There are limits to how much an Islamic republic and a communist state can have in common, but they seem to agree on what to avoid: Western-style freedom.
What is more, the tangible evidence of Western solidarity with freedom-loving people and willingness to resist oppression inherent in such an action might have helped to undermine the appeal of authoritarian elements in Moscow.
In addition to their Western look and feel, they carry Western messages such as freedom, tolerance and inclusion.
Their fierce interpretation of Islam was not to his taste: Mr Masoud had been brought up with western ideas of personal freedom.
Today, we are engaged in " the War for the Free World, " a formulation that makes clear that nothing less than the future of freedom and Western civilization is at stake.
But let there be no doubt: He is committed to protecting freedom and Western civilization in an era when too many are choosing the easier course of ignoring the gathering threat being posed to them by Shariah-inspired, fascistic Islamic supremacism.
We do this in return for measures to restrict immigration, roll back crime, counter cultural relativism, and restore our traditional Western freedoms, such as freedom of speech.
The Kremlin has tolerated Ekho Moskvy as a safety-valve for the discontented intelligentsia, and also as a useful tool to refute Western criticism of lack of freedom of speech.
Then too, when Denmark's Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen reportedly agreed to apologize to the Islamic world for Denmark's independent Jyllands-Postens 2005 publication of cartoons of Muhammad in exchange for Turkish support for his candidacy for NATO secretary-general, he was accepting that it is Western civilization - with its freedom of speech - that is to blame for Islamic aggression and intolerance.
Indeed, on the part of the freedom fighters or the Western benefactors.
All of this, obviously, flies in the face of the American and more broadly Western ideals of religious freedom and the separation of church and state.
They find buyers all along their periphery because we have failed to fill the vacuum successfully with the Western formula of affluence indexed to freedom.
China's anti-ship ballistic missile clearly is aimed at denying the U.S. Navy freedom of action in the Western Pacific.
Forward-looking cities such as coastal Guangzhou have adopted Regulations on Open Government Information that are similar to Freedom of Information Acts in Western countries.
Contrary to the radicals' dogmatic assertions, Islam does indeed possess a venerable tradition of justice and spirituality that is consistent with current Western ideals of human rights and religious freedom.
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In the era of leftist political correctness with its founding principle that Western power is evil and that the freedom to harm democracies is inviolate, can democracies defend their security and national interests?
Today's Arab societies have some of the same objectives to achieve dignity and freedom, to break with Western tutelage but their populations are bigger, they are readier to challenge autocratic rulers and, thanks to satellite television, Facebook and Twitter, they are more intimately connected with one another and with the world.
It would amount to yet another, ill-advised Western effort to prop up a regime that continues to pursue policies that deny political freedom and economic opportunity at home and that continue to constitute a threat to Western interests overseas.
Having the U.S and other Western government as major actors in the Internet freedom field could present a real threat to activists who accept their support and funding.
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For the Kurds, Shi'ites, Druse, Alawites, Copts, and other non-Sunni, non-Arab, or non-Muslim populations in the region, the end of Western rule meant the end of their relative freedom.
Israel is a vibrant, Western-style democracy, with universal suffrage, freedom of the press and freedom of religion supporting Israel does not contradict the freedom agenda.
Therefore, the success of the Turkish experiment combining religious freedom for a predominantly Muslim country together with Western political and economic institutions is of historic importance: Its outcome will help shape a large part of the world for the century to come.
Western celebrity leaders and their followers say nothing as Iranian students demanding freedom are shot and killed on YouTube.
By so doing, they seek simultaneously to dominate the Islamic faith and to benefit from the tolerance the United States and other Western democracies have traditionally shown toward minorities in the name of religious freedom.
These courageous freedom fighters have the unfortunate distinction of fighting a regime the Western narcissists would like to like.
So there is no reason to fear that globalisation itself threatens traditional non-western cultures, such as Islam, except in so far as individual freedom threatens them.
Unfortunately, available data suggest that the rebels championed as freedom fighters by the neoconservatives, the opportunists, the Europeans and the Western media alike are not exactly liberal democrats.
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Two decades after the fatwa was imposed on Mr Rushdie, it appears that many Western artists, publishers and governments are more willing today to sacrifice some of their freedom of speech than was the case in 1989.
Second, the nature of those Western societies - in particular, their openness, their civil liberties, and the freedom of movement they encourage - makes them particularly susceptible to such attacks, as well as the object of the enemy's malevolence.
The original view was that these were spontaneous "awakenings" in which peoples long denied freedom were rising up, asserting their demand for democracy, inspired and fanned by Western-innovated social networking media.
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