I might grasp that analogy a bit better if they were all taking a boat somewhere to homestead in a new land rather than just spending most of their time trying to figure out how to rid the world of Jews.

Majority rules? The American narrative is more nuanced than your simplistic majoriatarianism. When it comes to your love affair with Shi'ism you have become a master of simplistic equivocation.

No taxation without representation

Peter:

It's their land. They don't need to go anywhere.

Orrin:

It was your analogy, not mine. There are lots of peoples with a narrative of "martyrdom, persecution and suffering." The Balkans are teeming with them. Aboriginal peoples qualify. The Irish made a cottage industry out of it. What exactly would any of that have to do with American foreign policy today?

I think I get your insight about Shia being theoretically more compatible with secular government, but I don't see what difference that makes in 2006 when they are obviously a few wars and internal upheavals away from working it all out. Isn't that a little bit like someone in 16th century Europe saying that, because he thought Protestantism was more theologically compatible with individual freedom and religious pluralism, he was backing Zwingli?

jizya?

What analogy? The Anglo-American model is based on consensual government but you expect the Shi'a not to insist on the same?

The Catholics didn't get to govern England in perpetuity.

Consensual theocracy. Love it.

Orrin, I'm quite happy to wish the Shia the best of luck in their struggles for justice with the Sunni, but I also think it is important we tell them firmly to take the direct route and not detour through the rest of us.

Tom:

Worked here and Britain.

Peter:

We're there. They aren't here.

Theocracy? Your comment speaks for itself.

Our history speaks for itself:

www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1189/

That's a stretch.

Of course, because you are all things good and they all things bad. That's how bigotry works.

How does cultural relativism work? Moral equivocation? Seeing the dangers in radical secularism should not rob one of common sense. That which is implied within the the ideology of practical Islam is not beyond your grasp if you would like to understand it.

Understand it? I agree with it.

Cultural relativism isn't just the belief that all values are equal, but the belief that a different culture built on much the same values as your own is worthless just because it's not yours. Both are forms of evil.

"We're there. They aren't here".

Spoken (almost) like a true guilt-ridden Upper West Sider.

If the real issue is between the Sunni and the Shi'a, then why doesn't Hezbollah march north tomorrow? They have proven themselves, no?

And why does Ahmadinejad keep going to Indonesia, preaching about the destruction of Israel? Shouldn't he be measuring the drapes in Riyadh?

I understand that the Sunni have treated the Shi'a like dirt for 1400 years, but if the redress is going to include 'detours' through Tel Aviv and Manhattan, then they are going to remain in their minority status in perpetuity. No one here will care what tribe or sect a terrorist is from if he dances over the deaths of thousands of Israelis or Americans.

If the Shi'a want to distinguish themselves, they need to get somebody out front who can make their case. Right now, that somebody ain't Nasrallah, Khameini, Ahmadinejad, Al-Sadr, or even Berri. Perhaps Maliki can do it, but if he winds up being Tehran's puppet, they might as well partition Iraq ASAP.

Detours? Where are they?

We need to stop trying to fit Islam into categories established by Western religion and government. This error is particularly egregious in the case of the Sunni/Shia devide.

Some of us insist on calling the devide a "sectarian" issue, and all kinds of analogies are drawn to religious issues within Western religions.

Every book and article treating with the devide holds out hope that these supposed religious of theological distinctions are going to be laid out, and every time we study these sources, the hope is dashed. The Farivar article is no help. We will await the Nasr book, but the hope is fading fast.

Notice that the very name for the Shiites come from an expression for the "partisans of Ali"--not the followers, not the diciples, not the adherents, but the partisans of Ali.

Now this "Shia revival" is a very good thing, if only to maximize the contradictions of the spiritual jailhouse--confusion to the enemy, and all that. Chaos on the other side is a very good thing. Let them chew on each other for a while, have a good gang war ovewr who is to be capo di tutti capi, while communication technololy enlightens the inmates of the jailhouse concerning better ways to think and act.

Islam is a Western religion.

If the culture of desert Arabs is western. Words are meaningless, social constructs. Tools of the dominant class.

Christ and Moses were strangers to the desert, eh? You feel such a need to be better than them you can't even face what you are.