Editorial about Abdul Rahman

[Tonio]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-03-28-rahman-edit_x.htm

What's needed is a revolution within Islam itself — a struggle between modernizers and medievalists such as Osama bin Laden. In a sense, it's comparable to forcing European nations from time gone by — nations that tortured and burned alleged heretics at the stake, not to mention persecuted Jews and Muslims — to leapfrog into the modern age.

The battle within Islam is, for now, more a whisper than a roar. Some modernizers are speaking out, though disappointingly few. The Council on American-Islamic Relations called for Rahman's release last week and says Islam does not teach that defectors from Islam should be executed. Some Islamic scholars agree; radicals don't. All back up their views with citations of the Quran and other holy texts...

Democratic values, such as tolerance, can't be imposed from the outside. They have to be fought for from within.

I'm glad that Rahman's life is spared, for now at least. It's unacceptable that anyone wants to kill others with different religious beliefs.

I think this editorial makes an excellent point. The Middle East never went through the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, which were precusors to not only democracy but also capitalism in the West. The region is stuck in the equivalent of Europe's Dark Ages, except with deadly 21st-century weapons.

Right now I don't see anyone in the Middle East who could be the equivalent of Galileo, probably because they've all been executed or driven into exile like Salman Rushdie. Sometimes I think the universe played a sick joke on humanity by giving the region much of the world's oil and natural gas.