The Indian Ocean is the world's third largest (after the Pacific and Atlantic, larger than the fourth, the Arctic), and far less known than its two big brothers.  Close to two dozen countries border it, with the ancient land of India so predominant the ocean itself is named after it. Yet there is another country that has for centuries dominated the ocean far more than India ever did, a country that doesn't border it but lies thousands of miles away in Europe:  France.  So much so that it should be more appropriately labeled the French Ocean. Most people think that Western colonialism and imperialism ended in the three decades following World War II, that the term "Western colonial power" is a quaint anachronism.  This is not true of France, which has maintained its worldwide colonial empire by direct or devious means right through to today. From St. Pierre & Miquelon off the east coast of Canada;  to St. Martin, St. Bart's, Martinique and Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, to French Guiana in South America;  to Corsica in the Mediterranean;  to New Caledonia, Wallis & Futuna (between Fiji and Samoa), Tahiti & French Polynesia, and Clipperton off the south coast of Mexico, the sun never sets on the French Empire. Yet it is in the Indian Ocean that French colonial influence most clearly dominates an entire region.  And given the threats the region faces, it could be in our interests that it does.

Picture an idyllic beach on a tropical island.  The water is an intensely pure cobalt blue, gentle waves softly foaming upon the sugar soft sand.  People are picnicking under the coconut palm trees that line the beach, children are happily playing, it's 75 degrees and sunny, the azure sky dotted with puffy little clouds. The beach is set in a small cove, and built along the rocks on one side of the cove are picturesque little homes of the local villagers, whose livelihood is fishing.  A number of them are doing just that in their outrigger dugout canoes a few hundred yards offshore.  With the clear sky, you know it's going to be a spectacular sunset.  Then you'll have fresh fish for dinner, caught by one of those fellows in the outriggers. Paradise, no doubt about it, you think.  Then you notice those picturesque homes are all in a state of filth and decay, even though they are lived in.  The beach is littered with tires and other refuse.  Under the swaying palms are vast piles of garbage and trash. In fact, everywhere you go on the island, along every road (which have more potholes than pavement), in every village and town, there's trash and litter.  Not dumps of garbage, but the villages and roadsides are garbage dumps of plastic bags, foil wrappings, pieces of cardboard boxes, trash, trash, trash every place you look.  The whole island, it seems, is one big garbage dump. Welcome to the Comoros.  More precisely, the Union of the Comoros, a prime candidate for the world's most screwed-up country and object lesson for how to ruin paradise. So settle in your favorite chair with a glass of your favorite beverage (with refills at the ready), and let me tell you a true mind-blow of a weird adventure story about a lost corner of the world you never heard of. Yet in this tiny remote spot, we can also learn how to deal with illegal aliens, how to have a peaceful and tolerant Islam, and how to save a paradise instead of wrecking it.

Marco Polo (1254-1324) knew where the end of the world was.  He never went there but he heard about it.  It was a "great red island" in the vast unknown sea far to the south of India, and it had a strange name:  Madagascar. Although near Africa, folks here - known as Malagasy - are not from Africa.  They came from Indonesia 2,000 years ago.  For a thousand years they lived in isolation from the world. Then strangers started appearing on their northern coast calling themselves "Moslems." The Malagasy wanted no part of them or their strange and offensive religion.  Persians ("Shirazis" from Shiraz) and Arabs were sailing in their dhows down the east coast of Africa enslaving and Islamizing as they went.  But when they crossed the Mozambique Channel to Madagascar, they discovered people very different from Africans. Arabs had found the islands of Indonesia (Sumatra, Java, Borneo, etc.) easy Islamic pickings for converts.  Somehow, the converts' distant relatives weren't.  This is an important mystery. Ever since they invented Islam, Arabs have forced their religion upon peoples throughout the world, most of the time with little or no resistance.  The exceptions are among people who have a competing religion like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism.  It's very hard to think of any place without a strong competing religion already in place that resisted Islam. Madagascar is that place.  That's one reason it is a light at the end of the world.