Islamic culture is simply not compatible with the values, institutions and policies that constitute modernity. Islamic culture severely limits women and non privileged people of talent rarely have the opportunity to excel. Yet in the modern era of digital telecommunications even the poor and uneducated in Muslim countries come to realize how needlessly bad they live. The challenge of modernity cannot be avoided. The result is the political instability and violence that now characterizes the Islamic world. People vote with their feet and migrate, the jihadists are bewildered reactionaries desperate to stop any change, the privileged and wealthy produce little but use their wealth to preserve the status quo in any way possible. Eventually Islamic culture will reform or collapse. Until then true economic prosperity and social justice will not happen.
Islime shuns all those things that we regard as progress: equality, technology, creature comforts. Joy is supposed to be found only in rigid adherence to religious law.
But it’s simply not true. There’s not a lot of joy in eating bugs because you refuse to read about modern farming practices. Or in dying of face rot because it’s allah’s will. Or in being stoned to death because you dared to teach your daughter how to add and subtract.
Slimes don’t build; they only destroy. So they envy all other cultures that have achieved what they refuse to.
They can’t stop the march of time. They will adapt or perish. I say we help them in the latter.