Comment by EGreg
11 years ago
It seems the QuRan (like the Communist manifesto etc) provided an ideology that drove people to conquer and feel good about it. There have been many reasons to expand and conquer in the past, and they were all usually driven by some ideology. Hellenism, Communism, are two examples.
The political idea that a society should be run according to the principles of Islam is sometimes called "Islamism". A huge reason there isn't much "Christianism" today is that the New Testament was written by people who didn't have much power and so focused on peaceful proselytizing. That is not to say that the Church and other institutions didn't at times wield great political power and seek to maintain it. But rather that the WRITINGS advocate for more like anarchism than a philosophy that encourages converting others by the sword.
Judaism has never placed emphasis on proselytizing - whether by the sword or not. It had a much more exclusive character so there is no sense that Jews living in a democratic country would dream of converting that country's structure to one that follows the rules laid out in the Torah.
So Islam in a political and cultural sense is closer to Communism than Judaism and Christianity. And we see much of the same dynamics. McCarthyism in the USA and the Red Scare are now replaced with fear of radical Islam.
> It seems the QuRan (like the Communist manifesto etc) provided an ideology that drove people to conquer and feel good about it.
It seems like the Bible did that, too.
I mean, have you even casually glanced at the history of the West?
> The political idea that a society should be run according to the principles of Islam is sometimes called "Islamism". A huge reason there isn't much "Christianism" today is that the New Testament was written by people who didn't have much power and so focused on peaceful proselytizing.
"Christianism" is one of the solid bases of support for the political Right in the USA. To say that there isn't much of it in the world is, well, completely misguided.
> But rather that the WRITINGS advocate for more like anarchism than a philosophy that encourages converting others by the sword.
If you view the "writings of Christianity" as the New Testament only, that might be defensible, but actual Christians generally don't, and much Christianism -- which is nowhere near as elusive as you make it out to be -- is based very strongly on particular interpretations of the Old Testament (and particular interpretations of the New Testament that make those interpretations of the Old Testament valid for Christians.)
> It had a much more exclusive character so there is no sense that Jews living in a democratic country would dream of converting that country's structure to one that follows the rules laid out in the Torah.
Yeah, I mean, its inconceivable that, for instance, a Jewish-majority democracy would, for instance, prohibit grocery stores from remaining open on Saturday's because of the importance of maintaining the Sabbath [0].
[0] http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.601972
While what you say has some validity, I think you've mostly attacked straw men in what I actually said.
Islamism urges for instituting sharia courts for instance, with judges trained in Islamic law, which includes the death penalty for homosexual sex provided that it is sufficiently proven and the person is unrepentant. Comparing that with the attitudes of the Christian right today yields a vastly different level of punishment in their policy prescriptions. Opposing the state officiating gay marriage and killing homosexuals are two vastly different levels of enforcement. I'm not just picking on Islam here - homosexuality is illegal in India for instance, largely because of Hinduism.
And anyway I am talking about Muslims living in say Sweden who would support the overthrow of its liberal democracy in favor of an Islamic state.
As for the "elisiveness" of Christianism, by every measure it is far less. The number of radical Islamist groups in the world is far greater. I think the Lord's Resistance Army is an example of an actual Christianist group, and even it formed in response to Islamist groups UPDF and NRA committing genocide. One may also count the KKK as a "Christianist" group in some sense although they were more white supremacists. I see this dearth of Christianist revolutionaries today because the writings have very little that necessitates conquering other societies by the sword.
As for Jews... I said that they aren't looking to take over OTHER countries to run them by the principles of the Torah because those principles were spelled out ONLY for Jews. Now of course some Jews were involved in organizing revolutions but as Communists for example. Trotsky and Sverdlov did not consider themselves very Jewish, and they certainly were animated by another ideology.
As for Israel having certain laws such as no public transportation on Saturdays, that is again not at all the same as conquering other countries NOR even restricting others' religious freedoms. Anyone is free to keep their store open on Saturday. France's majority french population "forces" all the government offices closed on Bastille day. USA post offices are closed on Sundays. I think equivocating between that and, say, preventing women from driving, is a bit disingenuous.
Look I will put it simply: there is one religion that has led to more countries with an official State Religion than all others, and among these countries are some of the only ones that crack down on Christians and openly deny Jews entry. You can see that religion in this map:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion
I have several friends who are Muslims and I have spoken to Muslims as well as Arabs from all over the world. Many agree that Islamism is dangerous and are not in favor of it. But many are in favor of it and I am worried they would support Islamism if it became an issue the same way Germans who weren't super pro Nazism nevertheless helped bring the Nazis to take absolute control of Germany:
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi...
See what happens when it's worded in a certain way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeC2OLv_Fhw
That's not a lot of steps from having people help out in a revolution that will restrict some group's human rights.
The one religion that has led to more countries with a state religion than any others is Christianity. It's true that mamy of those governments with state religions have since been abandoned them or been forcibly replaced or had the state religion become a vestigial relic with little substance in the same way many monarchies in the same countries have, but that's more due to social developments resulting from economic developments in those countries (in many cases including the social development of declining Christianity in the populace) -- and exhaustion and disdolutionment resulting from centuries of war under the banner of Christianism, including much between various Christianizes with slightly different views of Christianity and what it demanded of civil government -- than a result of mildness in the writings of Christianity vs those of Islam.
I don't disagree that violent Islamism is a particular problem in the world today, probably moreso than violent extremism leveraging any other religion; where I disagree is with your claim in the previous post that this is due to a fundamental difference between Islam and other religions rather than a difference in present circumstances. And I think that distinction is important because confusing the need to fight Islamism with a need to fight Islam changes fighting violentrepressive religious extremism to using repressive religious extremism as an excuse for violent repressive extremism on the basis of religion.
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