Religion of peace?

[Occhidiangela]

However, Islam is not that far removed from what Christianity was back in the Middle Ages... which is about at the same age of the religion, given that Islam dates from roughly 620 AD, IIRC.

It's comforting to see that there is only seven hundred years of catching up to do.

One of the models of human behavior change says that when a person experiences enough pain, they change their behavior. Perhaps, instead of trying to alleve some of the populace's pain that they are experiencing due to the regime ... maybe we should allow them to experience it full force. Let them see that it isn't working.

If you wish to apply a human behavior model to a society, you can try, but not all things scale up very evenly.

Here's an example: the maritime embargo against General Cedras in Haiti after Aristide got tossed out.
The pain applied didn't hurt the gentry much, but it did lay some lumber on the every day Joe in Haiti.
Likewise the embargo versus Iran: the rich are still buying Mercedes and other luxury goods.

What outcome do you want the pain to enable? Answering that question is very important when choosing to apply pain to change behavior.

Merry Christmas.

Occhi