Just compare the Western and Islamic world in terms of technological progress, educational system, taking care of the sick and the poor. Go back in history for a while… that might provide the proper answer.

The Amish people in Pennsylvania could be deemed as quite fundamentalistic, even a bit legalistic, right? They stick to some rules you actually don’t have to hold as a Christian. But In 2006, a gunman entered an Amish school, killing and wounding ten young girls. Within days, the Amish community expressed their forgiveness for the man. Not only that, but they would try to console the family of the murderer, as as far as I’m informed.
Now, ask one of your acquaintances or friends with an islamic background what the proper islamic anwer would be. I would expect quite a different approach.
There are many more different approaches, when it comes to the relation between the sexes, esteem of education, dealing with your enemies, the worth of the individual, dealing with the sick, dealing with those who disagree, what a contract means between a Moslem and a Non-Moslem, and between a Chrstian and a Non-Christian (with severe implications for a nation’s economy)….and so on.

further reading:
On Islam:
Ali Sina’s website: http://www.faithfreedom.org/
(former muslim, persian, somewhat related to an ayatollah, but beware: no kidding there, no mincing words)

On Christian influence on the Western world: The books written by Rodney Stark.
From a sociological perspective, agnostic (recently, after writing all his stuff, reconsidering).

On the Character of the Triune God (why Triune? a loving God – really?), forgiveness (deep on that one), why allows God suffering in this world?:
Paul Young: The Shack
(Novel with some of the best theological content I ever came across; highly controversal though [with little reason, in my opinion])
(After reading the book, without knowing his background you would say: I don’t want to go through what it takes to write such a book!)

Music to my ears

The one-time prosperous jewel of the continent …has become Hell.

My cousin’s were missionaries there, some 30-40 years ago. They had young children, and finally had to leave.

…the outcome …the result you now see …was – sadly – never in doubt.

you mean the same people who starved 7 million in one winter? or the useful idiots who after hearing all the false hard work of the state organs active measures, promoted it as a means of removing protections so that an attack could succeed?

the ‘useful goal’ was the asymetrical disarmament of the united states while the other side built up in secret in preparation for a tipping point or opportunity.

there was nothing good in that, not even its core purpose. convincing honest good people to all put their weapons down in a world that has criminals not willing to also comply, leaves us in what position? knowing the source of the ‘good purpose’ was the criminals with their own weapons, should tend to show the fallacy of that.

we are doing the same things now to ourselves. centralizing through propping up huge corporations and preventing them competition. inventions have to happen in the corporation and with the collectie rather than external, and so forth. schooling is dumbing them down, and making them look to the big man, or didnt you notice the election? their education is compartmentalized, broken, so that they dont function competently. the tools that allowed the ignorant to grwo and constantly learn are denied them (methodologies. new schooling wants them to rediscover everyting, or other methods that do not give them methodologies of how to formulate solutions, and build knowlege on their own. etc). news and literature dumbed down 3 grades in my lifetime (8 to 5). consensus tricks replaced merit. appointments replace competition. things are more expensive, yet lower quality. companies dont please customers, but hate and trick them using the protections of the state. tons more. new age crystals and magic and pagan religions now replacing christianity and faith based. ideology based superstition replaces empirical based common knowlege. we got the message, western religion bad, and a large number get around their need for it by repalcing it with some retro one that really feeds the mentally incomplete and home incomplete.

maybe the moral momentum and the fancy cars cloud our vision. prevents us from seeing how we are not that far away from that same level.

a new military report as to riots and fights in the US shows that others see it, even if we dont.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/30/AR2008113002217_pf.html

with Stalin Makes Top 12 in Russia’s Poll for All-Time Hero
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,473245,00.html

we are not really that far from the same collective type mindset that looks to power to solve the problems rather htan accept the limits of meritocritous rule that cant lie.

the distance between the people of africa and us is not that far, look how much cultural knowlege (we cant even rear our kids well), and other things that have been permanently removed in the past 40 years? whats left?

one should note that most of those horrible acts in the past century were intentional. removing about a third of the population served the removal of the cultural knowlege and its cohesive struture of trust and such which allowed for trade and ambition, and other things.

remember that in every one of these states, from somalia, cuba, china, russia, etc… the people died more at the hands of their own rulers than at wars and have more to fear from those that step in and become the big man of the collective.

They still are. Except the tribe has been replaced by such things as “class” and “power” hierarchies, along with ethnic lines.

Tribalism is only one extrapolation of the basic human need for hierarchy, leadership, social control, and self-survival. Yet even if tribalism appears in another name, it still has some of the same effects: parochial tribal effects.

It is why Democrats can be seen as a “tribe” and why that tribe cannot be said to be part of the loyal opposition in America, an uber-tribe.

As a Christian, it is always a curiosity to me to try and tease out what cultural factors we have contributed to the world’s societies (for good and ill) and what things would look like if we had ceased to exist at any time in the last 20 centuries. Certainly, I can identify times and places where we seem to have created little if any improvement. However, there is some good in the world, particularly in the west, that I cannot see having happened any other way.

I entertain the fantasy that Judaism would have been different, and taken up some of the slack.

Additional note: The medical mission and orphanage my family has worked at over the years in Romania (and where we got our third and fourth sons) is run by a Romanian doctor who traveled throughout the US and Europe starting in 1989 to raise funds and volunteers. He stopped bothering with western Europe in the late 90′s. “No one ever comes but Americans,” he says. “It’s not worth my time to go anywhere else.”