Quote:
Originally Posted by spence
Is the root of the violence religion or politics? That's the question you should be asking.
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In the case of so-called radical Islam, the answer is both. Fundamental Islam is both religion and government. There is no separation between those "roots" in jihadism.
That's why I have more confidence that Latino immigrants and their progeny could embrace the foundational American governmental system. The vast majority of them who are religious are Christian. There is a basis for a theological separation of church and state in the foundation of Christianity. Christ said to render unto Caesar (the state) what is "Caesar's and render unto God which is God's. It was exactly that basis which was one of the driving forces of the American Revolution and the constitutional founding of this country. It was that Judeo-Christian ethic which allowed secular and religious freedom to exist together under the over-arching principal of individual freedom.
That's why I have much less, if any, confidence that truly Muslim immigrants and their progeny who remain truly Muslim could embrace our constitutional principals of government. The basis, the foundation, the fundamental principle of Islam is the joining of politics and religion. For a true Muslim they are one and the same, and that juncture is not compatible with our foundational principles.
There is the hope that Islam will be reformed, and that might have the best chance of happening in our multi-cultural society with all of its supposedly superior benefits in the quality of life and freedom of choice. We hope that Islam can be seduced into reformation. The problem is that if you remove the joining of politics and religion from Islam, it is no longer Islam. The founder of Islam, Mohammed, specifically made religion and state the same entity. If you remove either from Islam, it is no longer the same thing.
Obviously, if Islam were to be compatible with our constitutional system and could be made so by removing either religion or politics from it, it would have to be the politics. But then what would be left? If the statist aspect is removed from Islam, it becomes a gutted shadow of what made it "great" and what was the driving force and principle in its foundation and growth. And its guiding rules embodied in the Quran and the Hadith would have to be so greatly revised as to become a different entity--maybe some offshoot or sect of its original ties to Judaism or the twelve tribes. I doubt that such a contradictory reformation can happen.
I think that so long as Muslims remain a small, relatively powerless group in the broad national sense, they can be a productive, cooperative, and "very nice" people with sporadic or unreported incidences of honor killings or other various gruesome doings that are part of their culture. When they become a majority the good, "nice", things begin to fall apart.
And, so long as Islam where it is the ruling power, is at war with the West, especially the great Satan America, there is that emotional, spiritual attachment to it and its war in the hearts and souls of faithful Muslims, even here in the U.S. And therein lies the potential, the probability, that young idealistic, truly Muslim, minds will be "radicalized."
And Islam's greatest friend here, ironically, is secular progressivism. It is the progressive/socialist hope that religion of all sorts will become hypocritical shadows of "faith" and fade away by force of strictly humanistic values of fairness, equality, and elimination of class disparities. It sees success in the marginalization of and perceived irrelevance of Christianity (so can let it wither and be destroyed in Muslim countries without protesting or doing much to help, and chastising Christians here reminding them of their past sins). And it sees the necessity of helping Muslim dissidents, refugees, and "moderates" in the hope that they too will weaken the fundamentals of their faith so that Islam is slowly "reformed"--and fades away.
There is also an indirect, "relative," tie between the progressives and the Muslims. Both share the principle of the "benevolent" all-powerful State. And both are incompatible with our founding constitutional structure. And both, at their true fundamental core, are (or can be re Islam) the enemy within that corrupts and destroys the character and foundation of this country. On the other hand, both would like to see the other disappear. But, in the meantime, each can be a tool of the other.