I, like you, have been silently lamenting the passing of a truly extraordinary, attractive stateswoman.

Here's how I found out -- I was passing through an airport arrivals lounge after a very long cross-continental flight waiting for my baggage at the carousel, the likes of which had been excessively delayed due to a frozen plane cargo door -- I'll spare you the sob story.

But then I glanced up at the television screens arrayed around the baggage area, and there was the ominous CNN headline: "BHUTTO ASSASSINATED." I nearly gagged on my Juicy Fruit.

For about as long as I've been a senior political analyst, I've adored the Bhutto family dearly. In a region of the world, hers, known for its most "unglobalized" behaviour and for its deep disconnect from the rest of the planet, the politics practiced by the Bhutto clan was a ray of hope in a region consistently in despair.

Here's a thought for you, readers...have you ever considered why the Indian Muslim population -- the second largest Muslim community on the planet, after Indonesia, at 150 million souls -- has integrated so well into Indian democracy and politics (the former president of India was a Muslim, by the way, Dr. Abdul Kalam, India's "Missile Man")?

Well, that's because the tangible gains to be made from globalization and outsourcing -- just two of the many economic trends that have catapulted India onto the "developed economy" fast track -- have trickled down to all members of Indian society. Now, that's not to say Hindus and Muslims aren't ever at each others' throats on the Subcontinent. That's plainly not true. Ayodhya was a prime example of that.

What I'm merely suggesting here is that when a minority culture isn't humiliated and made to feel downtrodden, as well as being asked to play a constructive role in the economic affairs of state and governance, there's abundantly less time for them to contemplate how best to destroy the dominant culture. They can see the gains from playing an active role in the prosperity of their country, and the writing is clearly written on the wall: rock the boat, and you'll be destroying your country's economic gains for decades, hammering it back to the Stone Age.

Let's compare India and Pakistan.

In India, if a Muslim man sees a more successful Hindu in business or on the streets, he turns to his fellow and says, "I will one day be more successful than this man." In Pakistan, a Muslim man will look towards at the hill where a wealthier neighbour resides and instead exclaim to his fellow, "I will one day destroy this man."

These are precisely the miserable conditions in which the late Benazir Bhutto mingled with the massive crowds on Pakistan's teeming streets. Eight years after her self-imposed exile, she demonstrated the utmost in lion-hearted courage by returning to the land which snuffed out her father's -- Zulfikar's -- life at the end of a hangman's noose.

How does this relate to us in Central and Eastern Europe? Why should we Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, and Ukrainians care about what is going on in the Fertile Crescent and beyond? What does this got to do with the price of svickova, you ask?

In the opinion of many experts, it is distinctly we members of the (almost fully) developed world who must be utterly dismayed by this latest total meltdown in Pakistan.

Bhutto, for us, represented the epitome in moderate Islam. The kind of Islam that thousands of Muslims the world over practice daily, and the sort of Islam which millions across the planet had come to know and cherish in the decades prior to murderous 9/11. The Islam of Andalusian Spain, that of the Moors and the Turkish Caliphate, the Islam of algebra (an Arabic word, in fact), algorithms, benevolent rule, and respect for minority cultures.

Bhutto -- were she to have been elected -- would have been a boon to us here in the post-Communist world, gracing us with a privileged window into the sort of Islam which we here in the rising economies of the Centre and East of Europe desperately need to learn about. A kind of Islam which would transcend the false stereotypes. A kind of Muslim practice which would shock we locals out of our skins, educating us in a way which goes beyond the burqa, the hijab, the abaya, and draconian doctrinaire Koranic justice.

She could have been our distinguished guest, dining at the Castle with our president, discussing the affairs of the world and things like, um...climate change. She could have acted as a bridge between regions of the planet which formerly had very little to do with each other, except for the days when our Russian overlords decreed that it must be so (eg. Gaddafi's visits of our Czechoslovak past).

She could have taught us the very best in what Pakistan represents. She could have been our guide into the Islamic universe.

All this as a Muslim, from a dangerous part of the world.

Then there were her platitudes as a female politician. A Muslim woman being (re)elected to lead her nation into the bright 21st-century. An almost unthinkable accomplishment in the post-9/11 world, but this was the promise that the charismatic Benazir Bhutto had in spades.

The world weeps, but perhaps it is we here in the Czech lands who should be weeping more. If the loss for the world is a tragic one, then the loss for Central and Eastern Europe is devastating.

And, to think, the magnificent inter-cultural progress we were making up until now...que lastima, as the Spanish say, que lastima...