And outside of Saudi Arabia I don’t know any places where you can’t build a church or a synagogue; it’s not true that you can’t build a church in Egypt, it’s just that you need a permit:

An 1856 Ottoman decree still in force requires non-Muslims to obtain what is now a presidential decree to build a place of worship. In addition, Interior Ministry regulations issued in 1934 specify a set of 10 conditions that the Government must consider prior to issuance of a presidential decree permitting construction of a church. These conditions include the location of the proposed site, the religious composition of the surrounding community, and the proximity of other churches. The Ottoman decree also requires the President to approve permits for the repair of church facilities. In response to strong criticism of the decree, President Mubarak in January 1998 delegated to governors the authority to approve permits for the repair of church facilities.
http://www.cesnur.org/testi/irf/irf_egypt99.html

I agree that there have been woman presidents in majority Muslim countries, and even in “Muslim countries” before, but I think it is only symbolically important. It’s not like women’s rights in Pakistan took a huge step forward under Benazir Bhutto.

Human rights are the more important thing to focus on. I don’t like this idea of “Muslim countries”, where somehow God ordained that within a set of borders and population of a country must be Muslim til the end of time. And that holds for any other religion too.

Population of Saudi Arabia: 27 million.
Size of Saudi Arabia: 2,150,000 km^2

There are 7 million migrant workers in Saudi Arabia, including a million Filipinos and 1.4 million Indians. That means there are a lot of non-Muslims to be actively discriminated against, as opposed to zero non-Catholics in the Vatican.

I don’t think the Vatican should be a sovereign country either, but the situations aren’t comparable. The correct comparison would be having a small portion of Mecca being a sovereign state, not most of the Arabian peninsula, most of which is outside the Hejaz.

Egypt has a wide variety of repressive laws against non-Muslims, many of them left over from the Ottoman era. One important one forbids new construction of non-Muslim places of worship. Only Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are recognized, so that other religions are repressed and their members are denied identity cards. There are pogroms against Copts and religous discrimination is rampant. Many Jewish citizens were expelled by Egypt and denied their citizenship rights. Atheists can be sued in the courts for defaming Islam, and converts from Islam to Christianity are frequently arrested by the state.

Also – c’mon – if you really want to make a distinction between ‘Muslim countries’ and ‘countries with a Muslim majority’, how do you place Egypt into the former category? Egypt is a decisively non-Muslim country, religious parties are banned. Discrimination against the Copts there fades in comparison with their discrimination against Muslim fundamentalists.

I realize that Indonesia is a secular country, with no state religion despite its overwhelming Muslim majority. But that was/is the plan for Iraq too, right? And a fine thing that would be, if it were still possible. My problem with the “first woman president of a Muslim country” thing is that it’s basically being used as code for “west=enlightened, islam=backward.” At least the “decent” left actually cares about women’s rights in the West too, wheras conservatives more often just pay lip service to it in order justify the war. (I’m thinking of Karen Hughes’s visit to the region last year, when she encountered much more resistance to America than she expected among Arab women.) But that doesn’t make the claim any less sloppy.

Well I certainly wasn’t arguing that “paternalist Islam” was more woman-friendly than Western liberal democracy. I was arguing that a political tradition which has deeper regional roots than do American client states has ALREADY produced female heads of state, something which America itself has yet to do. So there are no grounds for triumphalism on that point.

In exactly the same way the United States isn’t a “Christian country”, Indonesia isn’t a “Muslim country”. The situation is more blurry in Bangladesh, where the government takes it upon itself to declare the Ahmadis “non-Muslims”, and relatively clear in places like Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, where non-Muslims are actively discriminated against in both legal and social terms, up to and including extra-judicial killings.

There is a difference between a secular country and a “Muslim country”, and non-Muslims feel it quite keenly.

Yes. Incidentally, the Kurds (everyone’s second most favorite ethnic group now) are also Muslims. But most of them, apparently, hate the Arabs, which obviously makes them extremely enlightened, worthy and good guys.

Snuh, you don’t have to read much anti-Muslim propaganda (even by the ‘decents’) to see that usually, (not always, but usually) ‘Muslim’ is a euphemism for ‘Arab’. They say Muslim so that they don’t get accused of being racist.

I mean, perish the thought.

Indonesia is constitutionally a secular state, with six religions officially recognised. Its politics, bureaucracy and military have long been dominated by secularists, traditionalist Muslims with pluralist sympathies, and non-Muslims. Of the 88% of the population who declare themselves Muslim, approximately half are believed to be nominal or non-observant Muslims, although they might well consider themselves believers. (Approximately, because there aren’t accurate stats for degrees of religiosity.) In the 2004 parliamentary election, Islamist parties got about 20% of the vote.

Bangladesh essentially defines itself as Muslim, although it’s not officially an Islamic state (as is Pakistan). Even as East Pakistan, the whole basis for its existence was as the portion of Bengal with a dominant Muslim and not Hindu culture. About half of its relatively homogenous population votes for the main Islamist party and allies. But I’d still think twice about calling it a “Muslim country”, and I didn’t do that above.

Or are all Muslims just “Muslims”, and we stop there?

look, indonesia is by any sensible definition a muslim country (about 90% of citizens are muslims, which is a hell of a majority). i mean it’s not a theocracy, but neither is saudi arabia, iraq or jordan (or bangladesh, your example) and you wouldn’t think twice about calling them muslim countries.

jared’s point is something that has been iritating me for a while. there are quite a few annoying generalisations made about muslims and muslim countries that seem to be made without reference to the world’s most populous muslim state. generalisations about the capacity of muslims for democracy, religious tolerance, treatment of women etc.

it is odd.

O’Leary’s Newsnight film impressed me too. After a bloody proxy war, Saudi forces withdraw thwarted. Whereupon Iranian forces, for reasons left unclear, withdraw too. Result: immediate peance freeance.

To be fair, if you’re an advisor to the Kurdish regional government the development of credible scenarios for a successful unitary Iraqi state has got to be quite a way down in your in-tray.