I am merely pointing to one possible explanation for the statistical skew against Muslims from the data you have presented.
I think the most reasonable explanation is that for a number of reasons, which may well be accidental and have nothing much to do with ideology, the industrial revolution has been slow in penetrating into Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia and Southeast Asia. A lot of hot spots were formerly part of the USSR or puppet states and satellites. Many Middle Eastern and African intellectuals were educated in the former Soviet Union. Thus, they had little access to Western capital.
The industrial revolution, like it or not, requires massive infusions of capital. One of my favorite theories is that the French Revolution led to the industrial revolution in Great Britain because French aristocrats removed their money from French banks and invested in British banks. All that money was loaned out to budding industrialists.
The nascent industrial revolution in the US was funded by bankers who were personally acquainted with the men they loaned money to. They went to the same clubs, and intermarried.
No such luck for Abdul and Mohammed in the madrassa. All they learned in school was how to envy, not how to create something from almost nothing. But take a look at SI's own Iqbal Latif. He doesn't want to make war, he wants to make money and live in peace.
IMO, it's not the culture, and it's not the religion, it's the fact that they are living in backwaters. Timbuktu, the Khobar Pass, these are reknowned for being remote.
As the Soviet Union breaks up, devolution is predictable, and devolution isn't pleasant. They need evolution. They need the industrial revolution.
Bin Laden is like the environmentalist who doesn't want Africans to have electricity because it will destroy their culture, or the French who want to get rid of McDonald's, or Pol Pot. He's parochial. He knows what's best for everybody and he's going to impose it whether they like it or not.
The world is full of people like that. Some of them want to tell you what car to drive. |
