Islam - the religion of peace

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Originally Posted by Odelay

I think a subset of Afrikaaners during the Boer War(s) might also fit this definition, though I in no way claim to be very knowledgeable about the combatants of that war.

I do sit amazed by the success of the people behind the IS. They seem to be hated by every modern Middle Eastern state that surrounds them, and yet they thrive. These are big states with advanced militaries.

I'm trying to piece together what an analogous situation would look like in North America. Hypothetically, let's say Canada, USA and Mexico all shared a border, all being nominally Christian, albeit with a Catholic flavor in Mexico, a Northern European protestant flavor in Canada, and an Evangelical Christian bent here in the USA. Now imagine a splitoff faction of militarized zealots who reject all 3 "normal" flavors of Christianity, brutally overtakes an overlapping area of all 3 countries and not only survives but steadily increases their territory as the 3 large states flounder around helplessly, engaging them in battle sometimes but not really having any real effect to destroy this new menace.

It seems preposterous. It doesn't seem like CanMexUSA would need any International outside help to squash such a movement like a bug.

That's why despite my more militaristic side thinking the World should get together and wipe these radicals out, I can't help to side with those who believe this is a native problem for the surrounding Arab/Muslim states to resolve.

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If the issue is taking over the state and providing an alternative system of government, I am not sure the US offers comparisons. In the USA, movements have tended to be opposed to federal government and thus to hark back to the original European settlers whose values of self-reliance and independence meant an instinctive hostility to taxation, military conscription, and anything broader than local government. This to me explains why there have been movements on the political right which have attacked 'the Feds' -the bombing in Oklahoma City in 1995 is one example; or movements whose primary aim seems to be autonomy from the 'American state'. This ranges from the Black Apartheid movements such as the original Lost-Found Nation of Islam and its alleged successor (or later alternative) the Nation of Islam -both of which exploited Black alienation from white society rather than attempt to convert Americans to Islam, assuming either movement to be Islamic (open to dispute); the MOVE movement which was largely destroyed by military means in Philadelphia in 1985, and smaller groups such as the Branch Davidians who were eliminated in Texas in 1993.

The South African War -sometimes known as the Second South African War or the Boer War was an early example of asymmetric warfare of the kind that became common in Vietnam and other places since. What was supposed to be a short sharp -and relatively cheap- military elimination of the Boer 'threat' to British imperial hegemony in South Africa became a war that dragged on for two and half years, involved in the end more than 500, 000 troops at a cost in those days of over £200 million and which, while it ended with a British victory, established an enduring hatred for the English which also failed to deal with the underlying theories of race which became fundamental to the Boer governments which eventually succeeded British imperial rule and imposed the apartheid system that lasted until the 1990s, though many of its ideas are still rampant in South Africa. Against half a million British troops there were never more than 80,000 odd Boers, but they were convinced that part of Africa belonged to them, and them alone, and ultimately they were victorious, even if the state of their desire turned out to be a disaster. State power, as IS is discovering, is not as easy to maintain once it has been achieved, unless some form of dictatorship is preferred to democracy, but as that has been the root cause of the crisis of the modern state in the Middle East, IS seems to me to be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, albeit in a substantially more bloody manner.

'The politically incorrect truth about Islam, the "Religion of Peace" (and terror).'


http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

Quoted from the website linked below
'The Religion of peace website is created in order to show that Islam is the antithesis of the websites handle. The website claims to hold “the politically incorrect truth about Islam”. The editor, Glen Roberts, claims that the website as a non-partisan website that does not promote any religion, but they put forth the idea that Islam is a religion that is “dreadfully unique”. They assert that this uniqueness comes about with the use of Islamic violence and that Muslims and their religion are intolerant individuals who seek the domination of the world. The website also acts as an archive of Islam related violence, but they only include news that support their thesis that Islam is purely a violent religion. "
http://islamophobia132.weebly.com/th...lam-watch.html

A long read...http://www.theatlantic.com/features/...-wants/384980/

... a medium length reply to it...

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2015/02...y-really-want/

... and a short reply to it.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/a...g-pr-for-isis/


All good reads that really illuminate some of the ideology behind ISIS. This really reinforces my idea that this is an Arab/Muslim problem that needs an Arab/Muslim solution. Jeb Bush's speech today about the need to "take them out", doesn't sound too wise.

Why am I not surprised how closely the visions of Apocalyptic Christians match with Apocalyptic Muslims, right down to a war between Jews and Muslims in Israel before Jesus returns to "win" the day. Seriously, I'm not sure I read anything in the ISIS end days thinking that is anymore surprising or violent than what you hear from garden variety Rapture believing Christians.

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Originally Posted by Odelay

A long read...http://www.theatlantic.com/features/...-wants/384980/

... a medium length reply to it...

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2015/02...y-really-want/

... and a short reply to it.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/a...g-pr-for-isis/


All good reads that really illuminate some of the ideology behind ISIS. This really reinforces my idea that this is an Arab/Muslim problem that needs an Arab/Muslim solution. Jeb Bush's speech today about the need to "take them out", doesn't sound too wise.

Why am I not surprised how closely the visions of Apocalyptic Christians match with Apocalyptic Muslims, right down to a war between Jews and Muslims in Israel before Jesus returns to "win" the day. Seriously, I'm not sure I read anything in the ISIS end days thinking that is anymore surprising or violent than what you hear from garden variety Rapture believing Christians.

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Thank you for the links, which I have read. I am more persuaded by Silverman's crtique of Wood, largely because I think Wood makes numerous errors. I think it is wrong to refer to this contemporary movement as 'medieval' as this is a western European concept of chronology that means nothing in the context of 7th century Arabia where one might as well use the term 'late Roman empire' given Muhammad's fascination with the Romans -something that might also require a rethinking of 'Rome' as used in the propaganda of IS.

The two biggest problems with Wood that I have, is that he overplays the 'end of days' element of ideology, and underplays the crucial portal though which all of this has passed: the modern state in the Middle East. That is because I see these Islamic movements as attempting to replace the apparatus of the modern state with an idealized re-constitution of what they believe was the 'first Islamic state' in Medina by Muhammad. The problem is that they have to decide if Muhammad's 'Community of the faithful' is in fact a state, because it seems to me that what Muhammad was interested in was not state power as such but a network of social relations between the tribes of Arabia based on common values and beliefs, and thus a peaceful co-existence among the people, rather than fractious wars and squabbles over property -livestock for example- which were typical of the day.

It also begs the question of non-Muslims in that community, because in the 'Constitution of Medina' which Muhammad drafted there is an accommodation of the Jewish tribes which were common in Medina and also present-day Jeddah, whereas the contemporary hostility to Israel seems to me to have exposed a weakness which may even be fatal -because all of these contemporary Muslims who claim as Wood suggests, to be reviving in Islam what has always been there, are doomed to re-interpret their founding texts, an activity which is supposed to be forbidden. They are bound to do simply because they have to work out what a 7th century text means in an age of the internet, running water and electricity, just as contemporary Jews and Christians are forever debating the meaning for the present day of something in the Bible.

It is further complicated by the fact that much of what passes as Islamic practice is not in the Quran or even in early hadith but is part of the very accretion of late practice which presumably the most diehard Salafi would dismiss -there is no prohibition on the consumption of alcohol in the Quran, for example, just as there is no requirement for women to cover their faces, these are cultural practices and regulations that came long after the death of Muhammad.

We have also been here before anyway -the Mahdi who appeared in the Sudan in 1881; the resurgent Saudi family laying siege to Mecca in 1925 and overthrowing the Hashemite family to establish their own supremacy on the basis that their version of Islam was the only one Muslims should recongise; the siege of Mecca in 1979 when a group of fanatics declared that the Mahdi had returned and was with them -well, for at least as long as the siege lasted. Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan, when that movement believed it had won a victory in 1996 declared himself Caliph and appeared on a rooftop in Kandahar to address the multitudes having draped himself in what is believed to be a surviving cloak worn by Muhammad. All believed they were the living embodiment of prophecies, anointed to lead the Islamic world into a new era....

I think Silverman's belief that IS will implode through the relentless pursuit of ideological purity coupled with practical problems of survival is closest to the mark. IS seems to me to be repeating all the mistakes in governance that it criticises in the corrupt Arab state, so that while it appears to offer an alternative, in fact that enduring problem of what a modern state should look like, if it is to exist at all, is unresolved, as are the practical problems of a place like Raqqa, where the IS fighters -most of them from abroad- have access to better housing, better food and better medical care than their so-called brothers and sisters in the community who have lived in Raqqa for centuries. In Iraq, I have read, even this famous Caliph Ibrahim now receives people wearing a mask, because his face is too precious, possibly divine, to be looked upon by anyone outside his family or trusted lieutenants.

But I agree that even if this group is militarily trashed, it will not resolve the deeper problem of what good governance might be. A lot will depend on the next US government, as it appears Obama's cautious attitude may be replaced by something more explicit.

Stavros, I agree with you that Silverman's response to Wood is probably the best of the 3 articles. But he prescribes some pretty tough medicine, especially an immediate 2 state solution to defuse the Israel-Palestine issue. I'm guessing a large majority of Israelis are in denial about the connection between the Islamic State and their own issue with Palestinians.

Silverman's concludiing paragraph:

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The problem set that we face with ISIS has several components. Among the biggest is that this is a problem internal to Islam. As a result Muslims have to resolve it for themselves. In many ways what we are watching in real time is the Islamic equivalent of the Reformation, counter-Reformation, and then the splintering within the Reformation that led to hundreds of years of struggle, conflict, and warfare in Europe. A lot of it had to do with which version of Christian theology and dogma was supposed to be correct and followed, but a lot of it used that as a motivating factor so elites and notables could control resources. Ultimately they became so intertwined, that even into the 1990s in Northern Ireland or the Balkans they could not be easily teased apart. The other big one for me is that America and its Western allies cannot really resolve this problem set. Even if we were to go in with overwhelming force and just decimate ISIS it would not resolve this dispute, which is multifaceted and internal to Islam. An appropriate response would be containing ISIS at the theater level within the Levant. To do this we should be empowering allies, clients, and friends within the region, including helping to forge new alliances. This includes engaging with the Iranians as appropriate in order to both reduce ISIS’s capacity and to allow the people that actually live in the Middle East to determine how they want to structure their own societies, economies, and polities. We should be assisting with Foreign Internal Defense and the building up and reform of the security sectors of these states as appropriate. We should also be working out ways to increase trade and opportunities between the states in the region. Moreover, we should basically make it clear to both the Israelis and the Palestinians, but especially the Israelis as they hold the power in that relationship, that a two state solution needs to happen immediately as the ongoing dispute is complicating the overall situation in the Levant. Finally, in Iraq we should be working to peel the tribes away from ISIS, organize them, and get them fighting against ISIS. Once ISIS is gone, then we can help mediate Iraq’s own internal crisis into an amicable divorce. It is no longer a coherent state and we should neither insist that it be one or force it to try to become one again.

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Originally Posted by Odelay

I'm guessing a large majority of Israelis are in denial about the connection between the Islamic State and their own issue with Palestinians.

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I read the article and this was the only part that I couldn't understand. I hope Israelis would be amenable to understanding how their interactions with Palestinians are effecting Palestinians. I think it would be a tough sell to tell them there is some causal relationship between the occupation of the West Bank and Muslim extremists in Syria burning alive people of all backgrounds in metal cages. I think you'd be almost as reluctant to admit your role in the meth trade in Sydney Australia.

My understanding of cause and effect has never been that whatever a person attributes their actions to is a cause. Otherwise, Judges would have to take a man's word for it when he says that he drove drunk because his wife was nagging him. I don't doubt that Al Qaeda and Isis have said their actions are motivated by a variety of factors, but it's called false attribution. The things they point to aren't anything like sufficient causes. A thousand people can look at the same situation or experience the same stimuli and not every one would decide that they are compelled to respond by cutting someone's head off with a dull knife or by throwing a homosexual off of a building.

Thank you for those links to excellent articles Odelay...
maybe it's the hangover that I'm suffering right now, but I have to admit that I find the Israeli/Palestinian issue mentioned as a bit odd in this case...almost out of place. It seems to me that IS is at war with (for want of a better term at the moment)who they consider "infidel"...they haven't, as far as anything I've seen or read, at the moment, specifically targeted Israel...or the Jews as other middle easterners have in the past. Resolving the Israeli/Palestinian problem will not make IS go away...and it isn't going to happen anytime soon anyway.
It seems all of western civilization and who they deem apostates are the problem to be solved in their eyes.

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Originally Posted by Odelay

Stavros, I agree with you that Silverman's response to Wood is probably the best of the 3 articles. But he prescribes some pretty tough medicine, especially an immediate 2 state solution to defuse the Israel-Palestine issue. I'm guessing a large majority of Israelis are in denial about the connection between the Islamic State and their own issue with Palestinians.

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Although I preferred Silverman, I am not sure about this quote, part of which you highlighted-
"The problem set that we face with ISIS has several components. Among the biggest is that this is a problem internal to Islam. As a result Muslims have to resolve it for themselves. In many ways what we are watching in real time is the Islamic equivalent of the Reformation, counter-Reformation, and then the splintering within the Reformation that led to hundreds of years of struggle, conflict, and warfare in Europe"

This views Islamic debates using the framework of European intellectual history and it doesn't apply to the Middle East where the process of modernization took place at a different time, and for different reasons.
It also absolves the non-Islamic world of any responsibility, as if modern capitalism had not had as traumatic an effect on the Middle East as it has had everywhere else. After all, a lot of the militants who are making IS work are not even from the Middle East, and their Islamic heritage comes form South Asia or North Africa. To understand the objection, imagine someone saying that only Italian Americans can sort out the problem of the Mafia, or only Black Americans can deal with the Black Panthers or the 'Nation of Islam' -the Black American experience is one in which Black Americans have felt at best marginalized, at worst excluded from the 'American dream' but it means that the anti-State violence of the Panthers or the Apartheid solutions of Elijah Mohammed and Louis Farrakhan are themselves part of the broader question of who the American state is for and cannot therefore be seen in isolation as solely 'Black' issues or 'problems'.

It presents is with an unsolvable problem, because most religions are based on ancient texts that contain values and principles which can be extracted without too much collision with modern life, but rules and regulations -especially those relating to diet and dress- which do. It means on the one hand that the modern state is as much a part of the IS problem as it is for Islam in general, but that in their attempt to create a Caliphate based on a pure concept of Islam, IS is no more guaranteed a success than Muhammad at Medina, not least because of the problems he faced in attempting to create his 'Community of the faithful' and the salient fact that not long after he died, it fell apart. Barely a generation after Muhammad's death, the central power structure of Islam had removed from Medina to Damascus, and an internal rift was beginning to open up over who was best qualified to be Caliph, an issue that has never been and probably never will be resolved, although the Saudi Arabians think otherwise.

The modern state has been just as problematical for Israel, where the biblical claims made by some -Likud for example- begs the question of what the political geography of Ancient Israel looked like compared to modern day Israel, with Likudniks blithely assuming all the land between the Mediterranean Sea and across the River Jordan is the 'Land of Israel' when a more precise reading of the Bible as a source says something else, and that is before one gets into the torturous debate about what, exactly, a 'Jewish state' should be, a matter on which even Ben-Gurion and the Rabbi's could not agree. The exploitation of the Palestine issue by radical Muslims has been as chronic and facile as it was by Arab nationalists and Arab Marxists and revolutionaries decades ago. But this isn't the thread for a debate on the 'two-state solution'.

In sum, how can the modern world accommodate religious practice that was first described thousands of years ago? It is as pertinent today to violent Islam as it is to Hindu violence in India, Buddhist violence in Sri Lanka, Christian violence in too many other places. But is this a problem inherent in religion, or is it 'merely' politics?

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world...ogue-1.2112780

For every Muslim extremist there are thousands of decent Muslims. It's only fair that I include this for some perspective. It actually makes the problem more complicated when you realize how marginal the violent extremists are and that in percentage terms they don't have much support.

I will point out though, that extreme beliefs exist on a sliding scale, so that there may be many Muslims who think the violence against cartoonists is unacceptable but who think homosexuality is or should be a capital offense. Or that it is permissible to punish apostasy by death, even if they would not carry out the punishment themselves. I am curious about how prevalent those particular views are and whether we think they are just internal issues to be worked out in certain Middle Eastern countries.

For instance, if a gay American traveled to Iran and was charged with engaging in prohibited sex, is it our position that he should have followed the rules of the country he's in and that a pending execution is an acceptable punishment for not understanding the mores of that society?

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Originally Posted by broncofan

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world...ogue-1.2112780

For every Muslim extremist there are thousands of decent Muslims. It's only fair that I include this for some perspective. It actually makes the problem more complicated when you realize how marginal the violent extremists are and that in percentage terms they don't have much support.

I will point out though, that extreme beliefs exist on a sliding scale, so that there may be many Muslims who think the violence against cartoonists is unacceptable but who think homosexuality is or should be a capital offense. Or that it is permissible to punish apostasy by death, even if they would not carry out the punishment themselves. I am curious about how prevalent those particular views are and whether we think they are just internal issues to be worked out in certain Middle Eastern countries.

For instance, if a gay American traveled to Iran and was charged with engaging in prohibited sex, is it our position that he should have followed the rules of the country he's in and that a pending execution is an acceptable punishment for not understanding the mores of that society?

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I realize the answer to this rhetorical question may seem like an emphatic yes to many people. While I agree that one should be aware of the laws in any foreign country they travel to and comport with them, I think it's problematic when something that is seen as neither legally nor morally wrong is a capital crime in a different jurisdiction. Discrimination against gay men and women is not a cultural value but a human rights violation. Enshrining that discrimination in law is abhorrent and I think it's worthy of condemnation whether it's an Iranian or an American being executed for having consensual relations with members of the same sex.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

But is this a problem inherent in religion, or is it 'merely' politics?

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The two only diverge where secular politics is not so anathema to fundamentalists that it cannot be tolerated regardless of the composition of the citizenry. If members of a faith are not content to live in a society based on at least some secular principles and instead mandate that citizens of non-state religions submit to a religious imperative or are subject to criminal penalties for blasphemy, the root of the problem is religion.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

The two only diverge where secular politics is not so anathema to fundamentalists that it cannot be tolerated regardless of the composition of the citizenry. If members of a faith are not content to live in a society based on at least some secular principles and instead mandate that citizens of non-state religions submit to a religious imperative or are subject to criminal penalties for blasphemy, the root of the problem is religion.

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I read that several times, and I am not sure. Although I agree that many members of religious faiths accept that they must respect the laws and customs of the state where they live, even if it is secular or of a different faith, the source of divergence lies in the holistic nature of most major religious systems which, by incorporating politics into their belief makes it difficult, if not impossible to separate religion from politics. It is part of the controversy in the UK, for example, over the ordination of women priests and bishops in the Church of England, gay marriage, and abortion, issues on which many Christians take a religious view, complaining that the moral life of the country is being undermined by secular changes which are now infiltrating religious life-not forgetting that the UK is, officially a Christian state, whose head of state is head of the Church.

It is precisely because there are Muslims who call for the imposition of 'Shari'a law' and Muslims who do not, that you can see how the radical groups are in fact using their holistic view of Islam to both shame their fellow Muslims (if that works) while appearing to threaten the existing Christian and secular powers that be. It begs the question however -what exactly is Shari'a law? Is there no flexibility in its application? Who makes legal decisions? I suggest when you pursue these questions, you end up with a political weapon in your hand, looking exactly like the Kalashnikov's beloved of bin Laden and the IS militants, rather than that absent book the Quran.

The same obsession with the monotheist faith rooted in a text that cannot be changed can be observed in the consequences of (mostly American) Christian evangelism in East Africa and Russia, where the attempt, successful or otherwise to criminalise homosexual behaviour raises the same question about religion and the state. My view is that they ought to be separated, because in multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-reigious society that is the only way to balance out belief and practice in as harmonious a manner, and that is also how I think most people like it. It does not downgrade a religion, but does raise questions about how people of different faiths co-exist, as they have done all over the world for millenia. I don't see why the actions of a fringe minority should threaten that, but we can't at the same time isolate such people and tell them to sort it out as if we had no role to play. Not slaughtering their fellow believers in other lands might be a good place to start.

I think people need to look deeper.

Just remember the US has killed far more Muslims then Muslims killed US in fact in 2013 3% of terrorists attacks where made by "muslims"

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Originally Posted by youngfit93

I in fact in 2013 3% of terrorists attacks where made by "muslims"

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I was wondering if you could post the site that reported this statistic. I would be surprised if this is the case. About 20% of the world's population is Muslim. If Muslims carried out 3% of the terrorist attacks worldwide, that would make them under-represented by a factor of nearly seven. I am just curious what definitions are being used (this is especially an issue since you put scare quotes around the word Muslims).

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Originally Posted by broncofan

I was wondering if you could post the site that reported this statistic. I would be surprised if this is the case. About 20% of the world's population is Muslim. If Muslims carried out 3% of the terrorist attacks worldwide, that would make them under-represented by a factor of nearly seven. I am just curious what definitions are being used (this is especially an issue since you put scare quotes around the word Muslims).

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The Global Terrorist Index Report from last year may be the most up to date survey, based on the definition of terrorism as "the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious or social goal through fear, coercion or intimidation". It is a 94 page report but worth reading. The link is here:
http://www.visionofhumanity.org/site...t%202014_0.pdf

The summary has these points to make:
Key trends
In 2013 more than 80 per cent of the lives lost to
terrorism occurred in only five countries; Iraq,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria.

The largest year-on-year increase in deaths from
terrorism was recorded between 2012 and 2013
increasing from 11,133 to 17,958.

102 of 162 countries covered in this study
experienced no deaths from terrorism in 2013,
while 60 countries recorded one or more deaths
from terrorism.

87 countries experienced a terrorist incident in
2013, slightly up from 81 in 2012.

The number of countries experiencing over 50
deaths in one year hit an all-time high in 2013 at
24, five greater than the previous high of 19
countries in 2008.

Putting terrorism in context
Around five per cent of all the 107,000 terrorist
fatalities since 2000 have occurred in OECD
countries.

Homicide claims 40 times more people globally
than terrorism with 437,000 lives lost due to
homicide in 2012, compared to 11,000 terrorist
deaths in 2012.

Approximately 50 per cent of terrorist attacks
claim no lives.

The long term indirect costs of terrorism can be 10
to 20 times larger than the direct costs.

Man, the US administration policy on training Syrian rebels is looking more and more like a clusterfuck.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/02/...pecial-forces/

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The Syrian project resembles 1961 in two ways: What happens when the fighting starts is undecided, and the intended strategic objective is wholly implausible. Before this project proceeds, Obama owes U.S. citizens answers and some evidence that phase two has been studied and makes sense.

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The entire piece is worth a read.

Thanks Stavros..I'm looking at your link right now.

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Originally Posted by Odelay

Man, the US administration policy on training Syrian rebels is looking more and more like a clusterfuck.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/02/...pecial-forces/

The entire piece is worth a read.

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Thanks for the link. This morning I read Patrick Cockburn's The Rise of Islamic State. ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (Verso 2015) in which he repeatedly points to the role played by Saudi Arabia and Qatar in the funding of the Syrian opposition -but primarily the Salafi groups including the al-Nusra Front and al-Qaeda before it became IS even if SA now regrets doing it. But here is the nub of the problem, from p58
"The 'War on Terror' has failed because it did not target the Jihadi movement as a whole, and above all, was not aimed at Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the two countries who fostered jihadism as a creed and as a movement. The US did not do so because these countries were important American allies whom it did not want to offend. Saudi Arabia is an enormous market for American arms, and the Saudis have cultivated, and on occasion purchased, influential members of the American establishment."

-And it goes without saying that a lot of the arms sold to Saudi Arabia end up in the armouries of IS just as they have got their hands on the American weaponry that was sold to the Iraqi military and abandoned by the soldiers in the last year or so when they ran away from IS in Iraq. Clusterfuck seems too mild a word for it!

Islam Is ‘Not A Religion Of Peace’

Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/pro...religion-peace

None of the monotheist religions (Abrahamic big three) are rooted in peace. The difference, I believe, is that Christianity, for instance, is often practiced in countries with a secular government, whereas in the middle east, where Islam rocks, government and religion are deeply intertwined...where Islam comes first. There's a good article on this by Kenneth Krause...see if I can dig it up.
On another note - I really like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and not just because I find her attractive.
Going to have to come back to this topic when I have all my faculties...Just discovered an excellent (and fairly cheap) baby Amarone that I drank without any food...

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Originally Posted by fred41

None of the monotheist religions (Abrahamic big three) are rooted in peace.

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That depends on how far back you focus and how much time in-between is ignored... which when speaking of being 'rooted' is quite a bit of time.

I must pause here and say that I am by no means a person of faith. While raised Catholic for 15-20 years (and trying to separate myself from it even then), I am best considered an agnostic (I don't know if there is a God and I really don't spend much time thinking or worrying about the topic). So what follows hopefully is not read as being form a bible thumper.

Aside from the God of Abraham kind of being crewel with that whole "kill your son to prove your faith" thing and much more (flood, pillars of salt, etc wrath), much of the older scriptures (of all three Abrahamic religions) tell of rather violent times of this people vs that, often in the name of their beliefs or other petty grievances.

Scripturally speaking, Jesus showing up was a rather big thing. Not just in the "I say I'm the son of God... so you should listen up" sort of way, but in a more fundamental "things are now going to change a bit with regards to messaging, and I don't just mean with me letting one of my followers betray me and me do nothing" bit, but a partial breaking from the past and a generally more peaceful message... hence stoning insolent children no longer being an acceptable thing.

Don't believe me? When did Jesus say "Hey flock, would you mind kicking that guys ass for me? He's rather offended me with his different views?"

You do see results like that from one and only religion today.

To quote one book which I thought rather summarized the time well:

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Originally Posted by The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

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Originally Posted by fred41

The difference, I believe, is that Christianity, for instance, is often practiced in countries with a secular government, whereas in the middle east, where Islam rocks, government and religion are deeply intertwined...where Islam comes first.

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There is a good reason for that, it was Jesus who was preaching the whole "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's", a truly secular message of religion and government not being one in the same... while a ~500 years later Mohammed was setting up a system where government and faith are tightly intertwined along with a good bit of "Here is a list of people who you shouldn't like, and by not like I mean convert, tax or kill... and in that order."

There is a limited argument to be made for the difference between how such religions are practiced and what they actually preach fundamentally, often pointing to the Christian Crusades... while ignoring the Muslim conquests which lead up to them.

State religions on the Christian side are not unheard of, today we know of the Church of England, at the time of the founding of the US there were several official state religions, adherence to was necessary for public office in a given state. Heck even today a number of European countries have some form of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax">church tax</a>... we see only one Jewish state (in which there are multiple non Jews in government), and several Islamic ones... and when comparing the requirements or suggestions of faith installed into the laws of all it is clearly that only one faith has a difficult time separating itself from governments that it can control.

So many acts of violence have been committed in the name of religion to imply that the religion is at fault, regardless of the context or contexts in which religions are developed. But I doubt that Jesus of Nazareth could predict that 1500 years after his death the Christian Kings of Europe would claim a 'divine right' to rule and take such delight in the harassment and murder of one set of Christians against another because they did or did not accept the Pope as the Minister of God on Earth. In fact, he might be -one would hope that he would be- appalled, as the meaning in the Crucifixion is that if there was to be a human sacrifice, Jesus offered himself as the last for all time, to relieve other humans of their need for human sacrifice when there is none. Moreover, Jesus offered love as a solution to human problems, yet this seems to be the hardest thing to do - compared to resentment, which seems to be at the root of political, perhaps all violence.
It is futile to look at the origins of religion in the context of secular politics or the modern state because religion was the science of its times, and the modern state as we know it did not exist. Perhaps the most difficult question to answer in the modern age is why so many people adhere to religious belief rather than secular, non-religious belief, as an explanation for life on earth, and as a guide to how to live one's life. It clearly brings comfort to a lot of people, yet for others in the wrong time and place can become a sentence of death, and on that score, no religion is short of fanatics and murderers who claim the authority of God for what they do. It could thus be not the fault of God, but the assumption of God-like powers by men with guns, or seated at the controls of an aeropane. That need for absolute power, even if only for a few minutes, points towards issues of power as another elusive enigma wrapped in the mystery of religion -or maybe that is where they meet with such devastating consequences?

The world into which Christianity was born was henotheistic. Rome had no difficulty accepting the religions, gods and goddesses or other cultures into an expanding pantheon. Rome may not have practice separation of temple and state, but the effect of recognizing all temples approximates a kind of secularism. If you were a client state, Rome was interested in your political fealty, not your religion. However, Christianity proved to be a different animal: it was not only monotheistic but virulently proselytizing. It eventually consumed Rome and spread to the rest of Europe and the British Isles, subsuming pagan cultural practices while displaying little tolerance for pagan priests, witches, gods and goddesses. Christ may have had something different in mind, but he had little control over what Christianity would become centuries after his death.

Europe also was the home of the Enlightenment. The influences of Voltaire, Locke, Spinoza and others in Europe and Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Washington and others in North America are directly and perhaps singularly responsible for inspiring the secular governments we find there today. (Since we have a historian on board, I know I’m going to regret that last statement.)

Like Rome (though not a consolidated empire) the Indian subcontinent was home to plethora of gods, goddesses and religions. Hindu is more an of religions than a single religion. Like Christianity, Islam is monotheistic, proselytizing and virulent. When it made contact with India it swept through the continent eventually making millions of converts. However, Allah did not join the Hindu pantheon. Allah will not tolerate other gods and idols. Perhaps because India wasn’t a monolithic empire like Rome, Islam did not consume India like Christianity consumed Rome, though the relationship between Islam and Hindu is not an easy one. Pakistan, very definitely does not have a secular government. India does or does not depending on who you ask. I imagine India’s government is perhaps more like Rome’s was: not secular but displaying the tolerance of its henotheism whenever that tolerance is reciprocated.

The two younger Abrahamic religions seem to have little capacity for tolerance. Their adherents (at least their more fundamentalist ones) yearn to live within like-minded communities. They suffer a phobia of the “sins” and religious transgressions of those who don’t believe as they do. They fear that somehow those transgressions will rub off. That fear becoming collateral damage to God’s wrath. Every other year Pat Robertson warns that tornadoes may tear up your town if it harbored homosexuals, or if its schools teach “evolutionism.” Jesus was a revolutionary. He pushed for tolerance. Though we was successful in creating a new religion, two of its founding principles and directives (monotheism and go-out-and-convert-the-sinful) conflict with what I like to see as the main principle, tolerance. I excuse the oldest monotheistic Abrahamic religion (which suffers from a lot of self-directed intolerance) on the grounds that it doesn’t seek (at least not to my knowledge in the modern day) to gain converts among the pagans.

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Originally Posted by trish

The world into which Christianity was born was henotheistic. Rome had no difficulty accepting the religions, gods and goddesses or other cultures into an expanding pantheon. Rome may not have practice separation of temple and state, but the effect of recognizing all temples approximates a kind of secularism. If you were a client state, Rome was interested in your political fealty, not your religion. However, Christianity proved to be a different animal: it was not only monotheistic but virulently proselytizing. It eventually consumed Rome and spread to the rest of Europe and the British Isles, subsuming pagan cultural practices while displaying little tolerance for pagan priests, witches, gods and goddesses. Christ may have had something different in mind, but he had little control over what Christianity would become centuries after his death.

Europe also was the home of the Enlightenment. The influences of Voltaire, Locke, Spinoza and others in Europe and Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Washington and others in North America are directly and perhaps singularly responsible for inspiring the secular governments we find there today. (Since we have a historian on board, I know I’m going to regret that last statement.)

Like Rome (though not a consolidated empire) the Indian subcontinent was home to plethora of gods, goddesses and religions. Hindu is more an of religions than a single religion. Like Christianity, Islam is monotheistic, proselytizing and virulent. When it made contact with India it swept through the continent eventually making millions of converts. However, Allah did not join the Hindu pantheon. Allah will not tolerate other gods and idols. Perhaps because India wasn’t a monolithic empire like Rome, Islam did not consume India like Christianity consumed Rome, though the relationship between Islam and Hindu is not an easy one. Pakistan, very definitely does not have a secular government. India does or does not depending on who you ask. I imagine India’s government is perhaps more like Rome’s was: not secular but displaying the tolerance of its henotheism whenever that tolerance is reciprocated.

The two younger Abrahamic religions seem to have little capacity for tolerance. Their adherents (at least their more fundamentalist ones) yearn to live within like-minded communities. They suffer a phobia of the “sins” and religious transgressions of those who don’t believe as they do. They fear that somehow those transgressions will rub off. That fear becoming collateral damage to God’s wrath. Every other year Pat Robertson warns that tornadoes may tear up your town if it harbored homosexuals, or if its schools teach “evolutionism.” Jesus was a revolutionary. He pushed for tolerance. Though we was successful in creating a new religion, two of its founding principles and directives (monotheism and go-out-and-convert-the-sinful) conflict with what I like to see as the main principle, tolerance. I excuse the oldest monotheistic Abrahamic religion (which suffers from a lot of self-directed intolerance) on the grounds that it doesn’t seek (at least not to my knowledge in the modern day) to gain converts among the pagans.

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It is difficult to reply to such a confused set of ideas, but I will try.
I am not sure why anyone would claim the Romans were tolerant of other religions, 'throwing Christians to the lions' does not seem tolerant to me, and although they did not invent Crucifixion, it was reserved as the most despicable form of punishment -the clue might be the view from Rome that Jesus was a truly nasty pest, Pontius Pilate washing his hands not amounting to much of an excuse. Perhaps if we looked beyond their splendid roads, their urban planning, their development of law and their homo-erotic sculptures, we might not find the Romans either so boring, or so benign.

This thread is in danger of morphing into the other God thread, but there must be a theme in the history of ideas which links the word's religions and the various strands of philosophy -and not just Western European philosophy- and that is the question of whether or not, left without law or politics humans revert to what Hobbes called 'a state of nature' in which human relations are characterised by violence and greed in which life is 'nasty, brutish and short'. In fact there is plenty of evidence that human societies without government develop rules which enable them to co-exist with others free of violence, trading if not always sharing resources, inter-marrying, and so on.

Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, the Hindu -and throw Plato into this mix-are united in their determination to provide their social milieux with tools for living -a set of laws, values and beliefs designed first and foremost to provide the framework for peaceful living. In essence, at the level of design, all religions are 'religions of peace'. If people believe there is an all-seeing, all-powerful God who has the power of life and death, to claim to be speaking on behalf of this God -and to be believed- endows the 'Prophet' with awesome social power. That religions use threats when people are being or threaten to be disobedient is part of the need for social order in which certain acts are sanctioned. Whether or not any of the aforementioned messengers of God would approve of the way in which their ideas have been developed into ideologies of power that emphasise chastisement rather than love, war rather than peace, I doubt. Even in late times, we have the example of the violence perpetrated in the name of Karl Marx that he would have found both appalling, and remote from his analysis of capitalism. How one gets from Volumes 1 and 2 of Capital, to Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot is a mystery to me but there is precious little evidence that these 20th century killers ever read Capital, or in Lenin's case, understood it. I doubt the majority of young so-called Jihadis have ever read the Quran and understood it least of all in the context in which it appeared, but many have read the violent tracts of Sayed Qutb, Abdullah Azzam, and a plethora of online nutcases and prefer to be pictured holding a Kalshnikov rather than the Quran.

It is absurd, as Bobvela implied with his link, to claim some special agency of violence by Muslims against non-Muslims as an enactment of the faith -where is the recognition that beyond state violence, social violence against Muslims is happening on a regular basis in the USA, the UK and Europe, Myanmar, Thailand, India, China, Sri Lanka and Australia to name just a few from recent news stories?

As for the USA, is it not a paradox of the American Revolution that the constitutional separation of Church and State took place where the issue was not that the founding fathers were not Christians -they were- but that the impetus for many of the early 'Pilgrims' (are Pilgrims different from Settlers?) was precisely the religious freedom defined in terms of Church loyalties, and that persuaded them to leave this arena free for all?

Is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana an extension of Constitutional rights to Americans in Indiana, or a violation of them, and indeed, the Constitution itself?

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana an extension of Constitutional rights to Americans in Indiana, or a violation of them, and indeed, the Constitution itself?

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That's the pretense. Indiana is part of the U.S and any citizen would have the full protections of the first amendment without the passage of a state law purporting to mimic the spirit of the first amendment. Insofar as the Religious Freedom Act itself would offer protection, it would be deciding by legislative fiat what would otherwise be determined by a court according to constitutional principles (this could get more layered depending upon whether the Indiana law is exempting someone from a federal mandate or protecting them from adverse consequences by a private individual).

Anyhow, it seems to me that it misses the spirit of free practice. It is the most authoritarian and intolerant interpretation of free practice. Is one only practicing his religion if he can prevent others from taking actions he finds disagreeable?

Religions are only religions of peace for their followers. Of course everyone has the right to convert and become part of the flock, but what about the various prescribed judgments in this life and the next for those who don't believe? Surely there are peace-sustaining edicts intended to protect human life as well as property....but what about the legislation of sexual morality beyond the bounds of informed consent (masturbation, sex of partners)? Or the advantages that are supposed to accrue only to those who believe in the right deity and the punishments reserved for those who don't believe, even if by any objective standard these are peaceable people who are destined to roast for eternity? I think all religions are by design inherently hostile to non-believers. That's why I think a focus on the Koran misses the point because the only way Judaism and Christianity (the latter in my understanding also uses the old books) is not violent is if one cherry-picks the text.

Yes, I know this has become an all religions post, but I think the issue is broader than Islam or the Koran.

I realize some of what I say about religion can be said about any ideology. A person who believes strongly in any idea will believe others should believe it too. But religion uses a manipulative set of tactics to instill fear in people, to demand punishment and ostracism for non-conformers, and even to endorse violence.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

It is difficult to reply to such a confused set of ideas, but I will try.
I am not sure why anyone would claim the Romans were tolerant of other religions, 'throwing Christians to the lions' does not seem tolerant to me, and although they did not invent Crucifixion, it was reserved as the most despicable form of punishment -the clue might be the view from Rome that Jesus was a truly nasty pest, Pontius Pilate washing his hands not amounting to much of an excuse. Perhaps if we looked beyond their splendid roads, their urban planning, their development of law and their homo-erotic sculptures, we might not find the Romans either so boring, or so benign.

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Well you got me there, the Romans showed no tolerance toward anyone who opposed or was perceived as being opposed to Rome; and as you point out, crucifixion was one of mode of displaying their displeasure (making this thread Holiday appropriate).

My claim, however, was with respect to religion. The worship of Egyptian deities did not automatically land you in the arena. There was no effort to convert the pagans in conquered territories to the religion of Rome. Obeisance and taxes were required.

My interest, however, is directed more toward the suggestion raised by Bobvela: Christ’s directive “give unto Caesar” and others like it is what renders Christianity amenable to secular government. I do not see Christianity as more amenable to secular government than Islam in particular or some other religion, say Hinduism. In fact, I see the coupling of monotheism with the proselytizing directive (which was and still is enthusiastically taken up by the followers of new religion) to become “fishermen of men” as incompatible with religious toleration. I always found it amusing that of His ten demands the God of Abraham wasted the first three on self-aggrandizement and intolerance toward other religions (You shall have no other gods before me. You shall make no idols. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain). With the spread of Christianity pagan religions went underground or died out entirely. Atheists kept their disbelief to themselves. In Alexandria, Hypatia was flayed and killed by angry Christians. Witches were burned at the stake in Europe and the Americas at the behest of crazed Christians.

It is not because of any difference between Christianity and Islam that the nations Europe and North America are now ruled by secular governments and the nations of the Middle East and North Africa are not. The former nations fell under the influence of the Enlightenment and adopted for themselves the political values of Enlightenment philosophers; while the people of the Middle East and North Africa were colonized and exploited by those same European nations that regarded themselves as enlightened. Surely to them, Sharia must now look a lot better than Enlightenment politics. (Not to mention that, in the interest of large oil concerns, we've propped up divine monarchies there for decades.)

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Originally Posted by broncofan

That's the pretense. Indiana is part of the U.S and any citizen would have the full protections of the first amendment without the passage of a state law purporting to mimic the spirit of the first amendment. Insofar as the Religious Freedom Act itself would offer protection, it would be deciding by legislative fiat what would otherwise be determined by a court according to constitutional principles (this could get more layered depending upon whether the Indiana law is exempting someone from a federal mandate or protecting them from adverse consequences by a private individual).

Anyhow, it seems to me that it misses the spirit of free practice. It is the most authoritarian and intolerant interpretation of free practice. Is one only practicing his religion if he can prevent others from taking actions he finds disagreeable?

Religions are only religions of peace for their followers. Of course everyone has the right to convert and become part of the flock, but what about the various prescribed judgments in this life and the next for those who don't believe? Surely there are peace-sustaining edicts intended to protect human life as well as property....but what about the legislation of sexual morality beyond the bounds of informed consent (masturbation, sex of partners)? Or the advantages that are supposed to accrue only to those who believe in the right deity and the punishments reserved for those who don't believe, even if by any objective standard these are peaceable people who are destined to roast for eternity? I think all religions are by design inherently hostile to non-believers. That's why I think a focus on the Koran misses the point because the only way Judaism and Christianity (the latter in my understanding also uses the old books) is not violent is if one cherry-picks the text.

Yes, I know this has become an all religions post, but I think the issue is broader than Islam or the Koran.

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I think you probably need to see the reward/punishment factor in religion much as you see it in the law -the whole point of having a law is to present society with a structure, with the proviso that if a law is broken, punishment will follow -precisely what that punishment should be is clearly something that changes over time, though execution and eternal damnation does seem rather excessive to many of us, even if many other contemporaries have expressed a desire to punish people in as gruesome a fashion as IS, and it is perhaps interesting that their punishments induce horror -yet capital punishment as such is still common in the USA.

There is also the theme that links religion as an ideology to nationalism -as in 'Do you belong here'? Can you be a non-Muslim and live in Saudi Arabia? A non-Jew in Israel? It is clearly possible in both cases, even if militants think otherwise. I don't think this is an issue that Muhammad every came close to resolving in his own mind. The Constitution of Medina indicates his intention to integrate the Jews into his Community of the Faithful, whereas they allied themselves to a hostile faction in the town and lost out as a result. Muhammad had many conversations with Christians who lived in the vicinity of Mecca at the time, and there are enough references in the Quran that laud the 'people of the book' -as well as hostile verses- which suggest this was an unresolved issue, and which, dare I say it, points to the human element in religion, since we must suppose God has no problem with believers whoever they are.

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Originally Posted by trish

Well you got me there, the Romans showed no tolerance toward anyone who opposed or was perceived as being opposed to Rome; and as you point out, crucifixion was one of mode of displaying their displeasure (making this thread Holiday appropriate).

My claim, however, was with respect to religion. The worship of Egyptian deities did not automatically land you in the arena. There was no effort to convert the pagans in conquered territories to the religion of Rome. Obeisance and taxes were required.

My interest, however, is directed more toward the suggestion raised by Bobvela: Christ’s directive “give unto Caesar” and others like it is what renders Christianity amenable to secular government. I do not see Christianity as more amenable to secular government than Islam in particular or some other religion, say Hinduism. In fact, I see the coupling of monotheism with the proselytizing directive (which was and still is enthusiastically taken up by the followers of new religion) to become “fishermen of men” as incompatible with religious toleration. I always found it amusing that of His ten demands the God of Abraham wasted the first three on self-aggrandizement and intolerance toward other religions (You shall have no other gods before me. You shall make no idols. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain). With the spread of Christianity pagan religions went underground or died out entirely. Atheists kept their disbelief to themselves. In Alexandria, Hypatia was flayed and killed by angry Christians. Witches were burned at the stake in Europe and the Americas at the behest of crazed Christians.

It is not because of any difference between Christianity and Islam that the nations Europe and North America are now ruled by secular governments and the nations of the Middle East and North Africa are not. The former nations fell under the influence of the Enlightenment and adopted for themselves the political values of Enlightenment philosophers; while the people of the Middle East and North Africa were colonized and exploited by those same European nations that regarded themselves as enlightened. Surely to them, Sharia must now look a lot better than Enlightenment politics. (Not to mention that, in the interest of large oil concerns, we've propped up divine monarchies there for decades.)

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Rather than say you are wrong about Rome, I would suggest you alter the perspective. The Roman Empire was both created and retained through military force, but also through the co-option of local elites into the higher strata of Rome where class was as important a form of social stratification as it had been in Greece. Whether this buttressed existing local elites, or created new ones who saw an opportunity and took it, is too varied an issue to be debated here, but it is also the case that there were urban riots and rebellions (eg, Spartacus) some of which rejected Roman power, others 'merely' complaints about living standards. Thus Rome can be seen to have been an 'informal Empire', a model copied by the British in, for example, West Africa, where a limited military presence enabled the Empire to function through a mixture of local elites and Christian missionaries, all of whom formed part of the economic nexus that tied the relationship together, just as the Roman Empire successfully used universal forms of coinage and literacy to establish lines of communication and transaction that linked the centre to the periphery. Recalticance could be fatal -the claim that 770,000 troops were sent to defeat the 20,000 or so Carthaginians cannot be truly verified, yet there are no records from Carthage because it was all but wiped off the face of the North African Earth.

Ideologically, all of the three monotheist religions thus challenged Rome, challenging the plethora of Gods with one absolute and all-powerful God -Plato's 'pure form' in another sense-, but replacing fatalistic inertia with individual purpose and salvation. Thus Jesus was rejecting the temporal power of Rome and insisting that spiritual power was all that mattered, because if you believed in his mission, that commitment to a personal God who would save your soul, it would enable you to have both a personal relationship with God, and form ties with a community of people who shared your belief. All of the rituals and practices common to religion follow. The ancient pagan religions did not offer this personalised salvation and eternal life, but note too how pagan rituals became absorbed into Christian practice much as happened with the Jews and Muslims. Indeed, from this perspective, you can see how unoriginal Muhammad's core message is. We may never know where the idea of one God began, Akhenaten in Ancient Egypt was a monotheist, and may even have been murdered by the pagan priests who saw this as a threat to their livelihoods, and while it did not catch on everywhere, it has clearly had universal appeal. It is also argued that Buddha by offering a concept of personal salvation or release from the material world, is part of the same trend toward the individualization of religious thought.

What seems to happen after foundations are laid, are splits and divisions among believers -the Pharisees and Sadducees in Judaism -one democratic the other elitist; the 80 odd Christian communities that existed with their own peculiar versions of Christ's message (these are the 'Gnostic' communities) before Paul developed the church as an institution which aimed to standardise all the ideas and practices of Christiaity -and not long after Muhammad's death as the locus of Islam shifted from Mecca to Damascus, a ferocious debate about whether the Caliph could be any believer or had to be someone related to Muhammad, the clue being a terrible anxiety about the purity of the faith being practised and the potential for new ideas to lead Islam away from 'the straight path' -but a set of arguments that has beset all religions, because after all they are human creations.

In the case of the USA, 1776 was a 'bourgeois' revolution that took the English Revolution to a new level, but are these not revolutions led by money in the sense that people, regardless of their faith, resent taxes that are taken from them but which do not then get spent on the society in which they live? Ideologically, there was nor rejection of Christianity in America; even in the fiercely anti-clerical revolution in France, resentment was aimed as much at the spendthrift monarchy as it was the Church, again, because many people saw them as leeches living off the blood of the people; an intimate relationship between Church and state did not exist in America as it did in France, and particularly in Russia.

Ultimately I think the problem is how each age interprets ancient texts of religion, because just as we practice punishment for crimes differently in the first quarter of the 21st century than we did in the last quarter of the 20th, there is always something that is living and something that is dead in ancient texts. That is what makes them interesting.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Rather than say you are wrong about Rome, I would suggest you alter the perspective. The Roman Empire was both created and retained through military force, but also through the co-option of local elites into the higher strata of Rome where class was as important a form of social stratification as it had been in Greece. Whether this buttressed existing local elites, or created new ones who saw an opportunity and took it, is too varied an issue to be debated here, but it is also the case that there were urban riots and rebellions (eg, Spartacus) some of which rejected Roman power, others 'merely' complaints about living standards. Thus Rome can be seen to have been an 'informal Empire', a model copied by the British in, for example, West Africa, where a limited military presence enabled the Empire to function through a mixture of local elites and Christian missionaries, all of whom formed part of the economic nexus that tied the relationship together, just as the Roman Empire successfully used universal forms of coinage and literacy to establish lines of communication and transaction that linked the centre to the periphery. Recalticance could be fatal -the claim that 770,000 troops were sent to defeat the 20,000 or so Carthaginians cannot be truly verified, yet there are no records from Carthage because it was all but wiped off the face of the North African Earth.

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So far, this is pretty much the way I see it.

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Ideologically, all of the three monotheist religions thus challenged Rome, challenging the plethora of Gods with one absolute and all-powerful God -Plato's 'pure form' in another sense-, but replacing fatalistic inertia with individual purpose and salvation. Thus Jesus was rejecting the temporal power of Rome and insisting that spiritual power was all that mattered, because if you believed in his mission, that commitment to a personal God who would save your soul, it would enable you to have both a personal relationship with God, and form ties with a community of people who shared your belief. All of the rituals and practices common to religion follow. The ancient pagan religions did not offer this personalized salvation and eternal life, but note too how pagan rituals became absorbed into Christian practice much as happened with the Jews and Muslims. Indeed, from this perspective, you can see how unoriginal Muhammad's core message is. We may never know where the idea of one God began, Akhenaten in Ancient Egypt was a monotheist, and may even have been murdered by the pagan priests who saw this as a threat to their livelihoods, and while it did not catch on everywhere, it has clearly had universal appeal. It is also argued that Buddha by offering a concept of personal salvation or release from the material world, is part of the same trend toward the individualization of religious thought.

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The emphasis Jesus was said to have placed on the spiritual nature of His message would have allowed Christianity to co-mingle with the other religions in Rome’s empire in spite of it being a monotheistic offshoot of Judaism. [After all, Judaism was monotheistic and yet had a place within the empire.] One could give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s (the material world is immaterial after all) and retain what really mattered (spiritual salvation).
Christ’s crucifixion was the reaction of a Roman “governor” of far flung satellite member of the Empire to a minor (perhaps only perceived) threat to their client’s (Herod’s) hegemony in the region. In hindsight, probably the wrong reaction. But does this single martyrdom and the wonderful message of spiritual salvation explain the exponential spread of Christianity throughout the next one thousand years? The later Church quite self-consciously propagated a self-reproducing, memetic form of Christ’s monotheism. Good News. Spread the Word. Be ye Fishermen of Men. Missionaries. Miracles. Promises. Wherever Christians went, the coupling of intolerance for other deities and missionary zeal snuffed out all other religions while subsuming their more recalcitrant practices.

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In the case of the USA, 1776 was a 'bourgeois' revolution that took the English Revolution to a new level, but are these not revolutions led by money in the sense that people, regardless of their faith, resent taxes that are taken from them but which do not then get spent on the society in which they live? Ideologically, there was nor rejection of Christianity in America; even in the fiercely anti-clerical revolution in France, resentment was aimed as much at the spendthrift monarchy as it was the Church, again, because many people saw them as leeches living off the blood of the people; an intimate relationship between Church and state did not exist in America as it did in France, and particularly in Russia.

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I certainly wouldn’t deny the motivations, forces and inducements behind the U.S. revolution were multitudinous and that economic self-determination was of primary importance to the merchant class and the wealthy. It should be noted, however, that a significant portion of those classes who took an active role in the revolution were deists. Even many self-educated frontiersmen, such as Ethan Allan, were staunchly atheistic. The U.S. Declaration of Independence makes a reference to Nature’s God, not the God of Abraham. The concept of “Nature’s God” is a weak brew of pantheism, agnosticism and atheism for eighteenth century atheists and agnostics who felt uncomfortable coming out of the closet. This enlightenment approach to religion undeniably influenced the early founders of American democracy to craft a secular government, much opposed by many Christians at the time.

I don't disagree with what you say, but I do wonder if you and others are attempting to force a clean break between the religious and the secular where the reality is that one morphs into the other, so that no clean break is possible. This attempt is particularly noted with Islam where people who clearly detest it claim that it is in many ways different from the other monotheist faiths, or for that matter, any religion, when it is not. Seen from the perspective of the history of ideas, you cannot separate out the secular from the religious as if they came from different sources, because the sources are the same and defined in relation to each other; thus the two are doomed to be related for all time. It thus becomes a matter of choice, and that is political.

I do think there are some, a few of the so called “new atheists” for example, who seem to think the lines between the religious and the secular can and should be sharply drawn. I do not think they can be, for the reasons you cite; namely

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Seen from the perspective of the history of ideas, you cannot separate out the secular from the religious as if they came from different sources, because the sources are the same and defined in relation to each other...

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My main concern here was to emphasize that Islam is no more incompatible with secular government than is Christianity; that the governments of the West and those of the Middle East were formed, not just under the influences of two distinct branches of the Abrahamic tradition at different stages of historical development, but at different times, in different geographies, under different social conditions, different institutions, different philosophies and under different geopolitical and economic circumstances. Moreover, the governments and political and economic circumstances under which each of the two religions have evolved and now continue to evolve, have shaped and are now shaping the futures of those religions. Over the past few centuries secular governments and Christianity have been learning how to co-exists. Am I right in thinking that to date Islam has not really had the benefit of such an experiment?

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Originally Posted by trish

Over the past few centuries secular governments and Christianity have been learning how to co-exists. Am I right in thinking that to date Islam has not really had the benefit of such an experiment?

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No.
There are numerous examples of co-existence at the religious level, and examples of what might be called 'secularist' government although it is a slippery term.
The Ottoman Empire is regarded by some as the last Caliphate, although the actual status of the last Sultans is disputed, or at least their effective rule as Sultans. That aside, the 'Young Turk' revolution of 1908 began a long experiment with secular government that has only been challenged since Erdogan's rise to power, giving an emphasis to Islamic issues which the military, who see themselves as the guarantors of Turkish identity disagree with.

In Iran, the attempt by the Shah in the 1960s to expropriate the property of the Shi'a Ulema, and the 'White Revolution' gave that country a secular appearance which meant that much of the opposition voiced its concerns in the language of Islam and thus enabled the Mullah's to form the backbone of what became the Islamic Revolution.

In Jordan, and also the West Bank -including the period between 1948 and 1967- Christians and Muslims co-existed without a problem, and still do, and, for example, you can buy alcohol in many places in Jordan and the West Bank.

Lebanon has a curious constitutional arrangement dating from the late 1940s which parcels up every government job among the 19 or so confessional groups in the country which means no single religion or confessional group dominates.

Both Iraq and Syria under their respective Ba'ath parties were considered secular states, indeed, according to some, that is what was wrong with them. The same was true of Egypt under British rule, and on through the nationalist revolution of 1952 until after the assassination of Anwar Sadat when Mubrak began appointing Islamists to positions in education and the justice system to appease the opposition, a form of window dressing which he actually came to regret.

The Yemeni revolution of 1962 actually overthrew a religious form of government, by a long line of Zaydi Imams, and became a sort-of secular government, but was split when Britain lost control of the Aden protectorate in the late 1960s and it became a separate 'Socialist Republic' supported by the USSR and where, as in Afghanistan, women had equal rights, and so on.

So while you may not have a secular form of rule as you understand it in the US, many Middle Eastern governments have not been overtly religious -so the religious government experiment is quite new, and is seen as a response to the failures of Arab Liberalism, Arab Nationalism, and the Arab Socialism of Hafez el-Asad and Saddam Hussein, if you call that socialism.

Thanks for the examples: Even more evidence that Islam, like its sibling, Christianity, is not incompatible with secular government.

The worrying trend is the fetish among the so-called radicals that any form of non-Islamic government -as defined by them- is incompatible with their version of the state. The fact that Muhammad lived among Christians and Jews and, indeed, derived a lot of his ideas from them, is either considered irrelevant, or carefully expunged from the record, just as the unelected crooks who run Saudi Arabia have erased so much of the diverse history of the Hejaz they invaded in 1925. This corrupt, violent and unelected ally of the USA practices the ideology of a man (Abdul Wahab) who became so confused and distressed with the diversity of Islam as it had developed between the death of Muhammad and the 18th century, that he dismissed it all as a perversion. His own brother said he was mad, but this complete dismissal of everything that does not fit with a simplistic version of the faith appeals to those who can't be bothered to read, or who rely on the interpretations of the faith which reinforce the mono-cultural argument which apparently has no complications. It is not much different from Leninism which sought to end politics itself by making argument pointless -the cadres received their daily dose of knowledge from the central committee, what was there to discuss? Saudi Arabia, one of the USA's closest allies in the Middle East -spends $60 million on Syria, $60 billion on weapons, but still relies on the armed forces of Pakistan to help out with its latest local war in the Yemen, perhaps because so many of the lads in the Kingdom's own army are the sons of Yemeni immigrants...with friends like these...