And this is news?
PINGY!
Amir Taheri is himself a Shia Muslim, also a brilliant journalist, die-hard conservative, and strong supporter of the war on terror.
Great post. Very informative.
He makes a few errors like saying Christianity is not monotheistic, but those errors are small in number.
Good read. Thanks for posting this.
He, of course, misses the point. His point that men must be obedient to God gets conflated with the idea of submitting to the will of the man with the biggest gun.
America's founders believed that obedience to God meant putting limits on the rule of men, and establishing personal space beyond the reach of politics so that men could better serve God. They believed that while men owed obedience to God, that no single man could speak for God, that men must discern his will each in his own life, which made personal liberty an absolute requirement.
So this is the difference. Not the belief in God, not the belief in obedience, but rather the belief among muslims that obedience to God means slavery to whichever human is strong enough to demand it; whereas among Americans obedience to God means liberty from arbitrary rule of men.
Forget trying to democratize Iraq. We should just put in a dictator-strong-man who will rule with an iron hand, except we have to make sure he is "our" dictator - someone who is sympathetic to the West and western culture and who wants to bring the Iraqi's into the 21st century.
Islam is a gutter religion, based upon a false prophet and self-serving, mysogynist "teachings". If it wasn't imposed upon people by force, this sham would have died out centuries ago.
"Depriving Islam of critical scrutiny is bad for Islam and Muslims, and ultimately dangerous for the whole world."
Taheri's analysis is fine up to this point, and then it runs right off the road.
"The debate is about how to organise the global public space that is shared by the whole humanity. That space must be religion-neutral and free of ideology, which means organised on the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
What is it about every reformist poseur in the world that makes them want to worship the UDHR! Screw Islamofacism and the UDHR in equal measure.
Still an interesting read, F14...
Food for thought.
The more I read about Islam the more I tend to agree with Ann Coulter. They need to be converted to Christianity ASAP. (Judaism would be fine as well.)
-Built a representative democracy (Republic), understanding the weaknesses of pure democracy as defined by The Greeks.
-Incorporated God's sovereignty into The Constitution and The Bill of Rights, yet accounted for God's provision of Free Will to all people.
Not an easy task by any means, and imagine trying to create these in today's world...
May God continue to bless America...
Nice to know that there is NO category that says there exist FREE Christian or Jewish women...note the lowest rung of human form is that of slave women Christian and Jew....Just another reason that I call Islam for what it is EVIL...EVIL...EVIL
ping
Ping. Tong would understand...
We take it they have never heard of "Constitutional Republic" either. Neither have the Democrats or the U.S. media apparently - which is a little odd considering that is the actual constitutional form of U.S. government.
Islam worships "Allah" not God.