Or maybe it's because Islam seems particularly oppressive to the modern eye.

The Taliban, reviled even by many Muslim nations.

No females driving in Arabia, and in that same nation, teenage girls are forced back into a burning building, where they perish, because they aren't PROPERLY DRESSED. They aren't naked, just missing their headscarves.

Most Arab Muslim nations don't allow other religions to legally proseletize.

There's not much evidence at all that Allah doesn't bear an uncanny resemblance to the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Plus, what's the attraction of Islam, anyway ?
Allah must surely be a God that values only intensity of religious faith, for He hasn't seen fit to allow many of his followers to attain much in the way of terrestrial wealth, or even comfort, to say nothing of educational achievement.

In strictly secular terms, Allah has proved to be only slightly more powerful and munificent than the spirits of the American Indians.

In strictly secular terms, Allah has proved to be only slightly more powerful and munificent than the spirits of the American Indians.

And we all know that religions must ultimately be judged by the secular goodies they deliver. But even on its own terms, that statement is absurd.

Got a lot of animists in Canada, do you ?

And we all know that religions must ultimately be judged by the secular goodies they deliver.

Why do you believe that religions die ?

But even on its own terms, that statement is absurd.

I'm a very dense fellow, so you'll have to explain why.

Well, I guess that's why cities like Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Cairo and Beirut look so much like typical Indian reservations. And why drug and alcohol abuse ravage so many Muslim communities. And why the family is in such tough shape in the Muslim world, why their streets are so dangerous, why there is no scholarship or intellectual tradition and why they were always so easy to conquer, subdue and displace. And why Islam has little ceremony, scripture, places of worship, or community and charitable organization. Why they are incapable of creating wealth out of their resources and why there is absolutely no trading or mercantile traditions. Indeed, a one billion strong mess of social pathology and penury.

Michael, why can't you just say that much of the Muslim world, mainly the Arab part, blew the second half of the twentieth century big time. What's with this compulsion to see it all in the Koran?

Peter,

On an annual basis more books are published in Hebrew than in Arabic.

There were more Nobel Prize winning scientists whp belonged to the suburban NJ synagogue, where I had my bar mitzvah, than there are in the entire Islamic world.

Muslims who emigrate into what they call the Dar al-Harb feel no need to abide by its laws. Thus, whatever their behavior inside the umma, in the Dar al-Islam, once they enter the rest of the world they behave like utter savages. The prison populations of much of the First World whether the US(over 600,000 of the two million Americans behind bars are Muslims), France, Britain, Germany, Norway, Australia or Singapore are clear evidence of this.

All the construction in Malaysia and most in Indonesia is the result of its Chinese minority, which suffers ruthless oppression, quite reminiscent of the Jewish experience in Europe for most of post-Classical history.

Drug abuse is pretty much universal among Muslims in Somalia, Yemen, Oman, etc. Ever hear of qat?

I guess family life is strong if you believe in stoning the wife you don't want. Are you married, Peter? If so, does your wife know that you approve of Muslim family life? Do you make her eat out of garbage cans as one can observe Muslims in France making their wives and daughters do, while they eat prepared food at a table?

Wanna try again?

bart - Nice knockout punch. All oj's posters have to believe islam is some uber-religion just to be allowed on here.

They simply don't understand it's just a sick cult, and that's all it can ever be.

At least Jonestown had kool-ade, and Heaven's Gate had a mothership...

No, Bart, I'll have to concede. I simply couldn't match your scholarship and keen sense of the subleties of cross-cultural comparisons and observations. Plus you might tell my wife who would then start demanding real food.

One more, Peter:

That would explain why so many white westerners are clamouring to get into strict Muslim countries, and so few Muslims are trying to get into the liberal, secular west?

Actually, Michael does mention perhaps the only thing to recommend emigrating in that direction: "No females driving in Arabia."

Michael, why can't you just say that much of the Muslim world, mainly the Arab part, blew the second half of the twentieth century big time.

I thought that's what I was saying, in this thread and others.
Much of what I disparagingly list in the first post is only oppressive to the modern eye, as I said. Christianity and Hinduism weren't much different, in those specific ways, in the past.

Additionally, my belief is that the Arabs will blow the 21st century, as well. To the extent that they don't, it will be because they give up their own culture, and adopt a Western one, as alluded to in the Fukuyama-titled thread below.

I guess that's why cities like [...] Cairo and Beirut look so much like typical Indian reservations.

Actually, the typical Indian rez, (at least in Wyoming, Montana, Arizona and New Mexico), looks better than Beirut, although without the trendy restaurants and clubs.
Cairo is filled with half-finished buildings that squatters live in.

[T]here is no scholarship or intellectual tradition

Yeah, if you want to go back a thousand years, you'll find a center of academic activity and some important contributions to world knowledge and advancement.
Nowdays, however, any Muslim who wants to learn anything dealing with science or technology needs to attend a Western university.
The medical school in Cairo doesn't have any research facilities !

The Bam earthquake was devastating - for Muslims. In the West, or Japan, maybe a few hundred would have been killed, if that.
Reinforcing their mud-brick construction by running cheap nylon twine through the walls, tying the bricks together, would have cut the death toll by at least half.
Yet, they don't even have that rudimentry level of construction knowledge or practice. This in a country that's seeking to build nukes.

In Turkey, in order to facilitate development near an earthquake zone, they "officially" moved the fault line on maps.

Most of the Muslim world's educational resources go towards churning out religious scholars.

[A]nd why they were always so easy to conquer, subdue and displace.

Again, that wasn't always the case, but it certainly is now.
Israel, a tiny, itsy-bitsy nation, TWICE repelled attacks by ALL Arab armies at once, seizing territory from their would-be conquerors.

In '91, when Iraq had the fourth-largest military in the world, the Coalition forces went through Saddam's forces like a plasma torch through gasoline. We lost more troops to friendly-fire incidents and traffic accidents than we did to enemy fire.
By some estimates, they lost 250,000 men.

In '03, the Iraqis simply threw down their arms and ran away, in many cases.

Why they are incapable of creating wealth out of their resources

In the Arab world, they aren't creating wealth out of their resources, merely living off of their rapidly dwindling jackpot.
That's the House of Saud's # 2 concern, what to do when the oil revenues run out. They are attempting to broaden their industrial base, but so far without much urgency or success.

Indeed, a one billion strong mess of social pathology and penury.

That is correct.

The exceptions are far outweighed, so your statement accurately describes the norm.

What's with this compulsion to see it all in the Koran?

I don't.
However, their interpretation of and devotion to the Koran is largely responsible for their social pathologies, and make no mistake, their ancient cultures have become pathologically maladjusted to survival in a world that the West has owned for hundreds of years.

The comparison to the American Indians is apt, because inferior cultures always implode when forced to co-exist with superior cultures.

America is making serious plans to send humans to Mars, and we've had rovers exploring there for a year now.
Meanwhile, the Muslim world can take pride in discovering cheese, giving the world the concept of zero, and having God choose the Arabs to live above a vast pool of a temporarily desirable resource.
No wonder they despair, and rage.

That trend is only going to get worse, not better.
The pace of discovery and invention is picking up in the West and Far East, and Muslim nations are falling further behind every day.
At the same time, the natural resources that Muslim nations rely upon for the bulk of their income are running out, or becoming less desirable, or facing stiffer competition. Oil, rubber, timber, coffee...

Twenty years from now, U.S. troops are going to be facing a rag-tag opposition force armed with AK-47s and IEDs in some third-world hellhole.
The American troops will have robot scouts and strength-enhancing exoskeletons, which will allow them to carry uber-strong body armor and leap over small buildings, and they will have active camouflage, which will allow them to blend seamlessly into any backround that they stop in front of for a few seconds. (All in development right now. It won't be Starship Troopers in twenty years, but maybe in thirty-five).

What are the future insurgents going to do ?

History is passing them by like a Japanese express train.

But, to get back to the religious aspect, unless you can show that Christians, Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists experience much greater spiritual satisfaction from their religioius practices than any of the others, we have to assume that any of these are, or could be, legitimate ways of reaching God.

Thus, if Muslims are not more spiritually blessed by God, and they are less terrestrially blessed, what can we conclude except that their religion is composed solely of those rituals and traditions that you are so taken with, and that they'd all be better off by switching to a religion that has a history of supporting successful cultures ?

Good job, Michael. You have correctly set out how the judgement of history has been passed on the muslim world, your method of analysis being what I would call military Spencerianism. We ask how one set of folkways and instituitions compares with another, and the bottom line is the battlefield. Rags are tough with bound prisoners, but never forget that Life magazine photo of 15,000 pairs of Egyptian boots, lined up neatly on a road marking where an entire division took off its shoes so that they could run away from the Israelis faster.

My only criticism of your argument is that you give up too much to Islam qua religion. Zenophobia and inertia give any system-in-being a certain degree of staying power. Consider how native American Hesperophobic movements operated, or for that matter Boxerism-Leninism. Ask how Islam fares as a religion in light of which way the barbed wire is facing. How much of its supposed success as a religion is due to its status as a kind of spiritual jailhouse? How does it fare in the marketplace of ideas?

This of course is the immediate cause of the present crisis. Communications brought down Communism, is short order, actually, and it is having the same effect on Islam. They see the handwriting on the wall, and the handwriting says what it did before: "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting."

Well said, Michael. One quibble: The Arabs invented algebra, but the Hindus discovered the concept of zero.

Lou, Do you have a link to the 15,000 boots photo? I'd like to put that one in my scrapbook.

It hardly matters who discovered algebra or the concept of zero. A camel might discover a pool of oil, but that doesn't mean it should be credited with inventing plastic.

What matters is who took those concepts, built on them and among other things, produced a little probe that hit a comet right on the nose.

Last time I looked, that was us.

i don't think religions should be judged one way or the other. they do however tend to stop being practiced when their adherents dwindle due to the effects of following unhealthy teachings.

peter, do you think islam will triumph over christianity ? they won't both survive widespread competition for followers, so where do you have your money placed ?

Lisa, actually the Hindus invented algebra too although the name came to the West via the Arabs. Same thing with "Arabic numerals."

Personally I don't see much evidence of Islam itself holding back material progress. A case could be made for that interpretation if Muslim states everywhere were implementing Islamic economic laws while holding themselves to First World levels of governance, education, scientific spending etc.

What holds back the Islamic world is mostly the same stuff holding back the rest of the Third World: the West learned the virtues of limited government, free markets, high levels of literacy, private property and high quality governance a long time ago. Large chunks of the Third World still haven't taken those lessons to heart, unlike Asia, and are contentto blame the white man for all their ills.

The elites in Muslim countries are mostly content with feathering their own nests and can afford to send their children to Harvard etc. There is little incentive for them to improve standards in their own backyard.

Bart: It's not much surprise that Israel has loads of Nobel winners. Israel is resource-poor and has had to build a knowledge economy. Arab countries live on oil wealth and in a few cases like Dubai, Qatar and Abu Dhabi are turning themselves into centres of finance and tourism, simply importing the skilled labour they need.

Michael: "Thus, if Muslims are not more spiritually blessed by God, and they are less terrestrially blessed, what can we conclude except that their religion is composed solely of those rituals and traditions that you are so taken with, and that they'd all be better off by switching to a religion that has a history of supporting successful cultures ?"

You could probably say the same about any Catholic country in the 19th century. Spain and Ireland haven't transformed from economic basketcases by wholeheartedly turning towards Protestantism.

ac: don't you think the islamic proscription against charging interest is going to hinder economic growth ? it seems like the only islamic countries with any kind of economy at all, are those with a sizeable population of chinese or indians.

Peter B: what I took from the good Ayatollah is the idea that Allah is whatever his imams and their followers make of him. Same with Jehovah, by the way. That looked to me to be changing, getting more openly warlike. Nothing since '79 has altered that view.

cjm:

It's difficult to say since I don't think Islamic countries adopted the rule. AFAIK, interest is charged as usual and just called "profit" or labelled as service charges.

I doubt it's nearly as critical as getting other things right like low taxes, the rule of law etc.

Ali Choudhury

"interest is charged as usual and just called profit"

Good, then we are in agreement that if the Koran is ignored or circumvented, Muslims can prosper.

Ali said-

. . .the West learned the virtues of limited government, free markets, high levels of literacy, private property and high quality governance a long time ago.

True, but the West learned those virtues through Christianity, refined them through Protestantism, and purified them through Dissenting Protestantism. A national culture's success is directly proportional to the degree it accepted Christianity, Protestantism, and Dissenting Protestantism.

You could probably say the same about any Catholic country in the 19th century. Spain and Ireland haven't transformed from economic basketcases by wholeheartedly turning towards Protestantism

Actually you could argue that they have. Protestantism did the heavy theological work of reconciling biblical texts to individual capitalism. Catholics nowadays have assented to Protestant theological notions on ecconomic and political morality.

Which is what Islam can do. The religious texts themselves are not as important as the exegesis. With changing attitudes come changing interpretations of the same text. The selection of texts is rather inconsequential, you could run a society using Moby Dick or Alice in Wonderland as your gospel. Morality is determined by trial and error, theological justification comes after the thing to be justified has already been decided upon.

Interesting that nobody's even nibbled on the deity/father bait, which is perhaps the dominant motif of oj's blogging.

erp: Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of that Life magazine photo of the boots. If I have some free time in the main library in the big city simetime, I'll try to make a copy. The big skedaddle at the end of Gulf War I was actually even more disgraceful and humiliating, but not as hilarious.

Here I am, trying to live my life as a run-of-the-mill extreme right-wing Massachusetts Jew and you guys keep making me defend Islam. Millions of Muslims lead perfectly assimilated lives in the west, working with high tech and low, while continuing to worship at the Mosque. Islam is not incompatible with modern life.

Nor is the choice that Islam is a uber-super religion or a satanic death cult. It is neither. It is one of the great monotheistic religions and we're going to have to come to terms with it eventually. To the (extremely limited) extent that BrothersJudd has an editorial position on Islam, it is that, with luck, we are pushing it through its reformation right now and it will come out the other end of this world ready to take its place next to Judaism and Christianity as a force for good in the world.

But of course most of you attacking Islam don't really believe the nonsense you're posting. If the best you can do is Bart's self-defeating post (qat, by gosh), then you already know that you've lost.

cjm:

Talk about a question that is above my pay grade! If I had to bet, I'd say both are going to do very well for as long as I can forsee into the future, a period of time that recedes daily.

Joe:

Right. 1979-2005 was a mess. Now let's talk 670-1979.

I must confess that, while we can all have a grand old time putting Islam under the 'ole ethical and socio-political-economic microscope (given our profound collective knowledge about it) it simply boggles my mind the see that so many here think a 1400 year-old wildly successfull faith that is growing daily is on the verge of either withering away over interest or scientific advantage, or about to be defeated in battle somehow. Guys, Islam ain't going anywhere. Live with it.

David:

Bless you.

davidc: some don't see the bad, some don't see the good. at this point it's difficult to determine whether or not islam is going to survive the current outbreak of extremism. using a biological analogy, it doesn't take much for a potent virus to take over a host orders of magnitude larger than itself. when non-terrorist muslims start speaking out, and acting to reign in the extremists, then your position will become reasonable. personally, i take the current muslim leadership at their word...

theodore dalrymple had a really interesting article on young muslims in britain. they are caught in a kind of paradox, whereby they succumb to the competition of western/christian modernity, while at the same time becoming radicalized by their guilt over not following their own culture/faith. and this then, is why islam will ultimately fail -- it can not compete with human nature. simply put, they will lose followers to other religions, and to secularism.

we won't have to do kill it, it is already in its death throes. of course it has been around for 1400 years, but it has also been in decline for 800 of those years. geographic isolation extended its sell by date, but technology has removed that band-aid for good.

imagine how the majority of muslims would react to your touching displays of "tolerance". with fantasies of pillage.

c: I see the bad. Suicide bombers are bad. I see the good. The Pakistani doctor who treated my Uncle for years and is the leader of his Mosque is good. If we actually look at the terrorists, what we see is that there is some combination of Islam and western modernity that is poisonous. Not too many people here other than OJ attacking western modernity.

What is somewhat bizarre is that this war isn't by any stretch of the imagination an existential struggle. The American Indians had a better shot at defeating us than the Islamofascists have. We're not particularly green around here, but it can't be good for the planet for us to go around killing more Muslims than we absolutely have to.

Finally, I'm glad you can identify "the current muslim leadership." I can't, except that I know that the Caliph is in Washington.

"leadership" was a poor choice of words; please substitute "spokespersons".

no one here is advocating killing muslims, just removing their ability to kill us.

if there isn't an existential threat, then why are we in iraq and afghanistan ? pneumonia isn't an existential threat -- if you treat it with anti-biotics. but if you leave it too long, no medicine will save you (ask jim henson).

time will tell which side of this argument is more correct than the other. i don't personally feel threatened by islam or much of anything else in the outside world, i just like to analyse and guess :)

The thing to understand about David Cohen is that if he were in Germany circa 1937 he'd be telling us about how wonderful those brownshirts are. The leather coats, the superhighways, it is to die for.(literally)

No, cjm, that doesn't work. Bart's vile racsim does not stand in stark counterpoint to a Canadian-stlye multicultural, let's-hug-one-another workshop. Lines must be drawn, Islamicism is a deadly threat and we must be prepared to meet it with force, even to the point of flushing holy books down the toilet. But where does that leave you?

I've made this argument before, but I'll try again. How many Islamicists do you think are out there determined to destroy us? I'll grant you a million, which seems generous. That's exactly 0.1% of the world's Muslim population. Whatch'a think about the other 99.9%?

Pearl Harbour--Japan--California--Internment.

Time to think, no?

So now it's vile racism to discuss Muslim genocide from East Timor to Israel. But then one can't expect any better from a Canadian.

Canadian=girlyman

Ah, the knock-out blow I truly feared.

Peter: 1979 - 2005 is significant to me. 670 - 1979 isn't, and I'm not sure why it should be. I form my estimation of Islam by the Muslims who are amongst the living, just as I judge Christianity and Judaism. Past history is no predictor of future returns.

David: I hope with all my heart that you are right, and your judgement has earned a measure of trust. But I don't see it. They're all we can handle, if not then some.

Bart: nurse Godwin says go home and take a couple of days off.

how many bolsheviks took over russia, how many men did mao have ? add those two figures together and you get much less than 1M and yet they eventually managed to murder 100M. by the time decent people *know* there is a problem, they are in the cannibal's pot with the fire lit.

muslims strike me as very paassive, and that means a small minority's pathology gets amplified many times over.

how much of the world's problems, how much of the world's evil, can be attributed to muslims ?

we interned some japanese americans -- unjustly, and un-necessarily -- what did the japanese do ?
how many canadians or americans or english or etc are you willing to sacrifice before you decide that maybe things are more serious than you initially thought ? how many did chamberlain sacrifice ? this isn't academic, this was forced on the u.s. by the arab world. decent people are not ever willing to see the full extent of evil.

the same thing occurs with regard to the leftist infestation of both the u.s. and canada. you and david most likely see them as wrong, but not particularly dangerous. and at this point they are not able to do serious damage. but given the chance, they would send you and yours to hell in a heartbeat. of course that sounds like hysteria to you, but it wouldn't to anyone who had lived through the soviet gulag.

i have seen many muslim crowds celebrating barbaric activity against the west, but have never seen a protest against the same, have you ? where is the evidence of muslim decency, not in the particular but in the aggregate ? show me the counter evidence.

look to nature for God's will, for His plan, and tell me where is the evidence to support your position. the evidence to support my position is everywhere, unfortunately. believe me, i would much rather live in your world than mine, but only one of our worlds exists.

"Is it not similarly likely that the fear and hostility so many in the modern West feel towards Islam was born in part by our unconscious assumption that Allah bears an uncanny resemblance to the Ayatollah Khomeini?"

No, it was born of the ashes of the WTC, and for those of us who connect with Israel on some deeper level, in the carnage of suicide bombed cross town buses and pizza palors.

What is it then about Islam that has lead us to this pass. The correct answer is nothing. Religions as abstract entities do nothing and lead nowhere.

Religions provide their adherents with sanctification of their ways of life and social relations. Unfortunately, Most of the portion of the world that had previously adopted Islam to sanction their tradition bound, tribal lives, has suffered mightilly during the past two centuries from a combination of factors.

They include a tradition of political absolutism that long predated Islam (it can be traced back to the first civilizations), a weak tradition of civil society, bad choices in the cold war, weak and poorly developed educational systems, lack of a tradition of secular learning, and the aforementioned tradition bound tribalism.

The traditional tribal society can not endure in the modern, urbanized, globalized world. Landless peasants congregate in chaotic cities kept alive by government handouts, jobless and unable to function in a 21st century economy. They try to hang on to their traditions and their tribal relationships, which do not help them navigate the firghtening and disorienting world they live in.

The result is anger, an anger that has been channeled by a new generation of theo-political entrepenures weilding a poisionous combination of the worst of Western thought (Nazism and syndicalism) and the worst of Islamic thought, into suicide bombings and jihad.

There can be no doubt that Islam, which was born as the religion of a conquering army, provides some uniquely valuable tools to someone trying to stir up trouble. But, Christianity, the religion of the prophet who said turn the other cheek, was able to create military orders and even Buhddism has had armies and political strife.

Do I absolve Islam. No they are responsible for their own actions. Further, the absence of voices from the Islamic community who have spoken out against the jihadists, tells me that they have a long way to go.

And go that way they will have to, they will either calm down and make themselves into useful citizens of the modern world or they will be bombed into submission.

The Islam that they will then preach and follow will be very different. It will not sanction tribalism, absolutism, hostility towards non-muslims, misoginy or jihad.

cjm

It isn't the proposition that we should be unyielding in the resolve to defeat terror and hard-nosed about it that divides us. It's the proposition that Islam is ipso facto a malevolent force that leads inexorably to terror and lots of other bad stuff and that should itself be battled, destroyed or marginalized. That is an idea that will come to corrupt us way more than them.

Robert:

You argument about Israel is the strongest one. But don't you have to read in the tolerance for terror in the West and even Israel itself that led to legitimizing the PLO and allowing them to cow and murder moderates like the West Bank mayors who wanted to cooperate? We've been funding and sucking up to purveyors of death for a long time. Seems a mite irrational to then complain that they rule the roost.

David is right.

Islam is, like all religions, perfectly fine so long as you don't take it too seriously.

A once-a-week ritual never did any God-fearer any harm. It's when you let religion interfere with the other 6 days of the week that you get the trouble.

Joe:

Not to load you up with history assignments or anything, but it is you that is arguing that terror and menace to the West is intrinsic to Islam as a faith. If someone visiting the Jim Crow South in the 1930's asserted that America was intrinsically evil but he really wasn't interested in its history--just what he saw in the here and now--you wouldn't take him too seriously, would you?

I fear Bart is in too feisty a mood to take your wise counsel, but we can always hope Zoo Day is coming up.

All vice in moderation, eh Brit?

Well, some vices work best in excess. But religion is not one of them.

Yesterday, I was really upset because exam prep(SOA- 5, Finance Track) isn't going as well as it should, and one of my prep manuals turned out to be defective, giving me non-matching answers for a practice exam. Since this a prep I have to do entirely on my spare time, as it is a separate track from CAS and related to my move to Florida, I am even angrier. So, I lacked my normally sunny dispostion and gracious nature and for that I apologize.

Let's make the argument a simple one however. What the Koran says and how Muslims treat each other are frankly irrelevant to the discussion. What does matter is how they treat non-Muslims in their societies and how they treat non-Muslim societies. And all wishful thinking aside, the record is quite dreary.

Peter, you seem to think it is a minor problem. Given the following:

1. Several majority Muslim states in Nigeria have illegalized Christianity, making conversion to it punishable by death.

2. In Cote d'Ivoire, Muslims are butchering Christians and animists.

3. In the US, there are over 600,000 Muslims in prison out of a total prison population of about 2 million. There are at most 5 million Muslims in the US.

4. Muslims are attacking Hindus throughout India, having blown up the Lok Sabha and are killing hundreds a month in Kashmir. Hindu pilgrims get attacked regularly.

5. Over half of Norway's prison population is Muslim.

6. Australia, France, even Ireland are suffering from gang rapes of Christian girls by Muslims, who see it as a rite of passage.

7. Slavery still exists only in the Muslim world particularly Mauretania, Mali, Niger, Sudan, Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula. Only non-Muslims are enslaved.

8. According to Stephen Emerson, every American mosque is a fundraising center for terrorists.

9. In Kosovo and in Bosnia, Muslims butcher Christians, particularly Serbs, with impunity.'

10. It is tough to keep track whether the Coptic Pope is in an Egyptian jail or not, but Coptic Churches are regularly attacked by Muslims and the perpetrators never caught. Non-Muslims tourists are attacked on a regular basis there.

11. If you think Iran is so wonderful and a harbinger for the future, you just might want to ask a Bahai his opinion.

12. Muslim Malays in Thailand regularly attack and kill Buddhist schoolteachers and merchants, then they flee to Malaysia where the Muslim government gives them protection.

13. Indonesia killed 1/3 of the Timorese Christian population and is in the process of the same genocide against Papuan Christians and animists. Chinese suffer enormous discrimination there as well, akin to what Jews faced in Tsarist Russia. And Christian Ambonese receive no protection from Indonesia's Muslim government.

14. In the Philipines, Christian missionaries, nurses, doctors, and ordinary folks are under attack on a regular basis by Abu Sayyaf and other Muslim terrorists who receive the full support and cooperation of the local Muslim population.

15. British Muslim clerics regularly issue fatwas ordering their congregants to engage in terrorism against Britain and even today we have seen its results in the London Underground.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

For '0.1 percent of the world's Muslim population' they sure seem awfully busy.

it has never been my position that islam is inherently bad, or inevitably leads to badness. nor is it my position that all muslims are terrorists. the indisputable facts are that much, and perhaps a majority, of the horror in this world is being caused by muslims, and that those not directly involved are not doing anything to curb this. if you can solve the problem of the few without injuring the many then fantastic.

Turning cjm's remark on its head a bit, Peter, you're betting an awful lot on the political (and social) inertness of Muslims.

I cannot detect any difference in outlook, Muslims v. infidels, today from any day in the past 1,400 years. It mattered less (to me and to you) when their weapon of longest reach was a sword.

Mr. Choudhury says that he does not see the problems in Muslim society as inherent in its religion. But how to tease them apart?

American Christianity faced that situation in the 19th century and solved it with secular schools, tolerance, economic opportunity, dissolving of tribal allegiances in the melting pot, etc.

Query: Is Islam also decoupling its spirituality from its (I think everybody but Peter would agree) widespread social failure?

How would we know if it were?

(One way I'd know: nearly every child was getting a secular education in the 3Rs.)

Harry,

You seem on the right track but let me make a few caveats. First, in America we had the frontier. It was a harsh place where people of diverse backgrounds went and forged a society together where their differences mattered less than their similarities. Mere survival was too tough for people to focus on trivia like the differences between trans-substantiation and con-substantiation or whether or not to circumcize male children.

Second, in Islam, the concern should be for the access of females to the 3Rs. In Afghanistan, a fundamentalist paradise, teaching the 3Rs to female children was a capital offense.

Finally, even Colonial America had a diversity of Christian sects making a national theocracy pretty much impossible. The doctrinal shoals upon which such a vessel would crash are obvious to everyone on the planet except for perhaps OJ. There were colonies where a specific Christian denomination wielded inordinate power, esp. Massachusetts, but anyone familiar with settlement patterns in Colonial America will readily see how stultifying that was. Even in some colonies like Georgia and Pennsylvania which were founded by specific religious entities, by the time of the Revolutionary War they were open to pretty much everyone. A visit to the colonial synagogue in Savannah might be helpful in understanding this.

We in America were fortunate that no single denomination was ever in a position to make its doctrine into national law and that is something we need to preserve for our continued prosperity, not merely economic prosperity, as a nation.

I don't disagree about how we early Americans evolved, but Islam has its frontiers and sects, too.

Orrin likes to think of modern western values as having grown organically out of ancient Christianity. This is not wholly wrong, but it's mostly wrong. There was a notable acceleration about 400 years ago when Christianity started getting decoupled from daily life.

That's just exactly what I don't see happening (very much) in Islam. Certainly if all Muslims took seriously the Koranic injunction to succor the poor, pray five times a day etc. and left it at that, I'd have nothing to say against it.

Harry,

You are quite correct. Much of our tradition grew from Classical or pagan sources too. Certainly, Anglo-Saxon common law and its emphasis on individual rights and liberties is pre-Christian.

The American West was in many ways unique. More or less ordinary folks trying to make a go of it or just trying to make a buck were its first civilized inhabitants. I can't think of a place that was hacked out of the bush and run by its initial settlers in that way, except for some parts of Australia. We differ from the Rhodesian and Boer Whites because the settlers did the hard work themselves, not employing the locals as either servants, vassals or slaves. Even Canada and New Zealand were first plated out by the British Empire before settlers were allowed in and they always had a fairly substantial government presence. Further, unlike any putative Islamic migration, ours was diverse, including Whites, Blacks and Asians, all manner of Christians, Jews, etc. The settlers on the frontier made a conscious decision to leave all the crap back East for the most part and get on with their lives.

That is why Barry Goldwater could defend gays in the military and Western states, other than Utah, are among the least religious in the nation in terms of regular observance and are also quite hostile to governmental imposition of doctrinal positions. Yet, they vote solidly GOP. It would be quite dangerous for the GOP to alienate these independent-minded, small-government voters by trying to impose a theocracy of whatever sort on them. The recent downturn in GOP fortunes in Colorado should be viewed by Republicans as a shot across the bow at any attempt to impose a theocracy on the Western states.