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• Monday, January 5, 2009 09:01 PM

  @ForgetItAlready

  You addressed this comment as a response to one of my remarks:

  (your words in italics)

  "...secular, egalitarian social democracy. Perhaps if they could point to one nation with a Muslim majority that successfully functioned that way..."

  What, are Muslims too sub-human and therefore incapable? There is a country named Turkey, doesn't sound like you've heard of it. Go look it up...

  i'm glad you brought up the case of Turkey. I know a little bit about the Turkish political system. And having done a recent search, I've learned even more: it seems that as of the Spring of 2008, the nation of Turkey has agreed to return the properties it confiscated from minority religious communities in the country, over the years immediately preceding.

  http://www.science.co.il/hi/Turkish/

  Although the Armenian minority still has quarrels with how that will work out for them, it's progess, and I applaud that. Apparently the Turkish government agreed to that settlement primarily because it was a precondition of joining the European Union.

  This was the state of affairs, as recently as 2005:

  http://www.christiansofiraq.com/Assyturkey.html

  At any rate, Turkey is a notable exception- the first Muslim nation to recognize Israel, and, if I'm not mistaken, it's top partner in economic trade.

  What do you think Hamas thinks about that?

  I don't judge the attitudes of individual Muslims- certainly not to characterize them as "subhuman", or "incapable" of supporting secular, egalitarian democracies that allow religious minorities full civil and religious rights. But that attitude does go against traditional Islamic doctrine, which advocates the inseparability of the dictates of the religion and the power of the State to an extent that's awfully pervasive.

  Turkey has had a long and convoluted history that over time allowed it's leaders to finesse and eventually loosen the bounds of that restrictive doctrine. But doing so goes against the traditions of Islamic religious thought, which is at least as theocratic as the Roman Catholic Church ever was at the height of its power (although Islam doesn't have any structure that's closely analogous to a Papacy or a hierarchal clergy. ) Islam's theocracy is more doctrinally based. For example, Islamic law, or shari'a, demands that all legal interpretations and precedents conform to Islamic principles of morals, ethics, and personal and civic propriety. I find many of those principles to be sound and well-reasoned, personally. But Shari'a simply doesn't tolerate outside influences. There's no way to argue the law in that system without being a Muslim scholar, thoroughly familiar with the Koran- which means knowing fluent Arabic, incidentally, since the Koran is widely held to be untranslatable.

  The Islamic traditionalists don't want to take on the government of Turkey from the outside. It's too powerful. But they would if they could. They'd prefer to do it from the inside, if possible.

  —cabdriver Read cabdriver's other letters
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