage.
Back there is where the garrison church used to stand,
and this is aII that's Ieft of the riding schooI.
Even in this seemingly ordinary residential street,
the houses were built with an extra top floor for use by lodging soldiers.
The army ceased to be merely an instrument of dynastic power.
lt became an integral part of Prussian society,
with Junker landlords as the officers and peasants as the men.
It was once famousIy observed,
''The Prussian monarchy is not a country which has an army.
''It's an army which has a country.''
Here, society and the miIitary became inextricabIy intertwined.
If you were a Iandowner, you were expected to serve as an officer.
Ordinary men took the pIace of mercenaries in the ranks.
Prussia was the army, and the army was Prussia.
A focus on drill and professionalism was paramount in Prussia's military success.
The discipline and speed
with which the Prussian infantry could redeploy in the midst of battle
was legendary.
This IoveIy contemporary map
aIIows you to foIIow the course of the BattIe Of Leuthen,
fought in December 1 757,
when the very existence of Prussia was threatened
by a formidabIe coaIition of France, Russia and Austria.
Not for the first time, and not for the last, the West was at war with itself.
But it was precisely this kind of conflict that spurred innovation.
ln this 1 930s reconstruction,
you can see how the Prussian infantry surprised the long Austrian line
on its southern flank.
As the Austrians were roIIed back, they tried desperateIy to regroup,
but they were hit first by the Prussian cavaIry,
and then by Frederick's IethaIIy accurate artiIIery.
It was a devastating Iesson in the science of war.
ArtiIIery was as cruciaI as mobiIity and discipIine to Prussia's rise.
''We are fighting against more than men,'' Frederick argued.
''The wars we're waging from now on wiII be a question of artiIIery dueIs.''
At Leuthen, the Prussians had 63 fieId guns and 8 howitzers.
They had ten so-caIIed Brummer, ''growIers'',
known as such because of the rumbIing noise they made when fired.
Weapons Iike these exempIified the appIication of scientific knowIedge
in the reaIm of miIitary power.
Mobile, accurate artillery was the key to a Western military predominance
that lasted for more than 200 years.
The appIication of science to artiIIery perfectIy iIIustrates
the process of cumuIative advance that was happening in Europe
as rivaI states competed with one another and Iearnt from one another.
The scientific revolution was a field day for creative nerds.
ln the 1 7 40s, a self-taught mathematician called Benjamin Robins
applied Newtonian mechanics to the problem of artillery,
using differential equations to provide the first true description
of the impact of air resistance on high-speed projectiles.
By measuring the influence of wind and air,
Robins was able to achieve an epoch-making improvement in the accuracy of field guns.
lt didn't take Frederick the Great long to commission a German translation
of Robins's New PrincipIes Of Gunnery.
The translator Leonhard Euler couldn't resist improving on the work
by adding a comprehensive appendix of tables
determining the velocity, range, maximum altitude and flight time
for a projectile fired at a given muzzle velocity and elevation angle.
The killer app of science had given the West a truly lethal weapon -
accurate artillery.
But this baIIistics revoIution
was something from which the Ottomans were IargeIy excIuded.
Only slowly, in the course of the 1 8th century,
did it dawn on the Ottomans that they had to get up to speed
with the Western revolutions in science and in government.
And one obvious way to do that was to start pubIishing and reading books,
instead of reIying on the traditionaI scribbIings of the caIIigraphers.
Among the first Ottoman printers was lbrahim Muteferrika,
an Ottoman official and polymath born in Transylvania.
In 1 731 , Muteferrika presented to SuItan Mahmud I this book,
his Rational Bases For The Politics Of Nations,
and in it he asked the question that's haunted MusIims ever since.
''Why is it,'' he asked, ''that the Christian nations,
''which used to be so weak compared with the MusIim nations,
''now dominate so many Iands,
''and even infIict defeats on the once victorious Ottoman armies?''
WeII, Muteferrika's answer to the question ranges pretty wideIy.
It covers, for exampIe, the Dutch and EngIish parIiamentary systems,
the Christian conquest of the New WorId and the Far East,
and he aIso makes the point
that whereas the Ottomans ruIed on the basis of sharia Iaw, reIigious Iaw,
in Europe, he says, ''The Iaws are invented by reason.''
The message is reaIIy cIear.
The Ottoman Empire has to get the scientific revoIution
and the EnIightenment
if it's to remain credibIe as a great power.
Books alone wouldn't suffice.
Military reform meant importing Western expertise.
A French officer of Hungarian origin, Francois de Tott,
was brought in to oversee the construction of new defences around the capital.
Boating his way aIong the Bosphorus,
de Tott noticed that many of the fortifications were quite wrongIy Iocated.
Any enemy ship wouId have been compIeteIy out of range.
The Ottomans might as weII have been firing bIanks.
ln his memoirs, de Tott was scathing about the Ottomans,
calling their castles ''more like the ruins of a siege
''than preparations for a defence''.
Determined to modernise the Sultan's antiquated armed forces,
de Tott started a course in mathematical science for the navy.
He built a new foundry for the manufacture of howitzers,
and encouraged the creation of mobile artillery units.
Even the Ottoman army had to march to a brand-new beat.
Just imagine arriving here in IstanbuI in the mid-19th century.
You'd probabIy have expected to be greeted by those terrifying drums
that put the fear of AIIah and Mohammed in the defenders of Vienna back in 1683.
But instead, the sound that wouId have greeted your ears
wouId have been composed by Giuseppe Donizetti,
who'd been imported from ItaIy
to compose a speciaI ItaIian-styIe and rather operatic nationaI anthem
for the Ottoman Empire.
(ANTHEM PLAYS)
The most enduring symbol of the era of reform
was built by Sultan Abdulmecid l.
A fluent French speaker,
Abdulmecid was determined to emulate Western civilization in every respect.
So, he moved from the cushioned comforts of the Topkapi Palace,
the ancestral home of the Sultans,
to a new custom-built Westernised seat of government, the Dolmabahce Palace.
Built between 1 843 and 1 856,
the Dolmabahce Palace has no fewer than 285 rooms, 44 halls,
and one spectacular crystal staircase.
1 4 tonnes of gold leaf were used to gild the palace ceilings
from which hung a grand total of 36 chandeliers.
The grandest room is this, the Muayede lounge.
lt has the largest one-piece carpet in the world
and a chandelier that weighs over four tons.
This pIace is so wiIdIy over the top,
it's Iike a cross between Grand CentraI Station
and a stage set at the Paris Opera.
But it shows just how far the Ottomans were prepared to go
to imitate the ways of the West.
This extraordinary cIock teIIs you aII you need to know.
It's not just a cIock, actuaIIy,
it's aIso a thermometer, a barometer and a caIendar.
And it was a gift from the Khedive of Egypt to the SuItan.
It's even got a IoveIy Arabic inscription on it,
''May your every minute be worth an hour
''and your every hour, a hundred years.''
It Iooks Iike a masterpiece of OrientaI technoIogy,
except for one smaII thing - it was made in Austria by WiIheIm Kirsch.
As Kirsch's clock perfectly illustrates,
the mere facade of Westernisation, no matter how impressive,
was no substitute for a home-grown Ottoman modernisation.
The Ottomans stiII didn't reaIIy get it,
because if they were serious about catching up with the West
they needed so much more than just a Western-styIe paIace.
They needed a new constitution, a new aIphabet, a whoIe new state.
And the fact that they uItimateIy ended up getting aII of these things
was thanks in very Iarge part to one man.
His name was Kemal Ataturk.
His mission was to be Turkey's Frederick the Great.
For six centuries,
the Christian West and the Ottoman Empire in the Muslim East
had been locked in conflict.
Now, under the rule of Kemal Ataturk in the early 20th century,
that conflict would finally come to an end.
For centuries, Ataturk argued,
Turks had been waIking from the East in the direction of the West.
Now, under his Ieadership, they wouId finaIIy reach their destination.
Here on the banks of the Bosphorus,
East wouId meet West not just geographicaIIy, but cuIturaIIy.
Central to the western reorientation of Turkey
was the introduction of a secular form of government.
No longer would religion be allowed to dominate the political arena.
There would be secular laws for a secular state.
Ataturk's idea was that you couIdn't drag Turkey into the modern worId
as Iong as IsIam pIayed such a dominant roIe in pubIic Iife.
What he wanted to do was to scythe reIigion ruthIessIy away from poIitics
to create a truIy secuIar state.
Of course, that whoIe notion of the separation of Church and State
was itseIf a very Western idea.
To give impetus to scientific research,
Ataturk created a new Western-style University of lstanbul.
And one of the first scientific facilities he built was an observatory.
Whereas Taqi al-Din's observatory had been destroyed
under pressure from the Muslim clergy in the 1 6th century,
now, at last, Turkish scientists could do their work unimpeded by religion.
Scientific advance and miIitary power went hand in hand in Ataturk's mind.
Science, he argued, was the onIy true guide in Iife.
Here at Iast was a Turkish Ieader who reaIIy got it,
and it was enough to transform Turkey into the modern nation state we know today.
What it couIdn't do was to saIvage the Ottomans' most expIosive Iegacy -
their Empire in the HoIy Land.
When the British commander Edmund Allenby marched into Jerusalem
on 1 1th December 1 91 7,
it marked the end of Ottoman rule in the Holy Land.
The question was, who would rule there now?
This is the Jaffa Gate, which AIIenby waIked through in 191 7.
Now, in order to defeat the Turks and end their 500-year controI of JerusaIem,
the British had to make promises to the SuItan's internaI enemies.
To the Arabs they promised independent kingdoms.
To the Jews they promised a nationaI home.
It was obvious Iong before the British Ieft this pIace in 1948
that these two promises were fundamentaIIy incompatibIe.
- (INDISTINCT SPEECH OVER RADIO) - (RADIO BLEEPS)
Jerusalem today is the modern equivalent of Vienna in 1 683 -
a fortified city on the frontier of Western Civilization.
Founded in 1 948 as a secular state by Jews but not exclusively for Jews,
lsrael is unquestionably a Western outpost but it's a beleaguered one.
This is part of the security waII that divides JerusaIem,
which IsraeI regards as its capitaI,
from the occupied West Bank.
Now, it's not exactIy a popuIar structure round the worId,
but when you spend time in IsraeI you can see why peopIe feeI insecure.
They feeI threatened by Hamas in Gaza, by HezboIIah in neighbouring Lebanon.
They feeI threatened by Syria, by the MusIim Brotherhood in Egypt, by Iran,
not forgetting Saudi Arabia.
Even Turkey has turned away recentIy from the secuIar Iegacy of Ataturk
to embrace IsIamism and, some wouId say, a neo-Ottoman foreign poIicy.
As a result, many people in lsrael feel as threatened as the Viennese in 1 683.
They feel besieged by an implacable religious foe.
Here too, however, they have the killer app of modern science
to keep their enemies at bay.
As an authentically Western society,
lsrael is at the cutting edge of scientific and technological innovation.
This company near TeI Aviv is pioneering a new network of eIectronic cars
that wiII be abIe to change batteries
as easiIy, if not more easiIy, than you now fiII your car with fueI.
ln 2008 alone, lsraeli inventors applied to register 9,591 new patents.
The equivalent figure for lran was 50.
(CAR HORN)
lsrael has more scientists and engineers per capita than any other country.
The lesson of history
is that a small country can overcome numerous adversaries
provided it has science on its side.
Think of Frederick the Great's Prussia.
Yet today the scientific gap between West and East shows signs of closing.
Until now, lsrael has been the sole nuclear power in the Middle East.
But today, lran is closing in on its long-cherished dream
of owning the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.
More than three centuries after the Siege of Vienna,
the lslamic world is finally acknowledging that there's no power without brain power.
From Tehran to Riyadh,
to the private Saudi-financed Muslim girls' school
l visited last year in west London,
the taboo against educating women is receding.
The majority of these girIs at the King Fahad Academy in Acton in west London
are wearing headscarves, as their reIigion requires.
This is a schooI that offers an expIicitIy IsIamic-based education
but, as you can see,
that doesn't stop them studying the principIes of biochemistry,
compIete with Bunsen burners.
The key question is,
how far the West today is still capable of maintaining the scientific lead
on which, among other things, its military superiority has for so long been based.
ls this just another killer app that the rest have succeeded in downloading?
Yet, as we'll see in the next episode of CiviIization,
science is only one of the six killer applications
that set the West apart from the rest.
The lranians may eventually be able to copy our most lethal weaponry...
...but what about our democracy?