Applying just this sort of analysis to Islam overall, I have come to the conclusion that “The Clash of Civilizations” is inevitable, regardless of whether Iran has stopped its nuclear program or not. It’s inevitably primarily because the West is not powerful enough to create sufficient demand within Muslim societies for a secular democratic regime, founded on universal principles of human rights, by whatever means.
The fundamental problem is that there is a sufficiently large group of men in the Muslim world for whom living in 7th century conditions is a non-issue. Thus, they destroy whatever exists in their environment that wouldn’t “fit” in a 7th century framework, even if they have to temporarily utilize the implements from beyond the 7th century to accomplish these goals, e.g. IEDs and, at some point, nuclear weapons.
An interesting application of Bayesian analysis would be analysis of the adherence to certain multicultural dogmas, such as the equal legitimacy of all cultures. Surely, stories of Taliban et al. torture or even homegrown Muslim atrocities, such as the hijab story coming out of Canada right now or even less violent but still disturbing incidents like the teddy bear fiasco, are going to force some “weak” multiculturalists to repudiate their beliefs at some point. Given how few and far between any “feel-good” stories are when it comes to Muslims (makes sense, since practicing Muslims know that they aren’t to take non-Muslims as friends, so why lift a finger to help non-Muslims), it should only be a matter of time until all Westerners have accumulated enough empirical evidence contradictory to the claim of cultural equality between the West and Islam.
I’ve seen progress toward this point in my own social circle, in which I was the first to reach the conclusion that Islam had nothing to offer to the West. Things I say that would have brought down condemnation on me now bring resigned sighs of agreement.
