On 23/11/2006, at 9:29 AM, Richard Baker wrote:
Quite how we can convince people in the regions where the failure of the Islamic states is most total that the things they ought to be emulating from the glorious past of Islamic are openness to trade, toleration, meritocracy, egality, respect and encouragement for science and scholarship and so forth, I just don't know. I think the admission of Turkey - former heartland of Islam's last great empire - into the European Union will be an important step. Engaging with the educated, partially Westernised elites of Iran might be another. But the near total failure of the heartlands of Islam to provide anything like a viable model for the organisation of modern industrial societies is an immense and complex problem to solve, and certainly not amenable to the sorts of quick and easy fixes that the more primitivist branches of Islam are desperate to try.
Also the slow but painful democratisation of Indonesia, the largest Islamic country, may bring change too.
Charlie _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
