"The violence was once seen as a legitimate way to seek for equality, no longer is," he said, adding that this week, 91 regional business groups, nongovernmental organizations and intellectuals in the region signed a declaration asking the group to lay down its arms.
The Arab Spring made some intellectuals look to peripheral regions in their countries.
But there are dangers, too, in the region's intellectual fashion for "historical memory".
He was an astronomer and mathematician who invited scholars to work and teach at Samarkand, making it the intellectual capital of the region.
They want a single European patent to protect intellectual property across the region, and a single court in which to defend their rights.
This comment on a neighbour's internal politics was a breach of South-East Asian etiquette.Besides commercial and political rivalry, there is also more intangible competition for intellectual leadership in the region.
A good place to look for those answers this week was Budapest, where Central European University, one of the intellectual centers of the region's political and economic transition, is celebrating its 20th anniversary.
21 Effect of Base Closings The Pentagon's plan to eliminate more than 30,000 jobs in Washington and Arlington, Va., part of its proposal to close dozens of military installations and bases around the country, would have a severe impact on the economy and intellectual resources of the region, lawmakers told military officials.
Delta and Virgin, which is the fourth-biggest airline operating at Heathrow airport, will co-operate on lucrative transatlantic routes between America and Britain.After four decades of bickering the European Union at last passed a single patents regime for its member states, which should reduce the cost to innovators of protecting their intellectual property in the region by 80% or more.
Under the same economic system, Córdoba rose to leadership in the 17th and 18th centuries, because the expansion of settlement gave the city a central location and because the University of Córdoba, founded in 1613, put the city in the intellectual forefront of the region.
