The totalitarian barbarism which is always essential to Islam always remains the problem in any country where Muslims are in the majority.

Like the sincere attempt at secularism by Turkey's Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, so the sincere attempt by Syrian philosopher Michel Aflaq to spark a secular pan-Arabism under the auspices of Ba' ath Party socialism; both were ultimately doomed to failure. The pervasive totalitarianism which is a essential component of Islamic ideology inevitably rears its putrid head in the form of Recep Erdogan the Turkish Islamist despot and Saddam Hussein the Iraqi fascist dictator with his strongly sectarian Islamist sensibilities couched in the imaginary secularism of Ba' athist socialism. The problem, as always, remains Islam. http://www.meforum.org/6271/the-bathification-of-iraq-saddam-hussein