Comment by dragonwriter
11 years ago
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.
Ok I don't understand the last sentenxe but I think we both agree that we shouldn't confuse the need to fight Islamism with a need to fight Islam. You may be right that Christianity has just as much potential to be used to justify Christianism - but as you and I both agree we now have very few nations AND very few violent revolutionary groups seeking to replace existing governments with ones organized along a "Christian political structure" whatever that may be. I was trying to say that Christianity doesn't COMPEL large swaths of the population at any given point to strongly support a political revolution towards Christianism, which is why the separation of Church and State is rather stable. Whereas I feel that the QuRan among its contents contains prominent instructions as to how a polity is to be set up. Christian writings have this too but the organizational principle is more akin to anarchism so whatever the political leaders wind up using isn't from the NT. Don't you see a difference in the nature of the writings at all when it comes to political structure, conquering and physical violence? I will give one example:
http://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=8&verse=67
Tell me where do you have a comparable verse in the NT? These pronouncements have been interpreted to apply to modern times as well, since Muslims are to emulate Mohammad. That is what I mean.
Look I could be wrong and at the end of the day the only danger I see is in the political and violent aspects of the writings, as something that makes it hard to separate Mosque and State given enough people. It's a "rule of the game" that you can't jettison as easily as Christians can. That's what I meant.