That's a tad presumptuous, Martin Ibn Warriq.

>>I think you'll find secularists like yourself are the religious pluralists and are happily Islamising their societies, concomitantly their preaching of sexual liberation is devastating society such that we can't even reproduce ourselves and Islam is increasingly demographically assertive<<

What is a religious pluralist? As an atheist, how can I be a religious anything, since my position is firmly against the validity of any of them?

And how does sexual liberation equate to an inability to reproduce? Not forgetting that correlation does not imply causation. Just saying.

And what has all this - especially the sexual liberation part - to do with your assertion that Islam is "increasingly demographically assertive". The linkage of those two ideas is particularly opaque.

>>You can see why your "welcome to Saudi Arabia" speaks more like a repressed wish than anything else. <<

Errrr... no. I was hinting at the delights of theocracy. Not specifically an Islamic theocracy, by the way, but any theocracy. Think of being ruled by a strict, to-the-letter Roman Catholic theology, and you will start to understand that it is not the particular flavour of religion that is the issue, but its application.

Incidentally, I'm not sure how those pieces you link to actually help your case. Perhaps it is because they are written in a more erudite manner, and are therefore more intellectually accessible.

They mostly consist of either self-serving or circular definitions and arguments. This seems to be one of the main themes:

"Basic social institutions inevitably claim the right to make decisions on matters of life and death, and to demand sacrifice — even extreme sacrifice — of personal interests. To do so, they must be seen as grounded in ultimate realities regarding the meaning and value of life, and thus correspond to an authoritative religious outlook."

There is a massive hole in this argument, starting from the words "they must". Democratic governments take their authority from their people, not from "the meaning of life". Theocracies, on the other hand, work primarily from the basis that they, alone, know the truth.

Your other reference is equally self-serving, Martin Ibn Warriq.

"Russell Kirk wrote: At the back of every discussion of the good society lies this question, What is the object of human life? The enlightened conservative does not believe that the end or aim of life is competition; or success; or enjoyment; or longevity; or power; or possessions. He believes, instead, that the object of life is Love".

That's all very fine and dandy, but supremely impractical when it comes to forms of government. As the Ethika Politika article concludes:

"It is hard to see why the pluralistic, desacralized state could facilitate this sort of ethos better than the religiously unified, sacral state; thus, there is a good argument that the real 'power of religion in the public sphere' must be a sacred power."

Once again, it should be crystal clear to you, as it is to anyone who has read any history or even scanned a newspaper, that this call to theocratic rule has been the rallying-cry of despots since the beginning of time. What on earth makes you think that it would be any different in the twenty-first century?

Given your own views on Christianity and Islam, Martin Ibn Warriq, you come across as the sort of person who is looking forward to a re-run of the Crusades.

A sort of "My Theocracy Rules". Only with the participants eliminated permanently.

@Pericles. Crusades :) fair dinkum. For everyone else http://wcfsydney2013.org.au/ going to be huge!

Conservatism is not necessarily born of religion.
Often it is born of trying to imitate religion.

As people progress along their spiritual path, they tend to be more able to postpone their impulses and delay satisfaction. Thus they are for example more likely to finish high-school, to not have children before the age of 20 and to get married to a suitable spouse before having them. That same discipline allows them to avoid getting into crime, violence, unrest and unrestrained lashing out at the whole social structure.

As one evolves even further along the spiritual path, self-discipline increases further and one tends to marry later if at all and have less children if any. One is no longer interested in family life at all (nor in random sexuality), but rather devote their whole life to God.

Despite the strong correlation, it's an error to view criminality and violence as a result of broken families, then attempting to fix the family (the conservative approach) and/or social conditions (the progressive approach) in order to reduce crime: BOTH are equally a result of spiritual under-development.

First comes religion, the yearning for God (which may be conscious or otherwise), then come religious practices that concentrate on God, thence as side-effects of having a direction in life come the power of concentration and self-discipline, of which are born
1) Either good family life or renunciation ; and
2) Non-criminality.

Mechanical conservatism is therefore an example of trying to imitate religion, turning it upside-down, mixing up the cause (lack of self-discipline) and the effect (broken families).
Progressivism errs similarly, as it views people's low economic position (merely another effect of the lack of self-discipline) as the cause of crime, instead of identifying the lack of self-discipline (and in turn the lack of religion) as the true cause of both.

Finally, we're all on our spiritual path: within this long convoy, some are relatively ahead, others behind. We all come from the same place and head the same way, so being behind is no reason for shame - we should all just start from where we are.