Khumayni versus Sadat

Here, Thomas Friedman does what he does best: offers a silly and very unintelligent cliche about the Middle East, typically reduced to his redundant dualities expressed in English of 8th graders. "Sadat argued that the future should bury the past and that Arabs and Muslims should build their future based on peace with Israel, integration with the West and embracing modernity. Khomeini argued that the past should bury the future and that Persians and Muslims should build their future on hostility to Israel, isolation from the West and subordinating modernity to a puritanical Islam." But here is the problem: what if you are an Arab or an Iranian who cares about democracy and human rights? Both Khumayni and Sadat were enemies of human rights and democracy. And Friedman does not know that Sadat unleashed the Muslim fundamentalists, just as Khumayni did.