[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

In Islam there is no free will, only the Will Of Allah.

Very profound point and one eminently worth making. In fact the word Islam means something like submission.

I think I would consider Winston Churchill to be one of the greatest men of the 20th century if not the greatest. Perhaps a close second is Whittaker Chambers, who from ignoble beginnings as an American Communist cast off all of the evil that that represents and led the spiritual fight against communism spritually, ideologically and legally. Chambers was the ideological mentor of McCarthy, Nixon, Buckley, and Reagan among many others.

Chambers realized that Communism was the triumph of the enlightenment in which man reigned supreme. Our way of life was the triumph of God, in which God reigned supreme, but as Jeff as so eloquently pointed out, Man retains free will.

In one line, you, Gritty have pointed out the problem with the new totalitarian enemy we now find ourselves faced with and it can be fitted neatly into a Chamberseque view of the world. Our enemies reject free will just as the communists rejected God.

Somewhere, Whittaker Chambers is smiling on this thread.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

I might also add that it seems to me that the will of allah is what the imams and the like say it is. IOW, they say it is the will of allah but what it reduces to oftentimes is the will of the imams who proclaim their will to be the will of allah. So it's just totalitarinism dressed up to look like a religion. My $.02.