Len,

>>Of course not -but- if you dig a little into, say the culture of those who live here you'll find some interesting things. Let me give you two personal examples:
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>>1) I used to do standup training. Lotus 1-2-3, dBASE, Rbase, etc.. One of our students was a nice gal who worked for Adnan Kashogi, the famous arms dealer. Now Mr. Kashogi was, by all accounts, a very sophisticated fellow. She brought to class two picture albums filled with pictures of his customized plane (707 I believe). Gold plated fixtures, hologram room dividers - the works. She also related how difficult it was to convince Mr. Kashogi to not slap the pilots.
>>
>>2) I know of another fellow who was big in the computer business in Southern Californian who was Iranian. Without going into the details let's just say that his personal behavior was so bad that he also used to slap his employees and treated his wife so badly that she divorced him.
>>
>>I dare say that those here in the USA who you and I would perhaps consider model citizens are either considered by their fellow Muslims as compromised or you don't know all there is to know.
>
>There have been several instances of bullying behaviour by people in positions of power reported in the UK recently, including slapping their employees. I personally have known English men who treat their wives appalingly, in one case more than 1 wife. The abuses of power & bad treatment of women are not limited to Muslims, they are universal.

Right, but does their faith teach them that women are in a lessor position as the Qu'ran does?

>
>There's a lot of publicity at the moment about the Roman Catholic hierarchy covering up instances of child abuse, the Church of England priest who married my wife & I was arrested & found guilty of child abuse. Do we infer from these instances that all Christians are child abusers (or maybe only the clergy).

Indeed. And so many popes who were adulterers, homosexuals and just plain power hungry.

And, no, of course we do not make the kind of inference you're suggesting. I don't make that about Islam. What I have said is that from what I have observed those within the Islamic community who I would consider the most 'enlightened' is the sense of being able to interact with those of differeing faiths are considered by their own peoples as being 'liberal' or 'compromised'. Wonderful folks candidly but not running the show in any great numbers (and when they are they're deathly afraid of their own) as far as I can determine.

As I asked before, please name by name the one Islamic-run country that you consider (in your opinion) to be THE MOST 'advanced'. What is the name again? <s>