Full marks for trying, but I can't find the logic behind this essay.

All religious wars are imbued with poltical undertones, or overtones. The papal wars, Northern Ireland, Kashmir, the Israeli-Palestaine conflict.....

Take religious belief out of the equation in each case and you have an altogether different cultural milleau.

There has been much debate recently as to whether religious or secular movements have caused more bloodshed and misery throughout human history.

The jury will never come home on that debate, because it is too difficult to do an accurate body count that everybody can agree with.

The extreme irony that religion (purporting love and peace) is so often an agent for hate and bloody warfare is a fascinating one. The fact that religion is in the running for top spot in the misery stakes is an indictment in itself, but it is not a productive debate. Better to focus on dogma per se.

Extreme dogmatists of any flavour, whether they be Muslim fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalists or secular fundamentalists, I believe, are the greatest danger to world peace.

This debate is useful but there is no point in declaring war on either religion or secularism. Let's just call it human nature.

“One of the few places for a political voice is at the mosque and through religion. Religion provides the cloak for what is essentially politics.”

“The similarities of communism and Islam are considerable. Both are egalitarian and advocate radical and economic change. They both demand a domination of the public space and share a dogmatic, ideological view of the world.”

Enough said!

Tanweer,

Agree with some parts of the article regarding Egypt.
Although a minor correction: Arab socialism was advocate by Nasser and not Sadat. Sadat was a great supporter and implementer of modern Capitalism in Egypt.

Nice try - similarities yes - but social equality NO.

Islam is not egaliterian does not consider all as equal... as much as it likes to boast that it is.

Women are not equal to men for example.

Other religions are mistreated under an islamic regime.

Islam is a supremacist political movement desguised as a religion.

The crunch of the matter is as a nation we have succesfully dwarfed Marxism - but are we able to put a stop to the marching political army of Islam?

A wise piece.

It is often overlooked that, for all its protestations, communism shared most of the characteristics of organized religion.

A wise and venerated (or powerful and feared) leader.

A saturation of dogma.

A strong culture of "us and them" - you were either a comrade, or you were a capitalist lackey lickspittle running dog - that is reflected in every religion's fear of every other.

This has the power to stifle internal revolt for many decades. Fear is used to ensure that the citizenry are themselves the policy enforcers. China's experience with the Cultural Revolution and Germany's experiences with Nazism are classic examples of the power of a ruling dogma, where the individual is powerless - not just against the state, but against his fellow citizen's fear of the consequences of non-conformance.

The key point is, as the author rightly points out, that bombing the crap out of them solves nothing. Only the continued (relative) success of capitalist democracies can eventually neutralize the threat of the religiously-mobilized have-nots.

Just as communism eventually crumbled away as its citizens came to realise that the enemy was not "the West", but their own deluded leaders.

Unfortunately, common sense is increasingly irrelevant to the winning of elections.

Some interesting posts here.

Whilst finger-pointing Islam, Christians should not forget the brutal historical role of Christianity which, aligned with politics, subjugated indigenous cultures throughout the world.

The Conquistadors carried the crucifix aloft, missionaries everywhere helped pave the way for cultures to be subjugated, divided, dispossessed, broken down, demorialised and politically colonised. This history was as violent as any warfare.

This is not a triade against Christianity per se, just a call for history to be ackniowledged as it is, not rewritten in a pious competition for righteousness.

Understandably, Christians wish to present Christianity vis-a-vis the Muslim faith as morally superior. Again, the lesson to be learned from history are lost if banal finger pointing becomes the name of the game.

Religious devotees and secular movements all need to be aware of the potential for imbedded hard-core beliefs to become cancerous.