[Don Corleone]

Question Period:

"What kind of government do we have?"

Ans: "A Republic if we can keep it!"

[true_blue_texican]

bttt

[Valin]

ping

[little jeremiah]

Later read self-ping.

[freema]

Ping

[Popocatapetl]

He makes an error in his assumptions of Islam vs. Democracy.

The first is that the dream of a Caliphate has long been held by every Muslim dictator, with himself as Sultan. Several attempts at national consolidation have actually been made, especially “Nassarism”, the Pan-Arabism of the 1960s. But these have never worked, as none of them were willing to cede power, and all were ambitious to gain power, based on the models of dictatorship and authoritarianism.

Importantly, it was also very secular in character.

The great irony, however, is that there *could* be something like Pan-Arabism today. But it would not be in opposition to Democracy, it would be *because* of real Democracy.

That is, for several Middle East nations, with a core of Turkey and Iraq, to create a Middle East Common Market (MECM), modeled after the EU.

The only way such a confederation could work would be if its members were in strict compliance with real Democracy and transparency. New members would be added only when they were able to meet those two criteria. The sole reason they would have to do this, is because Democracy and transparency are proven to be, by far, the two most *efficient* ways of doing business around.

Assuming an economic and eventually political alliance of Turkey, Iraq and Kuwait, then Egypt and perhaps Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, soon their momentum would create a tremendous incentive for other nations to join with them.

Nothing succeeds like success.

Now Islam, at first, would continue to press their respective nations to make the MECM an Islamic empire; but this would be destined to fail, as the Islamic way goes against both Democracy and transparency. So while their nations would remain Muslim, the religion would soon fade from public life, with a de facto separation of “mosque and state”.

It was not too long ago in the United States when religious leaders openly demanded laws in conformity with their sectarian beliefs, and yet eventually we evolved into having law that appreciates religion but is not directly based on the tenets of a particular sect.

[MNJohnnie]

You defeat this ideology the same way the ideologies of Nazism, fascism and Bushido were destroyed. You kill enough of them the rest realize the ideology is really a bad bad idea.

You can not argue fanatics into acceptance of contrary ideas or values. They simply tune out anything that does not validate or reinforce their dogmas. You have to shock them out of it. You can do that by killing many of their fellow fantatics while restricting them to very little progress towards their goals.