The Middle East (Old and New)

When we look back in history at The Persian Empire we find that their views were quite different than what we find today. Rulers like Cyrus The Great and Darius practiced a religion called Zoroastrianism which encouraged things like freewill, honesty, integrity, and justice. They promoted things like mathematics, science, astronomy, monetary systems, and irrigation hundreds of years before The Romans. They also introduced legal systems and huge libraries full of wisdom and knowledge. Another interesting fact to note is that they abolished slavery as much as possible within their empire....an amazing feat for a civilization back then. Cyrus was known to be quite generous once he had defeated a rival. He would usually allow them to continue their religious and cultural beliefs unlike other rulers who would completely destroy any and all competition. Now we look at Islam and The Middle East and find a system that controls and manipulates people. Islam seems to be nothing more that a large cult. ( One believer= delusional, ten believers=cult, thousands of believers=religion. ) Islamic extremists sadly encourage hatred, bias, anger, deceitfulness, and destruction. Their way is the only way which isolates Islam from the rest of humanity. Terrorism, brainwashing, and perverse tyranny seems to be the way in countries like Iran and Iraq. What the hell happened? How could a culture so advanced and intellectual slip into what I compare to The Dark Ages? Why are their current leaders allowed to remain in power? The world needs to wake up and realize that good people in these countries are being tortured and killed. The insanity has to stop. There needs to be a concentrated effort by all of the world powers to tackle and eliminate this madness.