Re: AC and education
AC:
"It's pretty clear that usually the smarter and more educated people are, the less they're likely to be xenophobic. Though it isn't usually the brightest sparcs that end up in politics, islamists with their built-in politics/religion entanglement seem to've made an art of it."
I believe this to be true. I once saw a breakdown of the illiteracy rates for the provinces of Pakistan and trust me, it's not good. In fact, it's down right scary. 170 million people in Pakistan with illiteracy rates in some provinces around and over 50%.
That's a lot of people, a hell of a lot of people that can't even read and write.
I noticed a correlation between those lawless regions of Pakistan (Dir, Swat, North Waziristan, the Federally administered tribal areas and NWFP - North West Frontier Provinces), these are the regions where the extremism breeds, these are the areas from where the suicide bombers originate who then head into the cities to blow themselves up. It's these areas which have the highest illiteracy rates.
The Pakistani government recognises that the madrassas are a problem. They're not schools as we think of them, their sole objective is to brainwash the students with the Koran, they don't teach any other subjects.
The government wanted to take on the madrassas a couple of years ago, the madrassas responded "You try and close us down and we'll fight back", and they will. AK47s are extremely popular in Pakistan.
The mainstream Pakistani's are sick to death of the extremists, but when the extremists come into your village, town armed to the teeth with AK47's what can the civilian population do?
They kill fellow muslims, they don't care, if you don't conform to their extremist beliefs then you are a target, regardless if you are muslim or not.