The biggest problem in analogizing Democrats to Moslems is that the former did have other voices surrounding them, voices that were pointing out the radical nature of those organizations Barr mentioned (NOW, the unions, and the teaching establishment): first, the Republicans, of course; in our republic, the critiques from the GOP could not be entirely shut out, even back in the 60s and 70s.

But second and more important, we need to bear in mind what Barr himself noted: Democratic leaders and organizations were not always so insane. The switchover (I'm using Judge Bork's timeline here from, I think, Slouching Towards Gomorrah) was when the New Left began to arise following the Port Huron Statement, released by the SDS in 1962 (the Students for a Democratic Society was the group from which the radical faction the Weathermen later spun off).

Most older Democrats never particularly embraced the New Left -- which was radicalized, hard-core, and Stalinist, inexplicably combined with feverishly anti-science, anti-technology, Luddite "environmentalism" -- and the New Left didn't take over the Democratic Party until, to be blunt, the older generation died off.

Thus, there has been reasoned resistance to the radicalization of the Democratic Party from the very beginning, coming from sources with unassailable liberal credentials, such as Hubert Humphrey and Pat Moynihan. Many Democrats retained their basic love of America... and unfortunately for the new radicalized Democratic Party (but fortunately for the country), that meant a lot of people left the Democrats and joined the Republicans, bringing the two parties into rough parity (during World War II, I would guess the Democrats enjoyed at least a 2-1 advantage over the GOP).

Alas, the Moslem world did not have any history of modernity, and they did not suddenly became radical; as Bernard Lewis discusses in many sources (e.g., Freedom and Justice in the Modern Middle East, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2005), the history of modernity in the Moslem (especially Arabic) world is depressingly stunted. The first introduction of modernity was when Napoleon, then a general in the French revolutionary republic, invaded and conquered Egypt with nearly casual ease in 1798. He imposed French ideas of equality (concept well understood in the ummah) and "liberty" -- which the Arabs at first thought meant simply the lack of being a slave but later translated into their concept of justice, as in a just ruler vs. an unjust ruler.

During this period, the Moslem world was forced to confront its woeful technological and sociological retardedness, compared to the Europeans. Alas, what they most took from their abrupt contact with modernity was the technological tools of war and oppression; they were eagerly embraced by low-level local leaders to make themselves into caliphs and sultans. Thus, I believe (this is my analysis, not taken from the Lewis article above), the ordinary Moslem and especially the Moslem cleric would come to associate modernity with oppression by unjust rulers and despots using surveillance and control techniques never before seen in Islam.

And the second period of modernist influence -- back to Lewis's history, now -- was when the French government surrendered to Hitler, and the elements of the erstwhile French empire had to decide whether to declare alliegance to the Nazi-controlled French government of Marshal Philippe Pétain at Vichy, or to the Free French Forces under Charles de Gaulle, then in exile in London. The French Arab colony of Syria-Lebanon chose Vichy, and Syria became a haven for Nazi forces. Thus, the Moslem "education" in modernity that began with Napoleon ended with Hitler; the Baath Party was nurtured and eventually hatched just after the war, and many Arabist rulers embraced first Naziism and then Stalinism as a way to further their personal goals of pan-Arabism, totalitarianism, and empire.

Back to my own reading, not Bernard Lewis. There are basically two types of Islamic societies now: those that embraced modernism, which are still heavily influenced by totalitarian European political systems, such as Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and others; and those who rejected modernism, either all along (like Yemen and Sudan) or at least for decades, such as Iran. Since Islam never had a Reformation, they never had an Enlightenment (I believe the former, which leads to intellectual freedom, is necessary for the latter.)

Moslems, whether they live in pre-modern Islamic countries or modernist-socialist Islamic countries, probably reject the ideas of modernism with equal fervor: the former out of fear of the unknown; the latter out of memory of the particular form in which they did, in fact, know modernism. Leaders from both types of Islamic nation would reject the modernist ideas of freedom of speech (or thought), of the press, dissent, and democracy, as both radical Islamism and also Baathism and its ideological cousins condemn individualism.

But Moslems do have communication with the modern worlds of Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism; they see the infidels living very different lives that seem better, easier, and richer. Western Civilization (especially American) is incredibly infectious, and a great many Moslems, especially in countries that are not majority Moslem, have succumbed ot its lure (thank goodness) and, well, westernized themselves. Their lives are materially better, but there is still that conflict with the religous leaders, hence with the religion itself. This conflict between how they actually live and how they are told they should live leads to feelings of guilt and restlessness.

In the West, Christians frequently "get religion" and become more conscious of and committed to their religion. Here, that means going to church more often, participating in charity drives, becoming a volunteer to help the poor, preaching to prisoners about self-control and taking personal responsiblity for their mistakes, and so forth.

In Islam, people often feel the same impulse to become more committed to their religion; it's a natural human trait. But in Islamic countries, while that often includes all of the above, it also typically includes leaders who preach jihad, hatred, and the denigration of the lives of infidels and apostates.

This, in longer form, is what I meant in my first post: before they can have a political divergence into peaceful parties separated by philosophy -- an Enlightenment -- as we have here, they first have to have a religious Reformation. Remember, even in the West, the Reformation caused the Enlightenment, which culminated in the rise of democracy in America and then everywhere else in Christendom. Look at the language our Founding Fathers used in creating democracy: the basic argument was that God had created human beings with freedom of choice... so who is Man to take it away from them?

Thus I say that without a Reformation to make Islam itself less all-encompassing and more modern, less like a crusader and more like a contemporary Catholic, Episcopalian, Baptist, or what have you, I cannot see how democracy can work.

The two Islamic countries we have been fairly successful at "democratizing" both came through a period of forced modernity. Iraq had been a secular Moslem state for decades before the war, due to the influence of the Baath Party; it's not so surprising, even given the tribal nature of Iraq, that democracy has caught on there... the people already had the taste of modernity -- and even though it was bitter, they could not go back again to the pre-modern beliefs of, say, Saudi Arabia: once tasting the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, you cannot go back to the Garden. (The Kurds even had a fairly democratic society in the North during Saddam Hussein's reign).

Similarly, Afghanistan had been forcibly exposed to the brutality of the Soviety Union for a dozen years, from 1979 to 1991-1992, when the Soviets were finally driven out. But during those years, they too got their taste of modernity, both its abuses (Communism) and uses (the American Stinger missile that helped liberate them from Soviet occupation). In 1996, the Taliban religious maniacs imposed upon them by brute force the harshest form of sharia around. The contrast must have been shocking; fortunately, no generation had time to be raised entirely under it before we destroyed it. Thus, I believe many Afghans, especially in Kabul, are thrilled at the ability to select their own leaders by the vote.

We seem to do better with states that have already been exposed to the advanced ideas of modernity. I would imagine that Egypt is another likely target, as Hosni Mubarik (and Anwar Sadat before him) are more in the mold of the Baathists than the Taliban; the same goes for Syria and Lebanon, of course. Iran might be a good match for democracy too, because of the history of the shahs, who were modernist "Moslem Methodists." Likewise Pakistan under Musharaf; and of course Turkey is already the very model of a modern Moslem nation-state.

But we're likely to have a harder time creating real democracy in Saudi Arabia, the home of Wahabbism... because that has always been a strongly Islamic religious state. Likewise, the states in Africa have already demonstrated a serious inability to modernize, as do many of the smaller Islamic countries in the Middle East. I don't know enough about the Philippines and Indonesia (the largest Moslem county in terms of population) to guess how well democracy could take hold there.

But in any country, religious Reformation must come first, then an Enlightenment, then democracy, and only then can we even begin to imagine "Moslem Republicans." Thus, while Barr’s history of the radicalization of the Democratic Party is accurate, in those areas of the ummah that did not pass through the forced secularization of socialism, we need "Moslem Methodists" before we can have "Moslem Republicans."