Indonesia’s disasters – October’s tsunami and eruption, the killing of suspected terrorists in Sumatra – get more media attention than its democratic elections. Yet these marked the direct re-election of the president last year and a cautious step away from Islamising agendas, re-affirming the country’s historic balance of secularism with Islam

Russia’s post-Soviet elites of wealth and bureaucracy did a quiet deal with Putin long ago: we’ll keep your governing structure stable if you keep us in the money. And that’s how the country functions, even if it is storing up problems for the future

India has the world’s third largest Muslim population, and political and economic ties with Arab nations. It is also buying weapons and military expertise from its new friend Israel