Replies

There is not a single religious tradition, including Buddhism, the most non-violent of them, that has not been used to justify violence and terror. And each religious tradition including Islam has produced individuals of profound humaneness and holiness. (My Islamic candidate is Jalal ad-Din Rumi, the great medieval mystic and poet, who is today the best-selling poet in the USA).

Every religious tradition has had to grow and evolve to the point of renouncing those elements in its tradition that legitimate repressive violence so that people of different religious beliefs can live together in peace. This is a fairly recent development in human history. It took about 200 years for Catholics and Protestants to agree not to massacre each other (Northern Ireland being the last vestige of this conflict). Even then, Catholics were the victims of Know Nothing rage and violence as recently as the mid-19th century.

Islam has its work cut out for it. I don't know whether it will succeed in accomplishing what other religious traditions have, but it is clear that it must do so. And I strongly suspect that the impetus for such ideological change is going to happen as the result of Muslims living and reflecting on their experience living in a religiously pluralistic society like the USA. And living in pluralistic societies is something very recent for Muslims - I just hope that it doesn't take them two hundred years to wake up and smell the pluralist coffee.

I had been feeling very pessimistic about Islam adapting itself to pluralism until I read Christopher Hitchen's piece on Indonesia in the current issue of Vanity Fair. They are not about to adapt Shariah law and trade their uniquely humane Indonesian brand of Islam for Saudi Wahhabism. Furthermore, the radical Islamic experiments in Sudan, Algeria, Iran, and Afghanistan have been a bust, so I hope that we in for an era of Islamic revisionism.

I have no doubt my Muslim friends want me and every other person to be a Muslim, just as my evangelical Christian friends want me to be an evangelical Christian. Eventually it is going to become very clear to them from their own experience in our and other pluralistic societies that theocratic Islamic rule is neither possible nor desirable, and they are going to adjust their ideology to fit reality.

"There is not a single religious tradition, including Buddhism, the most non-violent of them, that has not been used to justify violence and terror....."

Tend to agree with you. Pray the timing, checks and balances rescues us before we are all dead. I have heard Islamists justify their current behavior by the behavior,bedlam, murder,chaos.... created by the Christian Crusades.
Thanks for putting situation in perspective. My mother had to point out to me that my daughter's behavior was no worse than my own at same age, but it seemed to me
that her learning mistakes were longer and more devastating. So, it is with Islam. As a nation it must learn to live in a "pluralistic" society before we all destroy one another.