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I propose an experiment- confucians create missionaries who travel to spread the word of improvement through education, respect for elders, hierarchy, etc to all the most savage primitives of the world. I predict that the sentinelese and new guineans will improve themselves.
Islam is, I agree, an interesting case, partly because it would be the textbook example of bad culture even where the ethnic group it affects is otherwise quite capable. But we don't need to look that far. Anthropologists- most of whom are progressives or marxists and don't like Christianity- have extensively studied the difference between primitives who have been converted by Christian missionaries and primitives who remain in the service of dumb idols. And, like, there isn't a space program from third world Christianity, but they generally compare favorably to their coethnics who continue to worship demons instead. You don't seem to see that with Islam, despite extensive Islamic missionary activities in Africa.
Hard to pin down exactly what it might be. My guess is that Islam provides a template for organizing clan-based societies under a religious superstructure that is too weak to hold sway without political power. I wonder if the explicit sanction of polygamy has a role.
Fukuyama talks about how both Christianity and the Chinese Imperial Bureaucracy were essential to breaking the power of the clans in their respective societies. Islam doesn't seem to do that at all, which is perhaps why their societies are unstable and unable to coalesce around nationalistic lines outside of discrete ethnic groups.
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