The best part about this article is "muslims are already leaving islam in droves..."
It would be fantastic if the only one left were the radicals. Then we'd know who they were, and they couldn't hide behind the foolishly misled.

I disagree with the premise of "modernizing the Middle East". When they want to move into the 21st century, they will do so on their own. I am helping some of the potential future leaders prepare for such a modernization in a value-for-value exchange (their tuition for my education of them). They will arrive there in due time.

Hello khalling,
It sounds great, but hasn't this been tried for generations? Hasn't western civilization been showing the way by example for as long? These people are of the stock that preserved and disseminated the works of Aristotle and then turned their backs. This theocratic regime is doing all it can to keep the masses scared and ignorant. The question is how is this effort to be successful? What new means can be employed that will allow reason to penetrate and conquer the ideological and language barriers while conquering the fears?

Yes education is the key, but by what new means have we? I agree with the premise. I just have doubts that one can reason with the mystics, or conquer their hold on the illiterate masses in any near future. This is going to take time. Short of using greater force and instilling greater fear it may be the only path. It reminds me of the problem of conquering the suicidal fanaticism of the Japanese in WW2. I hope there is a different solution and that reason will prevail.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Regards,
O.A.

I appreciate the optimism for reason dripping from this article. At the same time, I cannot help but to be incredulous about the prospect for peace in the Middle East.

Another great article. Thanks. "With open discourse, reason will win converts." My hope is that we will have open discourse in this country. Truth has been suppressed very effectively in the US for far too long.

The best way is to stop the flow of asset's into the middle east except for Israel and Jordan. Let the the other countries wither and die. Stop all banks and other countries from financing Islamic theocratic governments of the middle east. Block the the flow of illegal immigrants through out Europe. Islam in itself will collapse. It has been said that any invader who tried to invade India became absorbed and assimilated. Just maybe, polytheism is the key in stopping Islam. Such a country as India religions just over-whelms foreign invaders. India is becoming modernized despite a large population living in poverty.
If the US would recognize the polytheism is a good thing and let it grow. Immigrants coming to this country would be assimilated into a US polytheistic culture a lot faster.
Instead of declaring this nation "under one God" maybe it would be it should be changed "under many Gods". Let the minority religions in this country thrive and offer the populace an alternative ways of worship as they do in India.

People who have never been free have to learn to be free. People in the middle east have never been free. They have always been subject to some imam, sultan, emir or whatever the despot-du-jour. Formal education if any is in religion-oriented madrasses or they learn from their equally unenlightened families. So the very concept of freedom is a foreign and therefore suspect. That;s why the "Arab Spring" failed as
they shortly co-allessed behind new leaders for
more of the same. Freedom is outside their
comfort zones.

For such a person to suddenly gain freedom is like
uncapping a bottle of soda water--instant decompression and then what? I remember Robin
Williams as his Mork-from-Ork character tossing an egg into the air with the exhortation, "Be free!"
only to watch it splatter on the table.

To be truly free one has to have learned personal
responsibility. Each individual has to internalize their own code of conduct and to accept the consequences of their actions and not excuse themselves as being subject to the will of another or to group mores. Until that happens nothing will change.

Nothing is forced. All you have is free speech, which doesn't exist under the theocracy. And Muslims leave their religion in droves (see links in the article). On can even have democratic elections when the majority is overtly non-Muslim.

True progress (dictionary meaning) can never be imposed. It must come from within. Unless it is an outgrowth of the people it wont last. When a population is ready to shake off privation and the stupidity of mysticism or collectivism it will come of itself. It may take hundreds of years, but it will happen, and when it does, if it has any degree of rationality it will prosper. But in all history the cycle never seems to last very long. As the saying goes, humanity can't stand prosperity.. Eventually the moochers take over, civilization crumbles and the climb to the light starts all over.

First off, I will admit that what I'm about to propose is a bit of a modest proposal and will never happen. That being said, just for the sake of discussion, what if we were to erect a virtual wall around the Islamic countries that are leaning more radical. For instance, Saudi Arabia is very hardline Islamic, but we don't hear about it too much because they sell us relatively cheap oil. If all the non-islamic countries were to stop buying their oil, where would the financing for large scale operations come from? If we allowed no transit in or out of those countries it may cut down the number of people who are bent on attacking the west. Granted, there will be home grown terrorists.
So, you would end up with them attacking each other. Eventually, after they reduce their own populations through infighting and social Darwinism we could step in and colonize thereby modernising the middle east. With the current population there, there is no modernization.

the best way to modernize the middle east is to first get rid of the entirety of the muslim population, then who ever wants to go there to live go for it.
of course you know why atomic bombs exist, now is the time to use them.

"One can’t modernize Islam if, as Richardson says, the canon was designed around emulating the founder as the moral ideal."

This to me is the crux of the entire argument. Modernization is a red herring. Fashion has no inherent philosophical value. Moral principles are principles regardless of the age they were practiced in.

All philosophies put forth some kind of ideal which they ascribe as the summum bonum of perfection, or in other words that which man should strive for. Whether the ideal has an embodiment (real or fictional) such as Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, John Galt, etc. is for the benefit of the potential adherent: it is far easier to relate to and adopt a philosophy one can see in action through example than merely the purely hypothetical. It is a fact that all men strive to become something other than what they started out as in this life. The real question of philosophy is what actually is the ideal state of man and in what time frame.

Islam identifies the ideal state of man and time frame in Mohammed. It really is that simple. To the followers of Islam, Mohammed is the culmination of perfection. Why don't his followers "get with the times" as it were? Because in the ascribed perfection that is Mohammed are prohibitions against the very things that this century pushes. It's a philosophical clash of ideals and the assumption that they need to be modernized is in actuality a biased judgement not based on the merits of the individual philosophies at all but merely one stemming from what we - the modern outsider - are familiar and comfortable with. Now please do not misunderstand this to be a defense of Islam. It is merely a debunking of the argument of "modernization" - which really means nothing at all!

Modernity is not a principle, it is a time frame. If we really want to get down to brass tacks, what we have to do is get down to real philosophical value differences such as the equality of men and women, the right to free speech, the right to property, etc. Those are principles. And they are principles which aren't shared by the Islamic philosophy. There is no way to "modernize" Islam - it is an absurd notion because it assumes that two competing ideals can exist within the same philosophy. If we hold to logic, we see that no philosophy can survive an internal incompatibility of such a nature. So what we are really saying is that we want Islam to either become something other than Islam, or we want to see those who profess a belief in Islam to choose to abandon the principles of Islam for something else. In either case, the result is a destruction of Islam. That is what modernization really means.

I am all for the destruction of Islam. I want nothing more than for its followers to abandon that religion en masse. Its values are devoid of merit and at its heart it rejects the freedom of the mind and will and punishes dissention with death. To me, there is little more reprehensible than that - except maybe the practice of stoning rape victims.

this is the only long-term path to peace (capitalism) and rationality (objectivism)...anything less is doomed to eternal conflict between freedom and islam...

democracy is a false god...universal voter rights are destructive of individualism and natural rights...

a republic that limits voting rights to property and labor prevents politicians from undermining individual rights with tyranny of those dependent on govt theft...

Nuclear testing grounds?

First you have to get them in a place where they have the possibility to become aware of self, of self introspection and self rule., (the individual that is). That can be accomplished much like it was for a good percentage of our ancestors...Language; spoken a written in a language that holds many, many concepts, not just words but the kind that can produce prophetic metaphors. In the time of our ancestors it was Greek, Latin and Hebrew...today that language is English. It has all the other languages beat and is the most adaptive. Then, hopefully the politics and laws will follow. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to know that their prophet was an idiot, a Charlton and stole most of anything valuable from our OT ancestors.
A good way would be the internet but without the ability to translate...forcing them into using the English language, giving them a proper definition of each word they use.

Reasons is the magic bullet.

The idea of concentric subsets is interesting. Mass-murdering extremists in the center, people who want the religion to run all aspects of life in the next ring, and decreasing levels of "awareness" beyond that. I question if awareness is the right word. In my own life most religious people I know do not believe anything about religion literally, but they say the stories inform their views. They're very aware of the crazy stuff in their religion, but they appear to treat it as entirely fictional. Some religious people say they do not believe a single word of their religion; it's just part of their cultural/family identity.

I do not agree with the part at the end about having absolute contempt for respecting people's religious heritage. I think of my grandmother, who was in that outer concentric circle, calling herself a believer but hardly aware of the crazy things in her religion. Christopher Hitchens and Mr. Kolhatkar say it would have been good to challenge her for believing in religious books that support murder and rape. I know the facts about religion, but challenging her comes off as attacking her heritage, attacking her parents, grandparents, and all the traditions they brought from their country of origin. She once asked me if I believed in religion. I said "no", which seemed to make her sad. I tried to say I would remember the good values and the stories. I think that's all she really wanted.

My thought is reason brings people out toward that edge of the circle. We don't need to remind these people that they're a superset of religious murderers.