"the temporal power of the papacy was expressed and understood quite differently to the powers of an Imam or a Rabbi."

I agree; this, in fact, is the strength of islam in the modern era; it is not a centralised religion; even within the same strains of islam there are competing hierarchies.

It is extremely difficult for the West to deal with; even if an arrangement is reached with one islamic leader, others will not necessarily cease hostilities.

So, while the competing strains of islam may have a common purpose, sharia law and a caliphate, hence the monolithism of islam, the details will vary, hence the illusion of islamic diversity.

Looked at in this way islam is as close to natural selection as is humanly possible; it is a rebuttal of the claim that human evolution has ceased although what the selecting criteria for adaptive fitness are is problematic.

Diver Dan and Runner need to do some decent reading and expand their actual knowledge.

Robert Ardrey's writings are now rather ancient but on some matters I have found no better comments. In 1966 he wrote, in The Territorial Imperative (Ch 9, p377-8 Fortune Paperback);
"....we must know that the territorial imperative - just, one it is true of the evolutionary forces playing upon our lives – is the biological law on which we have founded our edifices of human morality. Our capacities for sacrifice, for altruism, for sympathy, for trust, for responsibilities to other than self-interest, for honesty, for charity, for friendship and love, for social amity and mutual interdependence have evolved just as surely as the flatness of our feet, the muscularity of our buttocks, and the enlargement of our brain; out of the encounter on ancient African savannahs between the primate potential and the hominid circumstance".

So much for getting our guidance from ancient scribblings of people who believed men were not bound by the iron laws of chemistry and physics.

The farming and herding tribes of the Middle East only arrived on the human scene some 150,000 years after the appearance of the first modern humans.

Diver dan
"Secularism and Christianity are seen by Muslims as “sluts” and rightly so!"us all, I hope these attempts fail. Freedom is a two-way street, otherwise it is not freedom at all.

The muslims see all their women as sluts if they don’t cover the fact that they are women in public with big black sheets and face masks.) Thats why they belt them and sexually assualt or imprison them for not wearing the prescribed clothes.

Look at free women in the world competing magnificiently in Sport and the Olympics, hard to do in a big black sheet, because Moslem men want to label them as sluts for daring to go about looking like what they are women.

Here is a radical idea for you diver dan and all the Moslems, women are people; just like men; they are neither sluts or holy, they are just ordinary human beings.

Maybe the Moslem religion should impose certain hours of curfew on their men, so the women could go about their daily lives in the street without being accosted and abused by Moslem men. After all
it is the men who are the aggressors.

Why do you have nipples diver dan? Because you are a copy of the prototype female fetus. Men twist it around and make it sound as though women are an inferior copy of them.Especially religious men.

Scientifically, (in the Lab) this is not so, the XX female chromosomes are the dominant programmer Of the human. The Y(male chromosome) is only imposed over the already perfect human being that is the XX chromosome to change the sex to male.

Funny how men never advertise this scientific fact isn’t it? If it was the other way round they would be bellowing it incessantly in the face of every woman to try to justify the religious lie that they are superior and come first. Very quiet on this one aren't they, maybe because they are afraid of the truth and they'll loose their power to bully women. Does this free speech even though it is true, frighten you Diver dan?

Excellent article, Moira, but i don't think you really meant that it was unfortunate that people find reasons to mock beliefs. In fact people who criticise and on occasion mock beliefs are public benefactors.
I also think that there is merit in the observation that Muslims are reacting against contempt on the part of the West. Of course this invites the question: why is such contempt felt?

Cheerful:

...Your eloquent abuse is noted! It may in fact be true you realise, that Muslims do actually equate Christianity and secularism as indistinguishable. But what is more seriously disturbing is the vulnerability of Christian communities living among Muslim majorities…We can only hope for their continued welfare!

...You have a very “dim” view of Muslims don’t you: But secularism is under attack, from the bottom up! It is the direction of the assault which is confounding the political elite. A military response will fail: They fail to realise the significance and power of religious morality juxtaposed with hypocrisy.

...One would think the experience over thousands of years with the hypocrisy of Catholicism, would be lesson enough; but it does seem that historic lessons have been lost on our modern society.

An interesting article that makes the reader think about the extreme effects that radical followers of ANY religion can have on society.

Unfortunately, if we live in a country of free speech and democracy, we have to take the good with the bad. We have to put up with what may be offensive words to us, and can only do something about it if it is illegal eg violent riots.

Most of these religions are only a few thousand years old, so I wonder how our ancestors managed to survive in a world without Jesus, Mohamed, Allah etc, and the religious books written by mere humans who think they knew what these 'Gods' said.

I wouldn't mind giving it a try...