One has to look back in history in the West to find the point where reason triumphed over dogma. As can be expected, it was the excesses of religion which proved their downfall. Between 1618 and 1648 Europe was ripped by the 30 Years War.
http://www.history.com/topics/thirty-years-war
Not coincidentally, the horrors of the 30 Years War which ended in 1648 led to the Enlightenment which is generally dated to 1650.
The Arab world is going through the same problem. There are religious fanatics who are willing to kill anyone who wishes to stop them from dragging everyone back to the 11th century and there are secularists who want to join the rest of the world in the 21st. I doubt they will do this without massive bloodshed any more than the West was able to do. Sadly, enough blood has to be shed so that people stop listening to the religious assholes. How much blood that takes is up to them.
Egypt is an excellent example of an islamic state without oil money to gloss over its failure to move into the modern world. It is up to the progressives to stand up to the ignorant. Same as it is here in the US.
http://www.history.com/topics/thirty-years-war
Quote:The cost, however, had proved enormous. Perhaps 20 percent of Germany's total population perished during the war, with losses of up to 50 percent along a corridor running from Pomerania in the Baltic to the Black Forest. Villages suffered worse than towns, but many towns and cities also saw their populations, manufacture, and trade decline substantially. It constituted the worst catastrophe to afflict Germany until World War II. On the other hand, the conflict helped to end the age of religious wars. Although religious issues retained political importance after 1648 (for instance, in creating an alliance in the 1680s against Louis XIV), they no longer dominated international alignments. Those German princes, mostly Calvinists, who fought against Ferdinand II in the 1620s were strongly influenced by confessional considerations, and as long as they dominated the anti-Hapsburg cause, so too did the issue of religion. But because they failed to secure a lasting settlement, the task of defending the "Protestant cause" gradually fell into the hands of Lutherans, who proved willing to ally (if necessary) with Catholic France and Orthodox Russia in order to create a coalition capable of defeating the Hapsburgs. After 1630 the role of religion in European politics receded. This was, perhaps, the greatest achievement of the Thirty Years' War, for it thus eliminated a major destabilizing influence in European politics, which had both undermined the internal cohesion of many states and overturned the diplomatic balance of power created during the Renaissance.
Not coincidentally, the horrors of the 30 Years War which ended in 1648 led to the Enlightenment which is generally dated to 1650.
The Arab world is going through the same problem. There are religious fanatics who are willing to kill anyone who wishes to stop them from dragging everyone back to the 11th century and there are secularists who want to join the rest of the world in the 21st. I doubt they will do this without massive bloodshed any more than the West was able to do. Sadly, enough blood has to be shed so that people stop listening to the religious assholes. How much blood that takes is up to them.
Egypt is an excellent example of an islamic state without oil money to gloss over its failure to move into the modern world. It is up to the progressives to stand up to the ignorant. Same as it is here in the US.
