Steal under the Taliban in Afghanistan and receive your punishment, following yet another single line in the Koran.

A hand removed from one side of the body, a foot from the other.

If you steal and are well connected (financially), you could even pay to get some poor schlub to stand in for your crime and receive the treatment.

I see no strength in these precepts.

I see the endless rules of shari’a and Hadiths and fatwas being issued for every conceivable aspect of human experience (often contradictory, depending on which Ayatollah is doing the issuing) as creations of insecure individuals who want little more than what insecure people have always wanted, to control other people through intimidation and fear.

And Mohammed’s wife (and financial benefactress) Khadija never wore anything resembling that stupid black bug suit.

It only a matter of timne before the strong rule over the weak.

Get your Burkas ready it’s just a matter of time.

I admire Sufism, but it is also much under attack by radical Islamists as an aberrant, incorrect and “wrong” version of Islam.

Its peaceful practitioners and whirling dervish dancers would be more on the radar screen as targets if their numbers were greater. As would that transcendently beautiful Persian poet of yore, Rumi.

The notion that most drove the (madman) Sayyid Qutb, and, by extension, Ayman al Zawahiri, is a notion of “purity” (oddly enough) and the extreme mindset cannot and will not tolerate anything on this Earth that it judges to be not it.

Even the bloodshed and blood itself is tied in with notions of purification.

Muslims have lived in Europe, relatively peacefully, for a long time. Maybe that is the more “secularized” version of Islam to which you refer, Muslims who understand that they are subject to the laws of the country in which they’re living. “Moderate” Muslims embraced “western enlightenment values” a long time ago. Or, if not completely embraced, at least made some kind of peace with them.

However, I don’t see much possibility of integration into European culture of this relatively “new” and virulent strain of Islam.

Nor do I think radical Islamists want to be integrated into the European countries to which they’re migrating, see, for example, recent statements of Islamists in Great Britain who teach exclusion and aloofness from the corrupt, infidel culture surrounding them.(links below)

The extremist slayer of Theo Van Gogh has no regrets for his heroic act in service to the glory of Allah and Allah’s plan for this Earth.

Given declining European birth rates and increasing immigrant birth rates, it is not a stretch to imagine that Islam will rise in Europe through sheer numbers alone.

http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2402973.ece

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/06/nislam106.xml

(another Amir Taheri essay)

http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={1F890361-DF36-4B4B-823C-77A0F7442FA9}

You will see where the real hate comes from.

We should not give up our rights to freedom because of a 7th century violent, racist, misogynist religion. Spend a little time and read the Koran

I will agree that Salafism (aka Wahabism) is a particularly violent and virulent strain of Islam responsible for most of our current problems. Sufism on the other hand is completely compatible with the values of western civilization: pacific, charitable, and internally focussed. Yet where Islam breeds fatalism and apathy in a populace, its affects are always pernicious. I see no beauty in any religion that keeps its adherents mired in poverty and ignorance.

If there’s a compromise to be found, it means a more secular Islam blended with a more sober, less hedonistic, and (dare I say it) more pious Europe, even if that piety arrives via Islam. That’s a best case scenario. What we have now is worst case: violent radical Islam allied with decadent western socialism. Strange bedfellows, indeed.

Moderate Muslims have much to gain if they embrace western enlightenment values. Secular Europeans would gain by integrating a new population of people along with their conservative religious beliefs. Extremism is the enemy of both.

I teach my students that Rome did not fall in AD 476 as stated in the textbook. The Roman Empire gradually morphed into something new: a blend of Germanic custom, Latin language, and Church hierarchy. The conquered are always absorbed. The conqueror is corrupted by the ideas of the fallen empire. It has to be a blend. And it always is if history is any witness.

>1 Corinthians 5 1-13 is the basis for my position>At what point does a your role of ‘protector’ become that of an ‘enabler’ then, Anne?

>1 Corinthians 5 1-13 is the basis for my position<

Please remember that the letter of first Corinthians is written to the church in Corinth to correct wrong doing among the believers in Christ as the resurrected Lord.

Everyone in society is constrained to conform to the laws, rules, and social mores of that society or suffer the consequences. Christians, however, are held to a much higher standard than merely what society requires, especially in these times (and incidentally, during the time Corinthians was written. That was the whole point Paul was making to the Corinthian church.)

Yes, protecting the offensive artist’s life does enable him to continue whatever it is that is offensive.

My point is that there is a whale of a difference between producing offensive art and killing someone for offensive art. Offensive art can break our heart; infuriate us; drive us to retaliate by boycotting the artist and his sponsors; lead us to be certain that we, as taxpayers, do not support it. But to kill or threaten to kill someone for a piece of so-called “art” is certainly outside the bounds of Christianity, and outside the bounds of our society, even with the sad state modern society is in.

I’m not saying buy the guy’s “art.” But a civilized person doesn’t kill some one for producing art with which one doesn’t agree. I’m saying, if someone threatens his life, he should have our (society’s) protection of his life. If some one murders him, the murderer needs to be subject to the law.

Islam is a comprehensive way of life highly valued by its peaceful practitioners for its sense of orienting them to their place on this Earth and giving them a moral grounding. The call to prayer is beautiful, the 5X day prayer lends further grounding to the rhythm of an individual’s daily life.

“Jihad” means individual striving for personal excellence.

As for “art”, some of Islam’s mosques are among the most exquisite creations springing from the hands of man. The giant Baniyam Buddha statues gratuitously destroyed by the Taliban (justified by one line in the Koran) had been an integral part of the Afghans’ cultural milieu for centuries.

Islamism (usually preceded by the word “radical”) is a creed dreamed up by a bunch of outlaws to whom the word “jihad” means that a “good” Muslim is necessarily required to slaughter any individuals labeled infidels, polytheists, unbelievers, Jews, even fellow Muslim shi’ites …whoever the creed declares to be non followers of Islam. Or, in the case of shi’ites, non followers of the correct Islam.

According to the creed of Radical Islamism, anyone not believing in the necessity of violent jihad cannot be a “good” Muslim.

(The alternative to death for the unbelievers is dhimmitude where you might be allowed to live in a state of submission to your Islamic superiors as you might be useful as a source of tax money.)

Let me note that Sayyid Qutb (the “inspiration” for Al Zawahiri’s version of Salafist Islam) was a genuine, Grade A down to earth crackpot.

The followers of Radical Islamism The Creed have attempted to convince themselves that they are following Allahs’ single plan for this small Earth by spreading the creed to all corners of the Earth and overwhelming (through destruction) anything that is not it.

In order to justify itself, the creed relies on certain (bellicose) passages in the Koran relative to conditions under which Mohammed lived 14 centuries ago.

1 Corinthians 5 1-13 is the basis for my position