Western Model works for Most religions

Submitted by Steve (United States), Aug 7, 2021 at 18:26

The Western Model, with some modifications, works well enough virtually everywhere for cultures which are ready for it. Jewish culture, Christian culture, Hindu culture, Buddhist culture, Shinto culture and some others readily support democratic republics in the Middle East (e.g Israel), further East (India), and even further East (Japan). Islamic culture does not readily support Western style democratic republics in the Middle East and often has great trouble with it elsewhere, though Egypt is essentially a democracy and some other Middle Eastern countries are slowly progressing in that direction. In Europe, Turkey is still basically democratic. Albania is a majority Muslim nation and its Western style democracy seems to work. The fact that democracies do not work well with large Muslim populations in the Middle East is in itself a good reason why the one state solution, in the sense adding the Palestinians to Israel, is a bad idea. Whenever the Muslims even approach being a majority they destabilize democracies in many areas, especially the Middle East. Then they drive out or kill most of the non-Muslims and take over, making the country, in former President Trump's famous words, a s*****le (not to put too fine a point on it). Millions of people were forcibly resettled in the Balkans in the 90's due to inability of Muslims and Christians to get along together. There were significant atrocities committed by all sides, but the main take home point is that stability was achieved when the the Orthodox Christians, Catholic Christians, and Sunni Muslims were well enough separated so that each had an area in which they had large enough majorities to be the masters in their own domain. Likewise, India wisely realized that it was best to put a large number of their Muslims in a separate nation. Applied to the Israel-Arab conflict, the most significant resettling has already been done. A large number of Muslim Arabs effectively self resettled outside of the current boundaries of Israel as part of their attempt to help the invading Arab armies destroy Israel. It would be the height of folly to attempt to undo that process. The only "one state solution" that makes any sense is a solution in which Israel remains largely as it is, with some boundary adjustments to make borders more realistically defensible on all sides and the Arabs on either side attaching themselves to Egypt (Gaza strip) and Jordan (West Bank) respectively. Once the Muslims accept that there is no "return" to where the vast majority of them have never lived will stability be possible. Under such circumstances I think that the various Islamic cultures in the various Islamic states can slowly progress to their own versions of modernity.

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