hi dig,
it is more a reformation in islamic politics than religion. allah is not my business. but sharia is. just as catholic land ownership and tithes, the index of banned books and the inquisition were a big part of the issue in the reformation of christianity.
islam isn't simply another abrahamic religion. it is more comprehensive than catholicism ever was. it is a system for every aspect of life - from belief to law (sharia) to politics (eg caliphate) to economics (eg lending rules, taxes for non-believers) to ideas of freedom (eg right to blaspheme) to rituals. islam organises your day.
where the aim is to apply these principles to a society, a western society, a lot of this trespasses into everyone's zone of interest. and there is a huge amount of evidence that this is the intent of many moslem "evangelists". remember the saudi offer to build 500 mosques in germany? it is definitely the intent of jihadis.
some folks believe that one must protect moslem sensibilities because we are dealing with religion. and where a moslem is talking about their belief in a god, i have no issue. but islam is also politics. sharia is the expression of superior god-made law over secular constitutions. and so the argument is germane.
many folks think you can close your eyes and the problems will disappear. but we are revisiting the conversations of the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries here, which most folks have long forgotten. spinoza and locke are the kinds of folks we are all going to be referring to soon. i have already started (but by no means finished) getting myself educated on the arguments that were applied back then as folks sought to shake off the political ambitions of organised religion.
there's an intellectually lazy response to the issues we face, which says we must assume everyone shares the same values and we'll get along over time. that's obama's line. but you can't contain a group that is a short flight away from western europe and one hop away from the us. many of the terrorists appear to be the children of immigrants who have spent some time fighting with ISIS and have returned "home". we are all vulnerable.
meanwhile, the islamists are hard at work delivering their message. and silencing everyone that disagrees saying they are islamophobes.
not going to accept that silence. i believe in muscular secular liberal values and will express them.
the only stability with islam in a western setting is a form of islam that accepts an overarching secular organisational structure for society. this requires a reformation in islam.
hier stehe ich. ich kann nicht anders.
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