Middle East Enlightenment?

It appears to me that whatever good intentions got us into the Middle East have now been eclipsed by the all-encompassing insanity of that region. I hope I'm wrong. I hope that moderate Muslims will somehow gain the momentum in Iraq and that the extremist elements in and around that region will weaken. I'm not hopeful.

What is to be done with the Middle East? I judge that region diseased with the worst religion can become: unchecked corrupt theocracy, inhumane treatment of minorities, enslaved women, and absurd 'out-of-touch with reality' world views. It is an unqualified failure of civilization.

Some cultures are just better for humanity. I'm fortunate to live in a culture which, fundamentally, gives me the freedom to speak (to create this website), to dissent from the majority, to love another man, and to expunge religion from my life if I so choose. Any culture which regularly beheads its citizens for embodying these freedoms is not worth much in my opinion.

Unless the citizens of Iraq are able to envision the secular humanist path that is now being offered to them in the form of democracy (rather than dictatorship), I fear they will be submerged in the cauldron of superstitious paranoid jihadist suicidebombing theocratic victimized insanity seeking to pull them in. However, the fear and irrationality brought on by religious irrationalism mixed with little to no secular education can probably only be overcome from within the culture itself.

In order to take the path to secular humanist values, The Middle East would need something equivalent to Western Civilization's Great Enlightenment in which reason, exploration and science revolutionized world views no matter how entrenched, traditional or institutionalized they were. Again, I'm not hopeful.