""Bush too easy on Islam, some of his backers say"

That's hilarious for so many reasons.

On the contrary, I think they *may* gain in prominence...if there are more attacks and the public's toleratnt tide changes

do i really have to misspell at least one word in every single post i make?

I get the impression that in America there is some sort of idea that Islam is totally contrary Christianity/Judaism. As Allah in Islam is the same god as God in Christianity and whatever he's called by Jews, and as Islam recognises all the prophets, including Jesus (although it says Jesus is not God), this is obviously a bit of nasty propaganda. It is worth reading the section http://www.missionislam.com/islam/knowledge/basic.htm#8 to clarify who Jesus is in Islam.

If you actually want to read the Quran it is in easy to understand English at http://www.submission.org/Q-T.html

Well you know what has to happen? The intellectuals need to take control of things. The world will be a better place.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=4693

I think ILE should rule the world (not ILM, obv - that would be silly).

Osama: "Pink = punk!"
Bush: "Rockist!"
Rest of the world: "Oh no! Nuclear war! Oh no!"

I get the impression that in America there is some sort of idea that Islam is totally contrary Christianity/Judaism. As Allah in Islam is the same god as God in Christianity and whatever he's called by Jews, and as Islam recognises all the prophets, including Jesus (although it says Jesus is not God), this is obviously a bit of nasty propaganda. It is worth reading the section http://www.missionislam.com/islam/knowledge/basic.htm#8 to clarify who Jesus is in Islam.

toraneko, The God of Islam is the same God as the God of Christianity, according to whom? If large groups of Christians think otherwise, on what basis are you going to correct them? If Muslims say that he is the same God, and Christians (many, if not most, anyway), how are you going to decide between the two? The fact that Muslims deny that God became a human being, and that God would ever incarnate as a human being, is not an insignificant difference. For most orthodox (small o) Christians, faith in Christ is not optional for salvation. It's not just one way among other that one can be saved. Christianity relation to Judaism is obviously problematic, since it wouldn't be possible to deny that the God of the Israelites was the same God that Christians believe in. But in fact, the author of the book of Hebrew in the New Testament actually makes the claim that earlier Jews were saved by their faith in a Christ who had not yet come.

Islam is not contrary to Christianity in every respect, but there are significant differences.

*

You should all check out the Stanley Fish article on Islam that appeared in Harper's some time in the last year.

(No, I am not a Christian, and not religious.)

Then some dude called Jesus turns up and some say he's the son of that god and that he is that god at the same time. They are the Christians.

The Jews say Jesus is neither the son of the god, not the god himself. The Christians and Jews still believe in the same god though.

Then some other dude, called Mohammad, turns up and says that although Jesus was made by god, Jesus is not actually god.

"The similitude of Jesus before God is as that of Adam; He created him from dust, then said to him, 'Be', and he was."

(Qur'an, Al-'Imran 3:59)

Apparently Muslims also believe there will be a second coming of Jesus to lead them.

All the angels and prophets etc. are the same in Islam as they are in Judaism and Christianity.

So, Rockist, how could you, or anyone else even mildly informed, come to decide that the god that is worshipped in Islam is a different god to that worshipped in Christianity and/or Judaism?

I'm leaving work. I don't think I'm that uninformed about these things. Religion is the family business.

I'd also offer that Islam is a big red herring in our dealings with the Mid-East: it's what draws the line around groups and interests, but I don't believe it is in any way the source of the problems that exist. In other words, it's my guess that so long as the people of the region were unified by any common "stong" religion, we'd see the same tensions emerging, though possibly playing out in different forms.

You're probably right that some sort of ideological attack on Islam isn't going to be particularly helpful in working out the conflicts that exist in the middle east and between the U.S. (and much of the western world) and the middle east, but I still think we (more-or-less liberal westerners) need to keep our eyes open and not only listen to moderate or liberal Muslims saying what we want to hear, and I think there is a place for polemic against religions.

I imagine that most Muslims are more interested in maintaining their own traditions and just going about the business of living their lives than they are in claiming the whole world for Islam.

*

As someone who used to consider himself a Christian and who has known many devout Christians, I think that you cannot underestimate the significance of the Christian belief in God's incarnation as Jesus and in Jesus's actual crucifiction. "But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness"--I Corinthians 1:23. It is completely central to orthodox Christianity's understanding of how humans find salvation. If the God of the Qur'an denies that Jesus was God incarnate, and denies that Jesus died on the cross, then a Christian of reasonably orthodox stripe has a lot of reason to deny that that is the same God Christianity worships and believes in.

I do agree with this.

Whoops.

Hermann Goering, second in command to Hitler, 1939

Now I know that I shouldn't have created that "Free Republic: C or D?" thread ...

Shay: I don't understand why you think I'm encouraging religion -- the point is that the goals and values of most everyone in the West would be better fit by a Muslim world dominated by everyday "soft" Islam rather than Islamic radicalism. This is, so far as I can tell, the only productive tack to take in this regard: for the West's most religious nation to go around telling Muslims to become atheists seems like a pretty good way to encourage the exact opposite.

So now it's Democracy/Republics, not just Bush?

and anyone who doesn't think that Christianity doesn't "support" or "point towards" theocracy really ought to read some books about Oliver Cromwell or Savanorola.

As RS says, one of the clearest differences between Islam and Xianity - one I'm sure Mohammed was conscious of - is that its founder was a political as well as a religious leader, his book is unimpeachably and utterly the last word of God - much less easy to reinvent as the Bible has been - and combined with the Hadith it contains some specific rules as to how to live life (as indeed does Judiasm). Jesus stuck much closer to general moral principles.

Both religions have gone on to exhibit a huge range of characheristics, but the above facts have still made it harder to build a 'reform' Islamic tradition, and are surely bound to make it easier for those societies in which Islam dominates to tend to the authoritarian.

Which is not to deny the wisdom, variety and cultural richness in that tradition, which I respect a lot. Just to acknowldedge that those key differences can and do have an ongoing effect.

If Christianity had been founded by a Presbyterian it might have looked like this ...

I think it matters, because it means that there really isn't much ground for Biblical fundamentalists to justify pursuing something like a theocracy. Maybe my interpretation is flawed. If even someone like John Calvin, who I think was (frighteningly) serious about trying to take the entire Bible seriously, thought that a Christian state was Biblically justified, then maybe I am missing something in the Bible. It's not so much that the Bible rules out such a state, just that it doesn't call for or require its creation. (The whole question of how Christians should act in a democracy is a fuzzy one, I admit, since the situation of Christians in contemporary democracies is entirely different from what it was during the Roman empire.) I understand that historically the Christian church in one form or another has shaped oppressive governments. I don't think you can deny that statecraft is built into Islamic origins in a way that it is not in Christian origins. If you think it doesn't make any practical difference, that I can understand. I do think there is a difference between being told by your scripture, and by your religion's founder, that you are to create a civil order based on God given law; and having the relationship of your religion to government left open-ended, but de-emphasized, aside from exhortations to obey whatever government happens to be in power.

(I don't think there is only one possible plausible interpretation of the Bible, even from a relatively fundamentalist or Reformed point of view, but I also don't think it's so wildly inconsistent that "anything goes.")

There's something I think you're missing that I'm not sure exactly how to express, but I will try. It matters what the earliest recorded teachings say, because if a movement seeks to go back to what the primary documents of their religion says, and what the founder is reported to have done, then those teachings determine what is going to be found there. This is what the Wahabi movement in Islam attempted to do, and what the Christian Reformation attempted to do.

Edmund C. Cohen, writing about Reformed churches in the United States in The Mind of the Bible-Believer, points out that liberal churches kept Christianity alive in a watered down form, but continued to keep the Bible surrounded by an aura of sacredness; even though they were quite willing to ignore most of it at their own convenience. As Cohen puts it, liberal churches helped created a "benign" image of the Bible. Some individuals who were raised in that sort of church, when exposed to Reformed theological readings of the Bible, will end up going back to the much nastier, but more seriously Biblical, Reformed theology. Liberal forms of a religion keep that religion alive in what may seem like a relatively benign form, but if a reformation of some sort occurs, or an individual attempt to return to origins, then whatever was there at the beginning (at least to the extent that it was recorded), can potentially come alive again. In my personal experience, I was raised as a Methodist and taught a pretty loose sort of hermeneutic. When my devoutly religious sister was exposed* to the more rigorous close reading of Reformed theology, she became a Calvinist, and I almost followed in her foot-steps. (Instead, it pushed me out of the church altogether.)

Christians were taught to obey the authority of a pagan Roman Empire. It is very possible for a fundamentalist Christian to accept the authority of whatever secular government they are living under, wihtout being untrue to Biblical principles.

*Of course, it didn't hurt the cause that she fell in love with a Calvinist seminary student.

So I'm not so much disagreeing about the theology, which I'm not exactly hugely versed in, but more pointing out that the idea of being "soft on Islam" or "hard on Islam" is a ridiculous one. Islam exists, and it's not possible to go revising the Quran. Surely the point is to promote conditions that encourage the sort of Islam that one finds most beneficial to the world as a whole, not to vote classic or dud on the thing as a whole. (Especially because the West's calling "dud" only encourages the militancy of the thing.)

True, but they can still form the basis of movements which can become more or less popular (depending on other factors). And, for example, as I undersand it, the Wahabi movement was behind the strict practice of sharia that exists in Saudi Arabia today; so these reform movements are not entirely academic. On the other hand, you are right that, say, an Indonesian Sufi may see things entirely differently.

it doesn't really help -- and that beyond that, well, basically, what good does it do to go around saying "Islam's central tenets are questionable to the values of the west?" You won't get very far going around telling people that they shouldn't be Muslims.

True!

. . .but more pointing out that the idea of being "soft on Islam" or "hard on Islam" is a ridiculous one.

Well, getting back to what the thread is about, I have to basically agree. It's not up to Bush to make some sort of official statement about the worth or worthlessness, truth or falsity, etc. of Islam; though I think it was good for him to discourage people from attacking Muslims in the U.S., and to affirm that they have as much right to practice their religion here as anyone else.

Islam exists, and it's not possible to go revising the Quran. Surely the point is to promote conditions that encourage the sort of Islam that one finds most beneficial to the world as a whole, not to vote classic or dud on the thing as a whole. (Especially because the West's calling "dud" only encourages the militancy of the thing.)

This I have mixed feelings about. I think there is a place for critiques of Islam per se (just as there is for any other religion). At the political level, yes, you have to deal with it as a given.

Could you give specific examples of the type of encouragement you mean? Are you thinking primarily at the state level (e.g., granting special trading rights to Turkey, for example)?

But perhaps that's more the place of those who live in Islamic societies than those who don't. The same way that, at various points, it took Europeans themselves to undermine and question Christianity (influenced at least partly by the Islamic world, it should be added). Non-Muslims may have helpful criticisms, but isn't it for Muslims themselves to do the heavy lifting?

Anyway, it would be very difficult to publish the equivalent of Biblical "higher criticism" applied to the Qur'an, in many parts of the Muslim world, since, for example, it is often unacceptable to admit that there early manuscripts of the Qur'an aren't exactly the same as the Qur'an Muslims now use.