Islam isn’t a cult, either. It’s a system of government.
If we treated it legally like a system of government, we could legally eradicate it from our shores.
It’s got a legal system which supersedes the US Constitution. It levies taxes, even on those who are not a part of that ‘faith’ (jizya). It has a standing army.
In fact, you could line up hardliners for weeks to testify that they in fact do not recognize the USA as a controlling legal authority in an open US court. They line up for miles, because a) its the truth as they see it, and b) they’ve already declared war against it.
I don’t see how you couldn’t see Islam as anything buy a government, claiming whatever territory an ‘adherent’ is standing upon.
Exactly. When established as “intended”, Islam is a comprehensive system of religion and government all in one totalitarian package. Many people in the west are fooled because few Islamic societies achieve the complete package.
Muslims like Mateen hate western liberal values and society because they desire an (idealized) Islamic system to prevent “sin” and regulate everyone’s lives via social and governmental coercion (beatings, beheadings, stonings, massacres). It’s not just chance that many of the most zealous jihadis are children of immigrants, who never have experienced an Islamic society. The western concept of self-control, with sin and vice as a matter of conscience, is anathema to them, since it requires self-control. They want external control to suppress behavior that does not fit their construct. Mateen’s solution to his own homosexual tendencies was to murder the source of temptation.
Real Islam can NEVER be compatible with Christianity or any free society.