trying to grok

HMMM

An interesting comparison in Orson Scott Card's latest:

Why, just a few weeks ago a CBS television show (Cold Case Files) ran an episode that made an outrageous attack on my church, in which items as sacred to us as the Quran is to Muslims were openly displayed and mocked on national television.

But you didn't see Mormons rioting over it. Oh, we were angry enough-- it was infuriating to be treated with such contempt, as CBS, without a second thought, turned its airwaves over to some Mormon-hating writer who reveled in having the power to get at us with impunity.

But you see, we Mormons are very much aware of being in the minority. The memory of "Christian" mobs and state militias murdering helpless Mormon men, women and children, and then betraying and assassinating our leaders while they were in government custody, is still keen within our culture. It didn't happen far away, it happened in Missouri and Illinois. And it has continued in the years since then, in isolated incidents of murder and expulsion throughout the world, not least in America.

We remember our forebears leaving their homes again and again to get away from an oppressive majority. We remember our haven being invaded by the United States Army; we remember being prepared to burn our homes and crops and flee again, leaving our homeland a desert rather than submit to oppression again.

But in the years afterward, we learned something else, too: How to get along. How to avoid making waves. How to blend in. How to make a moral stand when it matters, without alienating those who might stand with us and without (usually) provoking those who stand against us.

That's what you learn when you're in a perpetual minority.

When would Muslims in the Middle East have learned lessons like that?