DURHAM This year, Islamist politics has faced massive setbacks in two major predominantly Muslim countries Egypt and Turkey.

Another plainly linked is Muslim majority countries efforts to define the relationship between religion and politics.

Incorporating Turkey and eventually other majority Muslim European countries into the EU is the European dream of the twenty first century.

And recent events in Bangladesh itself, or in the Muslim majority Mindanao region of the Philippines, extend the list further.

Muslim majority Indonesia lost its Catholic majority East Timor through Western political intervention, but its claims to East Timor were tenuous, as it only invaded the island a few decades ago.

It is Turkey's Muslim population that creates the strongest emotions.

Whereas Europe s birthrate is stagnant, the Arab population is set to double in the coming decades, and the population will rise in many Asian Muslim majority countries.

Individual freedom is a given as long as it is a habit or a behavior adopted by an individual or a group of individuals once it become a phenomenon like the niqab, lawmakers have to study it and assess its impact on the freedom of others.

I want to share some of that story with you, but also some of my ideas around change and the role of social movements in creating change in Muslim majority societies.

One of the problems we're facing is, in my view, that there are no globalized, youth led, grassroots social movements advocating for democratic culture across Muslim majority societies.

DURHAM This year, Islamist politics has faced massive setbacks in two major predominantly Muslim countries Egypt and Turkey.

The fighting took place in the predominantly Muslim part of town and so it was predominantly Muslim property that was damaged.

By accepting the words agreed upon, Palestinians, Arabs, and other Muslim majority countries have conceded that Israel will not recognize Palestinian refugees inalienable right to return to their homes.

More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations.

But China can take steps to gain these countries trust. For example, China s leaders should work to address the unrest in the Muslim dominated province of Xinjiang more effectively.

Well my personal story, my personal journey, what brings me to the TED stage here today, is a demonstration of exactly what's been happening in Muslim majority countries over the course of the last decades, at least, and beyond.

They do not form a formidable presence, as in Nigeria, where some Muslim majority states in the north have even implemented Sharia Law, making them more or less Islamic states.

Nor is it only Russia, China, and India that oppose Kosovo s independence, but also Muslim majority Nigeria, which retains Biafra, where a bloody civil war with Catholic Ibos was fought in the late 1960 s.

The more pious Muslim communities who segregate themselves from the Buddhist majority face greater difficulties than those who integrate more at the cost of observance to Islamic personal laws.

Indeed, some Muslim countries amputate the hands of convicted thieves in public.

The artificial fusion of the mainly Arab, Muslim north of Sudan and the African south, where Christianity and traditional animist beliefs are predominant, has been an abject failure.

American policy has also contributed to a growing conflict between Islamist and secular forces in Muslim countries.

But Europe and the Western world must also cooperate more closely with key Muslim countries.

Bilateral relations have been bedeviled ever since by a festering dispute over the divided territory of Kashmir, India s only Muslim majority state (but home to only 3 of India s Muslims, who are scattered in larger numbers throughout the country).

Unlike the Shahbag events, the counter demonstration was well planned and organized, and conveyed the stark message that there was an alternative point of view in this overwhelmingly Muslim country.

As regional conflicts are increasingly defined along Sunni Shia lines, it is becoming more difficult for Shia dominated Iran to gain influence in Sunni majority countries.

Significantly, these majorities existed in Muslim countries as well.

More generally, the debate about the Gülen movement should serve as an opportunity to clarify the relationship between religion and politics, while reminding the Turkish public and Muslim majority countries throughout the region of the core democratic values that have enabled Turkey to develop and thrive.

Traditionally, under Bengali Sufi mystical teachings, the majority Muslim population lived peacefully with other religions, and Bangladesh had a good record on education and civil rights for women.

Minorities especially Kosovo Serbs in predominantly Albanian areas, but also Kosovo Albanians in northern municipalities do not feel safe travelling through majority areas.

The current border between Serbia and Croatia was defined in 1945 by a Yugoslav federal government commission which assigned areas with a majority Serb population to the Socialist Republic of Serbia and those with a Croatian majority to the Socialist Republic of Croatia.

Some PDP politicians in the Muslim north insisted that their region be allowed to present a candidate, as Obasanjo, who was viewed as representing the Christian south, had served eight years.

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46 of the country s Arabs (622,400 people) live in predominantly Arab communities in the north.

Priority countries

Likewise, the fighting has created highly fluid conditions in the Kurdish majority areas of Iraq and Syria.

In Bosniak majority territories, about 25 per cent of minority households belong to the category of the poor.

This tranquility has been helped by the elaborate rituals of respect that have developed between the secular state and the Sufi orders, and the excellent relations between the country s Muslim majority and the Catholic minority at all levels of society.

Countries with special needs

Sami considered Layla as the perfect Muslim wife.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for Europe in the twenty first century is to bring down the walls between its non Muslim and Muslim communities.

The case of the 11 year old Muslim girl who had been kidnapped, had become pregnant and had thus been married under Sharia law, albeit in violation of Greek law, was exceptional.

Teaching of non Muslim religions in schools is prohibited.