Yes, excellent programme. 
 
I was curious about Khaldun's lack of curiosity about the Christian Reconquista. It profoundly affected his own life, forcing his emigration from Seville. He understood Islamic political decline, and had a theory for it. But not western Christian rise.

most Western nations were very restrictive of minority religions when the Russian Revolution occurred... 
 
That would be 1917. At that time there were 47 "Western nations": 
 
21 in Europe, not counting micro-states; 20 in Latin America (including Haiti); four British Dominions that were de facto sovereign; the U.S.; and Liberia. 
 
Which of these were "very restrictive of minority religions"? Certainly not the U.S., nor Britain, nor the Dominions, nor France, nor Switzerland, nor Germany, nor Austria-Hungary. Not even Russia, where active minority reiigions included Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, Islam, and even Buddhism. (The Kalmucks of the lower Volga are Europe's only native Buddhists, in a sort of communion with Tibetan Buddhism.) Not the Scandinavian countries (which had no religious minorities). Not the Netherlands. Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and maybe the Balkan states, possibly. 
 
Latin America? The only religious restriction that I know of at that time was revolutionary Mexico's crackdown on the Catholic Church - not the minority religion. 
 
I think this was a very poorly thought-out throwaway comment.

Does this evidence count against the Arthur Koestler theory that Ashkenazy Jews might be descended from the Khazars?

Have you read Stephem Oppenheimer's The Origins of the British - A Genetic Detective Story? 
 
I assume Oppenheimer is now the main opinion on this subject. You say things at odds with Oppenheimer without presenting your opinions as a refutation / rebuttal of him, without explaining to us how you think he's got it wrong. I'm a bit confused?

razib 
 
I think we can agree that Martin Luther had a massive effect on human history. Yet his argument about "sola fide" may not have been understood by many.

Religions really are different from each other. They hold different beliefs, & have different cultural flavours. Navigating round these is interesting but scary, & makes me favour "laicité" or secularism. But my preference may itself be a product of the specifically post-Christian culture I know. 
 
Take the attitudes of Islam and Christianity to Jesus & Muhammad. Islam teaches that Jesus was a holy man but not the Son Of God. This sounds friendly enough, rather like the Atheists who say Jesus was a great moral teacher like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, but they just can't believe he got up & walked around three days later. 
 
However, the Islamic view of Jesus isn't like that. He didn't die on the cross. Rather, at the last moment, there was a Houdini-like sleight-of-hand. God swapped him for some other person, who suffered the agonising Crucifixion in his place. 
 
If the saving sacrifice, the redemption through suffering, never took place, then Christianity is emptied of all meaning. It also inverts the moral character of Jesus. A Jesus who would endorse a "stunt double" dying a horrible death in his place is a very different Jesus from the Christian saviour who takes the sins of all humanity to the cross. The Islamic view is far more offensive to Christians than the view of many Atheists, that Jesus died horribly at the hands of the Romans but never revived. The seriousness of the Crucifixion feels mocked & trivialised. Nothing in the "Life Of Brian" is as offensive as the Islamic view of Jesus. 
 
There is a similar problem with Christianity's view of Muhammad. Christians say they believe in the same One God as Muslims. They just don't believe Muhammad was his prophet. But if Muhammad wasn't a prophet he must have been either deluded or a charlatan or both - at best an L Ron Hubbard with an army. This is bound to hurt Muslims' feelings, since Muhammad is "al-insan, al-kamil" - the perfect human. 
 
The different reported characters of Jesus & Muhammad have led to very different cultures. All of Jesus's teachings are impractical moral absolutes - love your neighbour as you love yourself; don't punish anyone for anything ever because you're not morally perfect yourself; turn the other cheek; take no thought for the morrow; don't just give a percentage of your money to the poor, give all of it - & even that isn't enough. No society could function on these instructions, though a few have tried. Jesus says render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, & says his kingdom is "not of this world". This makes possible the separation of Church & State. But Muhammad's "Year Zero" is the intensely political Constitution of Medina. The good governance of the ummah is at the heart of his teaching.

Imagine you're about to undertake a course of chiropractic treatment. You read Singh's article and decide not to proceed. Why? Because you realise the treatment won't work. Does the chiropractor know it won't work, or is he deluded? It doesn't matter. What matters to you is, does the treatment work? If it doesn't work you don't want to pay for it. 
 
Imagine the chiropractor is a con-man who believes his treatment won't work, and he's selling it cynically to make money. Unbeknown to him, super-new research has discovered conclusively that his treatment DOES work, and you've read that research. In that situation, you'd pay him for the treatment. 
 
Ultimately, if you're selling what you claim is a medical treatment, the ONLY REPUTATION you can have is a reputation for successful treatment. The idea that you can have a "reputation", worthy of defence, for sincere but nonetheless total failure, makes no sense. 
 
The problem with making "dishonesty" the benchmark test for this case is, maybe only future brain scans of chiropractors could ever settle the question. Supposing the chiropractic association commissions their own independent tests on the efficacy of their treatments. The tests come back, and they're completely damning. They show no benefit whatsoever from their treatments. Even in that situation, couldn't the chiropractors sincerely believe that the tests were somehow flawed, even if they have no idea how?

Roman occupied Britain versus Arab occupied Fertile Crescent: 
 
The Romans weren't just superior soldiers. Their culture, literature, sculpture, science & agriculture was also far superior. The Britons couldn't teach the Romans anything. 
 
The Arabs were superior warriors. But their culture lagged behind the conquered peoples. As they transformed themselves from zealous jihadi warriors to imperial governors they were bound to borrow from the superior local culture. Think of Kublai Khan in China. 
 
John Emerson -  
 
"The conquering armies were a mix of the available soldiers, mostly Muslims but including Christians and some pagans. This is pretty well-established." 
 
Could you provide a link so I can get understand what exactly the evidence for this consists of? Are you referring to the earliest Saracen attacks, such as that described by the author of the Doctrina Jacobi? Or the conquest of Jerusalem, witnessed by St Sophronius? Their writings - which you can read here - http://web.archive.org/web/20060429163403/http://www.christianorigins.com/islamrefs.html - don't mention Christians serving in the invading armies; to me, they make such involvement seem unlikely. Later on, once the Saracens were obviously on the winning side, I can see how this might have changed. 
 
(BTW I think it's unlikely that Jesus was an entirely fictional character, even if there's no non-Christian evidence for his existence. We know, independent of the Gospels, that Pilate, Caiaphas & John the Baptist all lived at the correct dates. Perhaps the best argument for Jesus as a real person is the convoluted story of his birth. The Gospel writers go to great trouble to have the Nazarene Jesus born in Bethlehem & so fulfil Jewish prophecy. This suggests there was a real historical figure, known to be from Nazareth. If he was an invented character they could place him in Bethlehem for the whole of his youth with no problem.)

The analogy between Roman occupied Britain and the Arab occupied Fertile Crescent misses an essential point. The Romans were not just militarily superior to the ancient Britons. They were culturally much more advanced, in terms of literature, the arts, science, agriculture, everything. The Britons had little they could teach the Romans. But the Arabs were initially superior only as warriors. As they reinvented themselves, from zealous warriors to imperial governors, they were bound to turn to the superior culture of those they had conquered. They kept Arabic as the language of government and state religion, and over time their cultural borrowings became more clearly Islamic. Think of Kublai Khan in China.

I've not read "Hagarism", only a precis of it. It's out of print, hard to find, & Crone & Cook have since modified their views. Crone's current opinion is laid out here: http://www.opendemocracy.net/faith-europe_islam/mohammed_3866.jsp 
 
In Hagarism C&C note that Muslim literary sources on the early Islamic conquests all date from later periods, long after the events they supposedly record. They're also usually written to win a theological/political dispute in those later periods, which makes them even more unreliable as history. C&C ask, what would that early Muslim period feel like if we set aside all the Muslim sources, & reconstruct it purely based on contemporary non-Muslim sources? 
 
All of the non-Muslim sources are translated into English here: http://web.archive.org/web/20060429163403/www.christianorigins.com/islamrefs.html They're taken from Robert Hoyland's "Seeing Islam As Others Saw It". Hoyland doesn't think they contradict the traditional Muslim version of events as much as C&C do in "Hagarism". They seem to suggest that Muhammad died maybe two years later than Muslim sources claim - which isn't such a big deal. 
 
From my reading I can't find any evidence that the invading Saracen armies included large numbers of Christians in their ranks. If such evidence exists, that would be very awkward for the "Hagarism" argument. 
 
In Hagarism C&C suggest that the invaders were originally a joint Arab/Jewish anti-Christian army, originating much further north than Mecca/Medina, united by their common descent from Abraham. Jerusalem was always the primary objective of that army. The split between Arabs & Jews happened after the capture of Jerusalem. At that point the Muslims had to invent a purely Arabian origin for their religion, so brought Mecca/Medina into play. Crone uses the analogy of the Samaritans, where a similar non-Jewish reinvention seems to have happened. 
 
I think the following "Hagarism" arguments are fairly sound: 
 
1. Muhammad & his followers must have been based much further north than Mecca & Medina. 
2. Jerusalem, not Mecca, was the primary prize for Muhammad's army. 
3. Muhammad & his followers were not fighting against "Wicker Man" style paganists, or heavy metal idol-worshipping satanists. Many modern Muslims I speak to have been brought up to believe the peninsula was like that before Muhammad started preaching. The available archaeological evidence suggests Abrahamic religiosity (Jewish, Christian, or hybrid) was already well-established before Muhammad. Rather, this was a civil war between Abrahamic believers. Muhammad's Arabian opponents were almost certainly following some adapted Arabian form of Judaism or Christianity. 
 
Shlomo Sand points out that Judaism used to be a proselytising religion. That's how Himyarite Yemen became Jewish. It
More....

To paraphrase Terry Eagleton, doing something for a very long time is not the same as being right.

He's clearly not aware of the "One Law For All" campaign in the UK, opposing Sharia and Beth Din courts. 
 
In the UK (as in the US) we make laws by voting. Jewish UK citizens are welcome to suggest changes in the law and persuade the non-Jewish majority of their rightness. But the argument must be "justiciable". It must work across the board, for Jewish and non-Jewish UK citizens alike, treating them as legally equal subjects. Spengler doesn't even begin this conversation.

Islamic societies may have more religiously inclined populations than other societies. But there is also massively more pressure to feign Islamic religiosity in these societies. Saudi Arabia forbids all religious belief/unbelief except Sunni Islam, and harsh apostasy laws apply in many other Islamic countries. Who knows what the figures would look like if these pressures were removed. 
 
I have a hunch that religious belief may be waning in Iran. In this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8314126.stm you can read the thoughts of Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri on the recent election crisis in Iran. Am I the only reader who detects in his call for reform a fear that Islam is losing adherents among the young?

How does Islam in america fit in with this pattern?

Hi Razib 
 
In many societies atheists feel the need to dissimulate. Publicly declaring one's unbelief in, say, Saudi Arabia is a very brave and foolish thing to do. But even in the US I suspect there are significant numbers of atheists who dissimulate - especially politicians. 
 
The UK is very different from the US. The country has a deep-rooted popular suspicion of religious enthusiasm, especially among its politicians. That's why Tony Blair was such an anomaly. When a Vanity Fair interviewer quizzed Blair about his Christian faith, his spin-doctor Alistair Campbell interrupted and said "we don't do God". BBC interviewer Jeremy Paxman asked Blair if he had prayed together with George W. Bush in the White House, and Blair was visibly embarrassed. 
 
Here's a thought, which I can't back up with any research whatsoever. In societies with a relatively secular culture - let's say the UK, France, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries - public debate, even from the religious, becomes more apparently rational. I don't mean these societies make wiser decisions. I mean even the religious feel the need to make arguments which will make sense to their non-religious fellow citizens. Catholic anti-abortionists don't bring God or the soul into the debate, for instance. When they fight for their religion to be exempted from anti-discrimination laws, they argue it more in terms of tradition, culture, and heritage rather than the divine.

The American Revolution had a massive effect on the subsequent development of the British Empire's other settler colonies. Britain assumed they needed to be made self-governing as soon as they were practically ready. It also assumed they needed US-style federal structures. 
 
Had the 13 colonies continued to be governed from across the Atlantic, they might not have expanded so dramatically into the continental space to their west, purchased land from France and Russia, gone to war with Mexico and Spain, etc.

Isn't it a matter of domestic monopolies competing in a bigger game? Defense spending needs an enemy to justify itself, after all.

Damn - I missed this post. Coming in a bit late with comments... 
 
There's so much else I'd like to know. Such as: 
 
1. In general, is approval of polygyny higher among men? I'd guess the answer is yes. 
 
2. Were people asked their opinion of polyandry?

The ability to know purely by ear that someone playing a test tone at 440 Hz is playing an A cannot pre-date Helmholtz, can it? 
 
I used to have perfect pitch and I lost it. As a child I always knew the exact pitch of every note I heard. But I loved Early Music, and started playing a lot of it. Most Early Music groups tune to A 415 instead of A 440. Constantly reading and playing music that my "perfect pitch" brain told me was wrong eventually destroyed my perfect pitch. I still have excellent relative pitch.

When foreigners lend or provide a service to a country, then - provided the foreigners aren't able to threaten overwhelming military force - that country can always stiff them. 
 
Private British investors paid for and ran the Argentine railway system. But when Peron nationalized the network in 1948, what could they do? The British Army wasn't going to invade Argentina. It would have been pointless to try and dig up the rolling stock and ship it back to England. 
 
Britain did try to re-take the Suez Canal after Nasser nationalized it in 1956. The invasion ended in farce and failure. Even then, I think the motive for invasion was geopolitical, rather than to get the Rothchilds back their money. 
 
The UK/US got rid of Mosadeq in Iran because he wanted to nationalize the oil industry. Subsequent history suggests this was a terrible mistake. He would probably have been Iran's Ataturk had he stayed in power.