Pointing Pers
“This world is even more unfair than in the time of the pharaohs; the socialist idea, designed to end injustice, proved to be untenable, and today ordinary people have no other protection than Islam, because it is based on the concept of principled theological justice. ” These words belong to Heydar Jemal, December 5 of the past year who left our unjust world. Not being a Muslim or an occultist and therefore not sharing the ideas of Heydar Jahidovich, especially the fundamental geopolitical task of Islam declared by him - conquering political power in the world, I note that he was one of the most non-trivial and interesting authors at the turn of the millennium, although its unmistakable brightness for me pretty much with a minus sign. But it is impossible to ignore Jemal’s reasoning about geopolitics, which, by the way, he considered to be false science, while rightly arguing that this line of thought was invented long before Haushofer and Mackinder were Russians: Khomyakov with his Kushitsky and Khamitsky civilizations, Aksakov, Kireyevsky and who became the forerunners Spengler with Toynbee Danilevsky.
Speaking about the Islamic renaissance, Jemal put into it his specific semi-cultural understanding. But it seems to me relevant to reflect on the “prophecies” of this man regarding the future - including the intellectual - revival of Muslim civilization. Was Jamal right here, or, if the question is broader, is the modern Islamic world capable of challenging the West, experiencing spiritual degradation and experiencing a demographic crisis?
In the field of basic sciences, the Old and New Worlds, along with Israel and Japan, are still ahead of the rest of the world, and Russia, despite the difficulties experienced, still holds a worthy place in this series. If anyone steps on their heels, they are not Muslims, but the so-called Asian tigers.
But times are changing. Not only Heydar Jemal wrote about the Muslim renaissance, but also the authors, far from Islam, Huntington for example: “The revival of religion is a global phenomenon. However, they are most clearly manifested in the cultural affirmation of Asia and Islam, as well as in the challenges that they throw to the West. These are the most dynamic civilizations of the last quarter of the 20th century. The Islamic challenge is expressed in a comprehensive cultural, social and political revival in the Muslim world and the rejection of Western values and institutions accompanying this process. ”
Even at the end of the last century, Huntington drew attention to an important detail: “In 70 and 80, political leaders literally rushed to identify themselves and their regimes with Islam. King Hussein of Jordan, convinced that the secular government has very illusive prospects in the Arab world, spoke of the need to create Islamic democracy and modernized Islam. The king of Morocco, Hassan, emphasized his origin from the Prophet and his role as leader of the faithful. The Sultan of Brunei, for which he had previously not noticed adherence to Islam, suddenly became extremely pious and defined his regime as the Malay Muslim monarchy. Ben Ali in Tunisia began to regularly appeal to Allah in his speeches, “to wear the clothes of Islam” to attract the attention of Islamist groups. At the beginning of 90, Indonesian President Suharto clearly set himself the political task of becoming a great Muslim. In Bangladesh, the principle of secularism was thrown out of the constitution in the middle of the 70, and in the early nineties, the secular, Kemalist Turkey underwent a serious test for the first time. To emphasize loyalty to Islam, state leaders Ozal, Suharto and Karimov hurried to make a hajj. ”
That is, the intellectual revival of the Islamic world is likely to take place (if it takes place at all) under the patronage of the authorities. But the paradox is that a significant part of the military-political and religious elites, predominantly Arab, is not interested either in the intellectual or in any other revival of their countries. That is, a situation in which Muslims, who make up one fifth of the world's population, will produce only five percent of their knowledge, may well continue for a long time. And the emancipation of the Islamic world, as Huntington wrote, is primarily of a demographic nature, as evidenced by Muslim authors, in particular, the well-known political scientist, research fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Ruslan Kurbanov. In one of the speeches, he complained that there were more books in the medieval library of Baghdad than in all European countries, and now Israel publishes books ten times more than in the entire Arab world, he noted: the authorities are to blame for this Islamic countries. They, according to the political scientist, are not interested in raising the level of education of their citizens, because they understand that as soon as an educated stratum appears in the society led by the dictator, she questions the established order of things. Ignorance is the main resource of dictatorial regimes. The examples were Egypt, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen. Another of the problems of the Islamic world identified by Kurbanov is the monosyllabic thinking, the inability to calculate the scenarios of future events. This allows the West to manipulate it.
Build a tank and land a drone
Nevertheless, there are governments that are trying to solve problems caused by backwardness in the basic sciences, economics, and education. But why do some Islamic states have achievements in the military-scientific field, while others do not? The answer (hardly, of course, exhaustive) to this question is in the civilization code or, if you will, the cultural matrix. Jemal often used both of these definitions.
I will start with Iran, which occupies a special place not only in the Islamic world, but also in the universal stories. And not only because it is a center of Shiism (in its specific local sense). This is the direct heir of the ancient highly cultured Persian civilization, and I will say more - the Mesopotamian. Even in the golden age of Muslim history, the Persians played an almost decisive role, especially in the life of the Baghdad Caliphate (recall at least Barmakids, Suhrab, al Khorezmi, Sukhravardi, Firdousi, Khayyam). They were the real intellectual elite of the Abassid caliphate and the Seljuk sultanate, which included the territory of the Zoroastrian state of the Sassanids defeated by the Arabs. In confirmation, I refer to the outstanding Russian scholar and geopolitics of Vadim Tsymbursky: “The Caliphate was created in the VII century as the hegemony of the Arabs. However, the rapidly Islamized Iranian Zoroastrians, less than a century, were among the strongest power elites of the caliphate, and two centuries later grew into one of the two recognized core components along with the Arabs. ”
The present-day Iran is perhaps the only Islamic country at the present stage that is trying to build large-scale armed forces based on internal scientific potential and its own industry. Of course, the achievements here are how competitive they are - another question.
I'll start with tank building. Under the leadership of Brigadier General Mir-Yunus Masum-Zadeh, engineers at Construction Crusade developed the Zulfikar tank, which belongs to the second-generation post-war vehicles. “Considerable help,” says expert Sergey Suvorov, “was provided to Iranian engineers by Russian specialists. In the early 90s, Tehran bought a batch of new T-72Ss at that time. Together with tanks Separate technologies for the production of spare parts and some components were transferred to Iran. At least two hundred specialists were trained in Russia at the Shot courses. We must pay tribute, the Iranian tankers who arrived in Solnechnogorsk took their studies very seriously, trying to absorb even the smallest little things. "
For the first time the tank was shown in 1994 and since then has been repeatedly upgraded. Now in service with the Zulfikar-3, which is still inferior in its combat characteristics to the Israeli Merkava Mk.4 and the Russian T-90 and the American M1 Abrams. But this is still ...
Iranian naval forces have ultra-small Kadir submarines of their own design. However, again, not really. Military expert Sergey Tolmachyov notes that the Kadir type diesel-electric submarines was developed in Iran in the middle of the 2000's. Its prototype is the North Korean submarine of the Yono type, the production technology of which, together with three ready-made boats, was transferred by Seoul to Tehran to repay the public debt.
This is not the only Iranian-made submarine. The Iranian Navy has three nationally developed underwater means for delivering Al-Sabehat-15 combat swimmers (length - 9,2 meters) designed for special operations forces.
Rocket science. At the present stage, according to expert Kirill Ryabov, Iran’s existing ballistic missiles make it possible to keep a large area around the country at gunpoint. With a range of about a thousand kilometers, they are capable of attacking targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East and Transcaucasia. Shahab-3 or Fajr-3 missiles reach objects in India, North and East Africa, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. "With such weapons, Iran is already claiming the title of regional leader."
The Chinese and North Korean specialists provided serious assistance in Iran’s rocket science. In particular, the Shahab-3 was created on the basis of the North Korean Nodon, and that, in turn, came into being with the Russian help - “thanks” to Gorbachev, who at one time put the Soviet military-industrial complex on a hungry ration. As for the Fajr-3, the Iranians claim that the rocket was developed exclusively on its own. Brigadier General Hossein Salami, saying that she was able to move away from radar and hit several targets at once, he added: this is a completely new technology. Israeli and American experts doubt the stated capabilities of the Fajr-3, but they do not provide convincing arguments.
In the Air Force, Iran also seeks to rely on its own forces. A few years ago, the country's defense minister, Ahmad Wahidi, announced a program to create a third-generation fighter-bomber. The first is the Azarachsh (“Lightning”) fighter, developed by IAMI (Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial, also known as HESA) in collaboration with Shahid Sattari University. But without the help of Russia has not done. According to Kirill Ryabov, the fighter’s combat capabilities are primarily provided by the Russian-made H019ME Topaz airborne radar. Created in 90-e fighters "Sakih" ("Thunderbolt") are a modernization of "Azarachsha". According to the Iranian military, "Sakih" will be able to use the latest and most promising weapons of domestic development.
Significant progress of the Iranian military scientific thought is evidenced by the American stealth-UAV Lockheed Martin RQ-2011 Sentinel “planted” in the 170 of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s air defense. Then the Iranian Navy intercepted another American drone - Scan Eagle. According to the doctor of military sciences Konstantin Sivkov, if today Iran does not own any military technologies like intercontinental missiles, then this is only due to the problems of materials science and the like.
Exaggeration? Not. For how does a scientifically developed country differ from a backward one? Criteria a lot. One of them is nanotechnology. Iran has achieved notable success in this area, taking first place in the Middle East and 20 in the world. Suffice it to say Sudabe Dawaran - Associate Professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Tabriz. On her account 15 registered inventions. An interesting detail: according to the Iranian ambassador to Russia, Mehdi Sanai, 67 percent of students in the universities of his country are girls. And Yevgeny Satanovsky, a leading domestic expert on the Middle East, once said: "Iran is a high-tech state, and the metallurgical industry is one of the best in the world." Add: Iran and its national space research is another interesting topic that requires a separate article.
Nuclear core of the Islamic world
Pakistan is a country with a rich history and the only Muslim nuclear power. However, like Iran in the field of rocket science, Islamabad relies on the assistance of the Chinese and North Koreans. Together with the PRC, Abdali, Ghaznavi, Shahin-1 and 1A, as well as the Shahin-2 BRSD, and the DPRK, the Hauri BRDD were developed.
In other words, without outside help, and non-Islamic countries, Pakistan would hardly have been able to create means of delivering nuclear weapons. But the possession of the atomic bomb Islamabad is obliged to its scientists, in particular the nuclear physicist Abdul-Qadir Khan. True, there is an assumption that this man, who had long worked in the Old World in the concern URENCO, associated with the enrichment of uranium, simply stole nuclear secrets. Expert Vyacheslav Yanovsky believes that Kadir Khan is rather a clever careerist than a talented scientist, because he was able to remove his compatriot, an outstanding physicist Munir Khan, who has been working on a nuclear project since the creation of the atomic bomb. Little is known about him, but one can say with all certainty: thanks to such enthusiastic scientists, Islamabad obtained a nuclear weapon. The country has enough merit in the scientific field, including in theoretical physics, it suffices to recall the Nobel Prize winner, the outstanding scientist Abdus Salam. At the beginning of 50, he was the one who directed the nuclear weapons program.
Like Iran, modern Pakistan is trying to manufacture its own conventional weapons. So far there are no special achievements, but the first steps have been taken. Along with China, the JF-17 fighter is already interested in Azerbaijan, Nigeria, Myanmar. And for financial reasons, the latter preferred the JF-17 to the Russian MiG-29.
Arguing about the successes of Pakistan in creating nuclear weapons, Yevgeny Satanovsky noted: "The Pakistanis are the same Hindus, only Muslims." I should add: the very word “Hindu” is identical to the phrase “a person involved in an ancient civilization”. That is, with respect to Pakistan, we also have reason to talk about its inherent highly cultured matrix, not fully reformatted by Islam and with caste division not overcome to this day, although not as tough as in India.
And it is obvious that if Iran needs a new Nizami al Mulk - Persian, to whom the Seljuk Sultanate owes much of its power, then Pakistan needs Mahmoud Ghaznavi - in honor of him, by the way, the country has a short-range missile. Of course, we are not talking about a campaign against India - it is simply impossible, but about the protection of science, which this prominent figure rendered.
In any case, both Iran and Pakistan may well claim the status, following the terminology of Huntington, the “core states” of the Islamic world precisely because of their civilization code, dating back centuries.
And another interesting detail, relating, perhaps, to a greater extent to Iran. Vadim Tsymbursky wrote: "The nature of civilizations can not be disclosed without resorting to the concept of hegemony." In this connection, let me remind you that Persia was a world empire, a superpower, quite possibly, that was also Harappan civilization. Someone will object: "All this is the work of days gone by." Of course, it’s not possible for me to predict the future, and the Shiite republic is unlikely to become the center of the Islamic world, nor will Pakistan be sharpened to a standoff with India. But Iran may well be among the leading world powers as a distinctive civilization and its great past (at least in part) will revive in its great present. The rest of the Muslim world, mainly Arabic, I think, will not be able to make intellectual competition to either the West or the Asian tigers.
Speaking about the Islamic renaissance, Jemal put into it his specific semi-cultural understanding. But it seems to me relevant to reflect on the “prophecies” of this man regarding the future - including the intellectual - revival of Muslim civilization. Was Jamal right here, or, if the question is broader, is the modern Islamic world capable of challenging the West, experiencing spiritual degradation and experiencing a demographic crisis?
In the field of basic sciences, the Old and New Worlds, along with Israel and Japan, are still ahead of the rest of the world, and Russia, despite the difficulties experienced, still holds a worthy place in this series. If anyone steps on their heels, they are not Muslims, but the so-called Asian tigers.
But times are changing. Not only Heydar Jemal wrote about the Muslim renaissance, but also the authors, far from Islam, Huntington for example: “The revival of religion is a global phenomenon. However, they are most clearly manifested in the cultural affirmation of Asia and Islam, as well as in the challenges that they throw to the West. These are the most dynamic civilizations of the last quarter of the 20th century. The Islamic challenge is expressed in a comprehensive cultural, social and political revival in the Muslim world and the rejection of Western values and institutions accompanying this process. ”
Even at the end of the last century, Huntington drew attention to an important detail: “In 70 and 80, political leaders literally rushed to identify themselves and their regimes with Islam. King Hussein of Jordan, convinced that the secular government has very illusive prospects in the Arab world, spoke of the need to create Islamic democracy and modernized Islam. The king of Morocco, Hassan, emphasized his origin from the Prophet and his role as leader of the faithful. The Sultan of Brunei, for which he had previously not noticed adherence to Islam, suddenly became extremely pious and defined his regime as the Malay Muslim monarchy. Ben Ali in Tunisia began to regularly appeal to Allah in his speeches, “to wear the clothes of Islam” to attract the attention of Islamist groups. At the beginning of 90, Indonesian President Suharto clearly set himself the political task of becoming a great Muslim. In Bangladesh, the principle of secularism was thrown out of the constitution in the middle of the 70, and in the early nineties, the secular, Kemalist Turkey underwent a serious test for the first time. To emphasize loyalty to Islam, state leaders Ozal, Suharto and Karimov hurried to make a hajj. ”
That is, the intellectual revival of the Islamic world is likely to take place (if it takes place at all) under the patronage of the authorities. But the paradox is that a significant part of the military-political and religious elites, predominantly Arab, is not interested either in the intellectual or in any other revival of their countries. That is, a situation in which Muslims, who make up one fifth of the world's population, will produce only five percent of their knowledge, may well continue for a long time. And the emancipation of the Islamic world, as Huntington wrote, is primarily of a demographic nature, as evidenced by Muslim authors, in particular, the well-known political scientist, research fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Ruslan Kurbanov. In one of the speeches, he complained that there were more books in the medieval library of Baghdad than in all European countries, and now Israel publishes books ten times more than in the entire Arab world, he noted: the authorities are to blame for this Islamic countries. They, according to the political scientist, are not interested in raising the level of education of their citizens, because they understand that as soon as an educated stratum appears in the society led by the dictator, she questions the established order of things. Ignorance is the main resource of dictatorial regimes. The examples were Egypt, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen. Another of the problems of the Islamic world identified by Kurbanov is the monosyllabic thinking, the inability to calculate the scenarios of future events. This allows the West to manipulate it.
Build a tank and land a drone
Nevertheless, there are governments that are trying to solve problems caused by backwardness in the basic sciences, economics, and education. But why do some Islamic states have achievements in the military-scientific field, while others do not? The answer (hardly, of course, exhaustive) to this question is in the civilization code or, if you will, the cultural matrix. Jemal often used both of these definitions.
I will start with Iran, which occupies a special place not only in the Islamic world, but also in the universal stories. And not only because it is a center of Shiism (in its specific local sense). This is the direct heir of the ancient highly cultured Persian civilization, and I will say more - the Mesopotamian. Even in the golden age of Muslim history, the Persians played an almost decisive role, especially in the life of the Baghdad Caliphate (recall at least Barmakids, Suhrab, al Khorezmi, Sukhravardi, Firdousi, Khayyam). They were the real intellectual elite of the Abassid caliphate and the Seljuk sultanate, which included the territory of the Zoroastrian state of the Sassanids defeated by the Arabs. In confirmation, I refer to the outstanding Russian scholar and geopolitics of Vadim Tsymbursky: “The Caliphate was created in the VII century as the hegemony of the Arabs. However, the rapidly Islamized Iranian Zoroastrians, less than a century, were among the strongest power elites of the caliphate, and two centuries later grew into one of the two recognized core components along with the Arabs. ”The present-day Iran is perhaps the only Islamic country at the present stage that is trying to build large-scale armed forces based on internal scientific potential and its own industry. Of course, the achievements here are how competitive they are - another question.
I'll start with tank building. Under the leadership of Brigadier General Mir-Yunus Masum-Zadeh, engineers at Construction Crusade developed the Zulfikar tank, which belongs to the second-generation post-war vehicles. “Considerable help,” says expert Sergey Suvorov, “was provided to Iranian engineers by Russian specialists. In the early 90s, Tehran bought a batch of new T-72Ss at that time. Together with tanks Separate technologies for the production of spare parts and some components were transferred to Iran. At least two hundred specialists were trained in Russia at the Shot courses. We must pay tribute, the Iranian tankers who arrived in Solnechnogorsk took their studies very seriously, trying to absorb even the smallest little things. "
For the first time the tank was shown in 1994 and since then has been repeatedly upgraded. Now in service with the Zulfikar-3, which is still inferior in its combat characteristics to the Israeli Merkava Mk.4 and the Russian T-90 and the American M1 Abrams. But this is still ...
Iranian naval forces have ultra-small Kadir submarines of their own design. However, again, not really. Military expert Sergey Tolmachyov notes that the Kadir type diesel-electric submarines was developed in Iran in the middle of the 2000's. Its prototype is the North Korean submarine of the Yono type, the production technology of which, together with three ready-made boats, was transferred by Seoul to Tehran to repay the public debt.
This is not the only Iranian-made submarine. The Iranian Navy has three nationally developed underwater means for delivering Al-Sabehat-15 combat swimmers (length - 9,2 meters) designed for special operations forces.
Rocket science. At the present stage, according to expert Kirill Ryabov, Iran’s existing ballistic missiles make it possible to keep a large area around the country at gunpoint. With a range of about a thousand kilometers, they are capable of attacking targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East and Transcaucasia. Shahab-3 or Fajr-3 missiles reach objects in India, North and East Africa, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. "With such weapons, Iran is already claiming the title of regional leader."The Chinese and North Korean specialists provided serious assistance in Iran’s rocket science. In particular, the Shahab-3 was created on the basis of the North Korean Nodon, and that, in turn, came into being with the Russian help - “thanks” to Gorbachev, who at one time put the Soviet military-industrial complex on a hungry ration. As for the Fajr-3, the Iranians claim that the rocket was developed exclusively on its own. Brigadier General Hossein Salami, saying that she was able to move away from radar and hit several targets at once, he added: this is a completely new technology. Israeli and American experts doubt the stated capabilities of the Fajr-3, but they do not provide convincing arguments.
In the Air Force, Iran also seeks to rely on its own forces. A few years ago, the country's defense minister, Ahmad Wahidi, announced a program to create a third-generation fighter-bomber. The first is the Azarachsh (“Lightning”) fighter, developed by IAMI (Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial, also known as HESA) in collaboration with Shahid Sattari University. But without the help of Russia has not done. According to Kirill Ryabov, the fighter’s combat capabilities are primarily provided by the Russian-made H019ME Topaz airborne radar. Created in 90-e fighters "Sakih" ("Thunderbolt") are a modernization of "Azarachsha". According to the Iranian military, "Sakih" will be able to use the latest and most promising weapons of domestic development.
Significant progress of the Iranian military scientific thought is evidenced by the American stealth-UAV Lockheed Martin RQ-2011 Sentinel “planted” in the 170 of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s air defense. Then the Iranian Navy intercepted another American drone - Scan Eagle. According to the doctor of military sciences Konstantin Sivkov, if today Iran does not own any military technologies like intercontinental missiles, then this is only due to the problems of materials science and the like.
Exaggeration? Not. For how does a scientifically developed country differ from a backward one? Criteria a lot. One of them is nanotechnology. Iran has achieved notable success in this area, taking first place in the Middle East and 20 in the world. Suffice it to say Sudabe Dawaran - Associate Professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Tabriz. On her account 15 registered inventions. An interesting detail: according to the Iranian ambassador to Russia, Mehdi Sanai, 67 percent of students in the universities of his country are girls. And Yevgeny Satanovsky, a leading domestic expert on the Middle East, once said: "Iran is a high-tech state, and the metallurgical industry is one of the best in the world." Add: Iran and its national space research is another interesting topic that requires a separate article.
Nuclear core of the Islamic world
Pakistan is a country with a rich history and the only Muslim nuclear power. However, like Iran in the field of rocket science, Islamabad relies on the assistance of the Chinese and North Koreans. Together with the PRC, Abdali, Ghaznavi, Shahin-1 and 1A, as well as the Shahin-2 BRSD, and the DPRK, the Hauri BRDD were developed.
In other words, without outside help, and non-Islamic countries, Pakistan would hardly have been able to create means of delivering nuclear weapons. But the possession of the atomic bomb Islamabad is obliged to its scientists, in particular the nuclear physicist Abdul-Qadir Khan. True, there is an assumption that this man, who had long worked in the Old World in the concern URENCO, associated with the enrichment of uranium, simply stole nuclear secrets. Expert Vyacheslav Yanovsky believes that Kadir Khan is rather a clever careerist than a talented scientist, because he was able to remove his compatriot, an outstanding physicist Munir Khan, who has been working on a nuclear project since the creation of the atomic bomb. Little is known about him, but one can say with all certainty: thanks to such enthusiastic scientists, Islamabad obtained a nuclear weapon. The country has enough merit in the scientific field, including in theoretical physics, it suffices to recall the Nobel Prize winner, the outstanding scientist Abdus Salam. At the beginning of 50, he was the one who directed the nuclear weapons program.
Like Iran, modern Pakistan is trying to manufacture its own conventional weapons. So far there are no special achievements, but the first steps have been taken. Along with China, the JF-17 fighter is already interested in Azerbaijan, Nigeria, Myanmar. And for financial reasons, the latter preferred the JF-17 to the Russian MiG-29.
Arguing about the successes of Pakistan in creating nuclear weapons, Yevgeny Satanovsky noted: "The Pakistanis are the same Hindus, only Muslims." I should add: the very word “Hindu” is identical to the phrase “a person involved in an ancient civilization”. That is, with respect to Pakistan, we also have reason to talk about its inherent highly cultured matrix, not fully reformatted by Islam and with caste division not overcome to this day, although not as tough as in India.
And it is obvious that if Iran needs a new Nizami al Mulk - Persian, to whom the Seljuk Sultanate owes much of its power, then Pakistan needs Mahmoud Ghaznavi - in honor of him, by the way, the country has a short-range missile. Of course, we are not talking about a campaign against India - it is simply impossible, but about the protection of science, which this prominent figure rendered.
In any case, both Iran and Pakistan may well claim the status, following the terminology of Huntington, the “core states” of the Islamic world precisely because of their civilization code, dating back centuries.
And another interesting detail, relating, perhaps, to a greater extent to Iran. Vadim Tsymbursky wrote: "The nature of civilizations can not be disclosed without resorting to the concept of hegemony." In this connection, let me remind you that Persia was a world empire, a superpower, quite possibly, that was also Harappan civilization. Someone will object: "All this is the work of days gone by." Of course, it’s not possible for me to predict the future, and the Shiite republic is unlikely to become the center of the Islamic world, nor will Pakistan be sharpened to a standoff with India. But Iran may well be among the leading world powers as a distinctive civilization and its great past (at least in part) will revive in its great present. The rest of the Muslim world, mainly Arabic, I think, will not be able to make intellectual competition to either the West or the Asian tigers.
Information