Iraq

The blog site had its first visitor from Iraq the other day - which for some reason pleased me no end.

Maybe it's a sign of some sort of normal life being restored to a country - with such a troubled and bloody past?

I hope so.

Because while the suicide killers continue to try and prevent Iraqis from building a new future -  there is at least a power sharing government in place which recognises the rights of minority groups - not just those of the majority.

Which is a difficult concept to grasp in the middle east and - to be fair - other parts of the world as well.

But the middle east and Arab countries are the centre of attention for the moment - because so many of them are feudal and tribal.

Where the rights of minorities are not just unimportant - in many cases they have no rights at all to speak of - at least as we would understand them in the western world.

So while in the UK a mosque can be built in relative peace and harmony - just about anywhere - a Christian church would not be tolerated in Saudi Arabian. 

The authorities wouldn't allow such a thing to happen - before even the fire bombers burned it down.

The exception proves the rule in countries like the Lebanon where - despite all kinds of other problems - people of different religious faiths and beliefs live side by side - in relative peace.

Although like the former Yugoslavia - you get the impression that some people would quite happily start murdering their neighbours - if they ever got the chance.

So it will be interesting to see how things develop in Iraq - and in Egypt as well where Islamist parties have won a majority of seats - in the new Egyptian parliament.

A tyranny of the majority over the minority - is not democracy at all - as the world has discovered over time.

But things can change by peaceful, non-violent means - as the civil rights movement in America, for example, proved.