http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/18/AR2006071801336_pf.html

There are plenty of non-fundamentalist muslims around the west, in the US for instance. Islam is not the problem here.

-Padishah

Re: In the west...of course there are moderates (I would guess about 60%). But the moderates don't run the show. The traditionalist hard-liners run the show; these are the heads of the Islamic schools, Islamic organizations, and the clerics. About 35% of Canadian Muslims and about 40% of British Muslims want some form of sharia to be implemented in those respective countries. 58% of British Muslims wanted the Danish Mohammad cartoonists to be criminally prosecuted and punished.

What we need are polls that ask a variety of key questions regarding support for various aspects of sharia (punishment of apostates, blasphemers, adulterers, homosexuals; views on honor killing, etc). This will give us a reasonable estimate of how many moderates there are.

China doesn't give a damn about human rights either. Nor do most countries in Africa. Nor military dictatorships anywhere else in genera (there is little Islam in South America for instance

Islam too was founded as a military dictatorship. It wouldn't have gotten anywhere without being a military organization. It would have remained just another one of the 360+ tribal religions in Arabia had it not conquered them all. All that is added to this military dictatorship is a bit of superstition, but basically mainstream Islam, and certainly Islam founded by Mohammad and his companions, was a military dictatorship (or organized criminal group, whichever term you prefer---the important point being rule by force/threat). Abul Kasem has described how Islam was founded upon terrorism, plunder, and slave trade.

Just because there are non-Islamic dictatorships doesn't mean that the dictatorships in Muslim-majority countries do not have an Islamic basis and origin. These are Islamic societies.

Sharia is implemented in Pakistan by local tribal leaders and clerics, but the national government is secular

No, the penalties for blasphemy, heresy, apostasy, etc., are all officially on the books in Pakistan. Yes, the tribal clerics also implement a form of partial sharia (mixed with tribal non-Islamic traditions), but so does the so-called secular government. Like I said, using terms like "secular" versus "theocratic" can be very confusing because, if we ignore the deity behind the curtain (or the person controlling the sock-puppet "Allah"), it is all just autocratic laws, rules, government, punishments, etc. designed to control people. The Mohammad personality cult aspect of Islam is similar in many respects to the "secular" Stalin and Mao.

On the "Theocracy Watch" topic- ebon and the Turkish army are both watching for signs of religous interference in politics. Would ebon feel better if the US army could be relied upon to violently overthrow any overtly Christian US government?

Well, sure. Like I said, "officially or unofficially." That's why it's necessary not only for a government to have a policy of neutrality in religious matters, it must also have positive safeguards to ensure it functions so.

Turkey is also a lot bigger and much poorer than Eastern Europe. It may well be fixable though.

Still, there might not be a coup. The Islamists would not want to get expelled from the EU and definitely trigger a coup, so they might not abolish democracy.

Ireland was poor. Eastern Europe was poor. The population of Turkey is young and educated and will be a much needed boost for our economy in the long term.