Instead, the Islamic world would do well to look at the cultural and economic success of the Jewish world and seek to emulate it.
Incidentally, Mahathir is a particularly unstable and dictatorial personality. Until this episode he was more notorious for this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/872820.stm
Kharin, Of the citation, there is even a more global causation for pessimism. Simple artifacts of social psychology provide... UTism is ingrained in the human condition. The Jewish world embraces this paradigm and exploits it. Against a social paradigm of openness and tolerance that the Ottoman empire once stood for, a society that pits itself against that must portray the successors of Islam as being anything but. This is done through isolation and impoverishment. Since the 1940's this is what Israel has done. The paradigm of tolerance has been pre empted by mere survival and subsequent reactionism. Once this paradigm shift has became pat of the paradigm that is handed down from generation to generation, the stance of "Us peace loving Israelis versus Them terror mongering Muslims" becomes not only easy to maintain, but profitable. Anwar Ibrahim is a figure who exploits the social condition of his own people. The fact that he could does so readily encouraged him to his pederast tendencies. He was in the business of exploiting a culture, so it was a small step to exploit innocent children. Both instances point to the inherent fallacy in didactic political relationships, UTistic. The human condition seeks to simplify complex matters based on a psychological model of "ego versus environment", man v nature, man v man, man v society. This polarization of world views comes naturally to humans. But as is routinely demonstrated throughout history, nothing is polar in relationship. Americans regard Iranians as terroristic, unstable, and not to be trusted. This comes from the consequence of the Iranian embassy, the Shah, and other internal relations where the Iranian public has literally cast out the American interests in some "violent fashion." Americans get tossed or kidnapped and held hostage; Americans regard Iranians as terroristic. Iranians remember when the CIA overthrew a democratically elected president to put the Shaw in power. The Shaw was put in power because he was young and naive at the time and agreed to a sweet energy deal. The Iranian college students remember their history. Western college students tend to trust what they are taught by the curricula "sponsored" by multinational corporations. Western college students, with obvious exceptions present, tend to be vapidly ignorant of world history. But let us not limit that sin to merely western students. Anytime a societies "good name" is challenged in the historical record, a funny thing happens. It gets dismissed as being the propaganda of Them v. Us. The real "Them" is Us. Go do your homework people. Kharin does on a consistent basis. That is rare. cheers kirksteele