Ills in the Middle East - Not Just Because of Religion

Submitted by Mark D (United States), Mar 29, 2014 at 12:56

As I tried to show in the article you are referring to, The Sick Middle East, the problems run far deeper than Islamism, including such varied phenomenon as ecological disaster, deep biases, and Saddam Hussein.

Your near-breathless series of ills as listed and explained in the article "The Sick Middle East" is really a nice piece of work. Thank you for injecting some reality on us as to what ails the Middle East.

And what ails the Middle East has long been recognized as due to religion, Islam. However, that does not provide a complete picture. Others are not without faults.

In other words, Islam is not the only thing that makes the Middle East sick. It is not the only thing that is responsible for the state the Middle East is in today - which might be an inconvenient fact to many but true.

But of course that should not serve as a basis for putting a halt to bringing up the ugliness of Islam on a regular basis because a large chunk of what ails the Middle East, I believe and correct me if I am wrong, is due to the corrupting effects of Islam, and the rest are due to many of what you outlined in the "Sick Middle East" article.

How about if nations in the Middle East had been a democracy, would that have helped or there are no easy answers?

Thank you for shepherding us in the right direction.

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