Your anecdotal examples are just anecdotal examples. I too had known some Middle East "muslim", he drank beer and stuff.
What's more, Syria before the West started supporting terrorists there, was a pretty forward-looking country, and no Saudi-Arabia.
Not quite so anymore, thanks to great foreign policy of US and EU.
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I don't need to assume anything, I was asked to look at the past and make a prediction based on that. I did exactly that and I saw Dark fucking Ages after Roman Empire fell.
So, don't introduce slavery or pass laws forcing people to follow their father's trade; don't demand very big taxes that don't in any way benefit the taxpayer and, above all, don't have a military that is very well paid and able to set up whomever it chooses in government. mostof all, don't have an Empire that disarms vast numbers of people and prevents them fighting invaders. You are welcome to those lessons, but I fear they are not very relevant, and nor is an obsession with other people's religions, about which you know next to nothing. The Muslims I know are extremely British (other than those in Bradford who insist in sending 'home' for wives), and everything I read suggests that those in the States are even further forward.
Your anecdotal examples are just anecdotal examples. I too had known some Middle East "muslim", he drank beer and stuff.
What's more, Syria before the West started supporting terrorists there, was a pretty forward-looking country, and no Saudi-Arabia.
Not quite so anymore, thanks to great foreign policy of US and EU.
I suppose that experience and anecdote are different: yes, I have anecdotes about drinking with Muslims, but I have
experience of Muslim students, even from Bradford, rather a lot of them, who were already pretty much where I stood on most issues, and I can't see that is just anecdote, because it continued over a number of years. Inevitably you get a reaction, often in the third generation, against assimilation (I had 'Irish' students whose father's were big deal officers in the British Army who learned Irish and went out to the West, but this has always been so - read up on Erskine Childers). In my own case, my parents were quite happy to give up our language, and I have devoted a great part of my life to learning to be a decent patriot). I found that the women Muslim students, in particular, were a great deal more forward-looking and feminist than most of their English contemporaries. I think any personal experience is inevitably limited, but most racist-type opinion is based on prejudice only. And incidentally, in Sarajevo, I have discussed alcohol with a Muslim waiter who was a lot more on the ball than my temperance great-aunts in their formidable Congregationalist masses.