Echidne on that survey of Muslims worldwide that was making heads explode in wingerstan last week:

If an overall conclusion appears from the report, it might be that the different areas are not identical with each other and that what seems to influence the findings is the actual history of a particular country: If that history is one of something fairly close to Islamic theocracy, then the results tend to be more conservative. On the other hand, if a particular country has had a more secular democracy or a period of non-Islamic laws, the results tend to be less conservative. Thus, the European countries included in the report largely come across as more progressive, whereas the least progressive countries include the Sub-Saharan countries in Africa and the Islamic Countries of the Middle East.

Shockingly, people are not animals, and are influenced by more than one factor at once. Last week everybody waslosing they damn minds about SHARIAH LAW and how many Muslims think women should be stoned to death for looking at a man the wrong way and what have you, all the stuff, as Echidne points out, worries comfortable non-Muslim America more than it does anyone else:

When I was reading it I wondered how the included questions were determined. Pretty much all of them are about concerns the “rest of the world” has about Islam, and most of them are “trigger” questions: the sorts of questions we in the West often read about in the context of Islam. But questions about, say, the education of girls or the chances of women to work outside the home or to serve as judges or to travel alone etc. were not included.

As if the one has nothing to do with the other. As if the more people educate themselves, the more we all learn, the more we don’t realize we’re the same. As if we haven’t seen this play out over and over and over. As if we’ve got it all down pat by now and are just waiting for these people to catch up.

A.