Peter,

1. By coercive force, he means the power of a particular denomination to tax others and otherwise impose its views on the general populace. It is a damanable infringement on my rights that I cannot go to a bookstore in Bergen County NJ on a Sunday, that I cannot buy a bottle of wine before 12 noon on Sunday. In Europe, churches are regularly subsidized by the taxpayer, whether he wants to or not. The C of E in particular is very protective of the property and privilege it has extorted and swindled out of the masses over time.

2. American campuses have far more racial hostility today than they had a decade ago. One of the most noteworthy features is the lack of socialization outside one's tribal group.

3. Muslim treatment of Christians matters because that is how they would treat Christians in America if they had enough power to do so. The cancer that is Islam must be stopped now, before it metastasizes into something that cannot be controlled. There are no such things in Britain or the US as 'Muslim countrymen.' To be a Muslim is to define yourself out of civilized society.

"To be a Muslim is to define yourself out of civilized society."

That's a pretty broad brush you're swinging.

Bart:

You have no "right" to buy anything at any time, although you may arguably have rights to sell. Constitutional or political rights aren't created by declaring them pugnaciously. If anyone's rights are affected, it is the merchant's, not yours. However, I must say the right to buy wine before noon on Sunday is the most hilarious of all the rights I've seen asserted for many years.

I doubt very much racial tensions at universities have deteriorated because the students have been prohibited from hurling racial epithets.

I hope your Muslim comments gave you that little power kick you so love.

Another example of improper influence of religion over government is the idea that gov't offices should be closed on Biblically imposed "days of rest". Those office should be open the entire week, and gov't employees should take their days off on a rotating schedule that has nothing to do with religion.

And it may be a broad brush, but there is a correlation between people who want to reject US society and conversion to Islam. It's a childish way of showing contempt for a tolerant society by embracing a religion which would not show similar tolerance.

The only agency that should make the decision of whether or when to sell something is the merchant, not the state, and certainly not some religious entity. If you don't want to engage in commerce on the sabbath, that is your business.

As for buying wine on a Sunday morning, haven't you ever made a boeuf bourguinon or a coquilles St Jacques for your football buddies? If I want to buy a quart of vodka and pour it on my Rice Krispies in the morning, I have the absolute right to do so. Whether I should be allowed to drive or handle dangerous machinery thereafter is a fair question.

I suggest that all the above analysis of the proposed Brit censorship program is simply wrong. What we are seeing is anticipatory cultural surrender. The Rags will attack free speech, we know that: they have told us they will do so. The weak sisters who are running the place know that they don't have the nerve to fight back, so they may as well throw in the towel in advance and save all the fuss.

Americans, on the other hand, are not about to give up free speech because a few folk-enemies threaten to gag speech by force. We have plenty of prisons, plenty of lampposts, and if we need to, I'm sure we can find the keys to those WWII internment camps.

I suggest that all the above analysis of the proposed Brit censorship program is simply wrong. What we are seeing is anticipatory cultural surrender. The Rags will attack free speech, we know that: they have told us they will do so. The weak sisters who are running the place know that they don't have the nerve to fight back, so they may as well throw in the towel in advance and save all the fuss.

Americans, on the other hand, are not about to give up free speech because a few folk-enemies threaten to gag speech by force. We have plenty of prisons, plenty of lampposts, and if we need to, I'm sure we can find the keys to those WWII internment camps.

Speech is either free or it isn't.

If you can prove damages from somebody's speech, we have courts where you can pursue your claim.

The unstated gorilla in the corner here, though, is the penalty for dissing Mohammed. Death is what the religion prescribes.

And the issue is that a religion, in this case Islam or part of it, is claiming a moral right to control the civil government in order to impose its rules on everybody.

That ought to scare anybody.

What confusion Liberalism has thrown us into!

First, Harry: speech is not free. It never has been and it never will. Every society lives by an orthodoxy; the traducement of which will bring punishment upon the traducer. It is true that here in America the presumption (only, mind you, a presumption: see 1. Alien and Sedition Acts, 2. loyal oaths, 3. Hatch and Smith Acts) has been in favor of free speech, but this has never been absolute, despite what so many among our intelligentsia say about the First Amendment.

Secondly, Bart may speak intemperately, but he is, I'm afraid, onto something real, and we cannot simply denounce as evil anyone who entertains the question publicly. The question is: Is Islam compatible with the American tradition of politics? I for one will not have that question closed before it is even examined.

A similar question faced us with regard to Communism; and, by and large, Americans answered no. Communism, we concluded, is not compatible with American politics; and we will do what we have to in order to place sufficient burdens on anyone loyal to Communism as to emasculate the Communist enterprise here in America. That was a wise decision; and no amount of vituperation against McCarthyism will change my mind about it.

Now, it is important to note that with Islam, as with Communism, what we are considering here is not so much freedom of speech as freedom of thought -- the freedom to hold certain opinions without being subject to certain impairments, inconveniences, and irritations, most a matter of social pressures but some -- yes, some -- a matter of law.

I am well aware that all this rings fiercely discordant to ears used to being massaged incessantly by Liberalism's platitudes; but it is no less a pressing issue for us, as a people, to take up and consider as serious citizens of a republic.

Paul:

Assuming your question is an open and not a rhetorical one, what standard of proof would you demand of those who argued that it is? Would you insist on a political/theological dialogue on the Koran, or is the proof in the pudding--the actual behaviour of the Muslims in your midst? The question you ask was asked in the past about Catholics, Jews, Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, East Indians, West Indians, etc., etc., generally by people who were leaning hard on the con side. In all those cases, the answer proved to be yes, but I don't recall any formal certification processes that studied their cultures and purported to answer in the affirmative and give an official welcome. Many of them came from torn and hostile lands and, in the first generation especially, suffered from divided psychological loyalties. Some--always a small minority--proved to be dangerous. Even today, many, many secularists in the West would say that religion itself is incompatible with plurality and freedom, and, given the way many of them define those terms, they have a point.

Surely the analogy with communism is wrong. Communism is an indigenous, Western dogma that aims to dictate all aspects of political and economic life. There is no mystery about it and no cross-cultural divide to bridge. It is not a basis around which families and communities organize themselves; indeed it essentially denies and seeks to destroy family and community. Pretty hard to fit individual rights into a political dogma that denies the individual, no?

Nor has communism met any kind of historical test of longevity and popular fidelity. It has no golden age, no ebb and flow of art, science, prosperity, commerc, tolerance, etc. Most importantly, it has never had any popular appeal after it was established. Fundamental denial and resistance to it starts from the moment it arrives and it's all slavery and downhill from there. Whatever we may think about Islam, you can't possibly say that about it, especially as hardly any Muslims do or ever have.

I know almost nothing of Islam beyond the fact that they are in an unhappy mess. I've read lots of critiques from Westerners about how they are all slaves to scriptural literalism and the commands of the mullahs, but also many from Muslims who deny that and are convinced change is possible, if not inevitable. In their homelands, their record of dissent, tolerance and plurality is awful, but so was the record of almost all Catholic countries until World War 11. Do you think worldwide Catholicism would ever have opened itself so to political freedom and the separation of church and state had it not been for the American Catholic experience?

My main problem, though, has nothing to do with ideological or theological argument. It is simply that the evidence before my eyes in the city where I live belies completely all the frightening things I'm supposed to believe. The contribution of the visible Muslim community is so obviously positive that the fears you have and I once had just don't make any sense. That subversives lurk among them I don't doubt, but that is a job for the strong, intolerant police and security services I rely on and always have. Surely none of us are strangers to immigrants who import the battles from home--some of that goes with the turf and always has.

Yesterday, there were a few letters in the local rag from Muslims (and Jews) protesting that they wanted nothing to do with those arguing they were offended by public Christmas celebrations and wishing all a Merry Christmas. And I'm supposed to believe these people are faking it or congenitally incapable of fitting in? (I could tell you lots more stories, but I fear you would just accuse me of being a liberal) Frankly, we here could all do with a few moments pondering the tyranny of intellectualism.

I think you are selling your country short and underestimating the power and universal appeal of your tradition. On this point, Canada is almost identical and so, I believe, is Australia. Muslim immigration in Europe is a mess because of European racism and incompetence (and yes, also because of poor immigration choices). This is not the first time. In Britain, relations between the East Indian Hindu and mainstream societies are (or were--If you are listening, M. Ali, is this still true?) poor, ghettoized and hostile. Is there a big problem in the States with that community? I don't think so. I heard somewhere they keep Silicon Valley humming. To blame Muslim woes on the Prophet and selected Koranic verses, as Harry likes to do, is as absurd as denying entry to Orthodox Jews because of the approvals of stoning in the Old Testament.

The British Muslims seeking this kind of law are wrong, but it is very understandable that they feel under siege when they live in a society where they can be called "goatf-----rs" by artistic heros and where the words "English", "French", "German", "Dutch", etc. can never apply to them. But, more to the point, where did we ever get the idea that Muslim sins are collective and to be born by all one billion of them? If they are all irredeemable fanatics, why there are so few terrorists, despite the NY Times' efforts to convince us they are multiplying like bacteria in a sweaty locker room? They aren't.

If you want to circle the wagons, fine, but when has the States ever thrived by so doing and by slamming its doors on nefarious foreigners?

BTW, a little off topic, but I thought I would share a delightful quote from David Warren in yesterday's Citizen (pay only). In arguing that Bush's foreign policy is indeed having a profound and benificent effect on thinking in the Muslim world, he quotes an Arab correspondent, who he can't name:

"If one has been occupied for some time by the Saud family, or the Assad family, or the Mubarek family, let alone the Hussein family, one begins rather to envy the sort of people who get to be occupied by the Bush family."

Peter: Not particularly now. Minority\majority clashes tend to be mostly between blacks and whites.

Sorry.

Peter:

I will certainly not enter into a theological debate about the nature of Islam. The proof is indeed in the pudding. It is not for me, a Christian, to say what Islam is.

Nor is the fact that the question of compatibility has been raised with other groups -- raised and answered (usually) in the affirmatiive -- mean that this specific instance of it is any less valid a question. It is a sign of a healthy society when men are seriously considering the question of who we are as a people.

I think the analogy of Communism is the proper one, or at least the most immediate one -- and not because Islam has any particular affinity with Communism* in terms of content. But it is important to note that Americans were willing to proscribe Communism before they saw it as a pressing military threat (again, see the McCarthy era legislation, most of which, of course, preceded the career McCarthy himself by years). This is what made the Liberals so mad, because this entailed Americans saying, in effect: Some ideas, regardless of whether they threaten us, we judge to be intolerable. Communism is one of them. The Liberals of the McCarthy era were so angry because Americans seemed to be denying very emphatically that America was an Open Society, of the kind so dear to the hearts of the J. S. Mill-taught Liberals.

The point is that a self-governing people such as this has the right to say (though its republican institutions) that there are certain ideas we will not tolerate.

I am only arguing that we ask this question of Islam. I am not even sure where I would come down if the question were asked in earnest. But I will note that it was not a question that even entered my mind before some Muslims turned a part of Lower Manhattan into a crematorium three years ago.

"In their homelands", you write, "their [Muslims'] record of dissent, tolerance and plurality is awful, but so was the record of almost all Catholic countries until World War II."

Here, it must be said, you seem to elevate Liberalism as the Judge of Nations. But, unless Liberalism is indeed our Judge, why let these be our criteria? Frankly, I prefer the goals set forth in the Constitution of my country: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Where is dissent here? Where is plurality? Perhaps -- perhaps -- included in Liberty,** but we also must consider things like Unity and Justice.

In short, between Open Society Liberalism, and the purposes set forth in the Constitution, I favor the latter.

_______
* Although there have been a number of fascinating studies undertaken about the role of Western radicalism in shaping Islam's response to modernity.
** But even there the talk is about the blessings of Liberty.

It is precisely the encouragement that organized Islam gives to violent acts against non-Muslims which makes it incompatible with civilized society. Bahaism and Sufism are not indicative of anything more than a small minority of Muslims, about the same percentage of overall Islam as Quakers are of Christianity.

What CAIR, Louis Farrakhan, the clown with the hook in Britain, the leading Muslim theologians in Saudi Arabia, or the nutbars inciting Muslim violence in France do and say is of much more importance. These people are the chosen representatives of the vast majority of the West's Muslims. Looking to the Koran and claiming that these people are behaving in a non-Muslim fashion is as much of a waste of time as looking to the New Testament to condemn the behavior of the Cossacks, the Crusaders or the Teutonic Knights. What people think is irrelevant, what they do is what matters. In America, there are Muslims raising money for terrorist activity, there are people planning attacks on American civilian targets, there are people planning to murder Americans by the thousands. There are certainly people who danced around, cheering, as the World Trade Center collapsed.

That is why Islam needs to be removed from the civilized world. When Muslims decide to behave in a civilized fashion, maybe then they can return.

Paul, as Orrin is wont to remind us, ideas have consequences.

Orrin, among others, just hates the idea of free speech and has presented us with long arguments that the First Amendment does not prevent, say, the sovereign states from proscribing whatever speech they want.

A legalistic argument, and very few Americans are willing to have it applied to them, however many are happy to apply it to others.

It's like slavery. No one wants to be a slave, but until very recently only a few people had come around to the view that nobody should be a slave.

That, to me, is a separate issue from whatever Islam is or may be.

I'll come down on the side, though, that says we judge Islam (or any other belief system) by what it does and not by what it says or says it does.