I think the article completely misses the point. Separation of church and state means that church officials are not automatically functionaries in a government (bishops are not automatically senators)

Of course religious leaders can run for political office just like anyone else. Whether the population takes their lifestyle advice from priests, life-coaches, magazine editors or celebreties has nothing to do the separation of church and state.

To say that the Islamic world is full of tyranny etc does not mean that the tyranny is caused by Islam. Tyranny is a feature of human nature. History knows more tyrannies than democracies. Even most of the democracies in Europe that came into existence after the first world war had reverted to dictatorship on the eve of the second world war. Many atrocities were committed by Christians, Muslims and atheists alike during the war.

We have also seen that "enlightened" American jailers can be just as cruel as Iraqi ones.

The underlying issue is that the former colonial world has been asked to westernise in a few generations. That is a formidable change, the west took 10 generations and many wars for the transition. To have adopt completely different values than what your parents and grand parents had is always going to lead to some resistance.

As Iraq, the nation state, does not have a long proud history, (in fact Iraq was created by the same team that brought us the former states of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia), the population will look towards another common identifier, in this case Islam and its various denominations. What we are seeing in the middle east is similar to the nationalist awakening we saw in Europe during and after the Napoleoic wars.

When we query some of the fundemantals of Islam we then question the identity of people who strongly identify with Islam. Many of us have dropped God, Jesus, the trinity and the saints for a veritable pantheon of celebreties, sport starts and consumer brands. When one disappoints we just switch to another. No wonder we are so puzzled about the reaction to the cartoons.

So much is written of the ills of others ignoring our own. Christianity was and to the fundamentalist still is one of domination of unbelievers as aim whilst somehow abiding by Christian love and rule though shalt not kill. One who is so rare as to behave decently is promptly hailed Christian and deified, weary Dunlop being an example. Current and past international wrangling claiming difference from terrorism and purity of purpose by the West is Christian?
Lies for war, lies to the people surely merely Herman Goering’s dictum yet again.
God given purpose? Which God which propaganda station?
Religions have muchtin common, many are at heart possible tools for power by those who would use them. One can answer in the rightist red necked way of kill them all or the way temporarily in popular vogue after 1945 dispute resolution compromise and sharing before the law, international law. All thrown away as we revel in he is evil I am pure.

PIERRE, to quote you, "l'nfame will be doing the crashing of freedom as we know it". Are you using this as a mere slogan or as a call to action? If you are using it as a slogan you can make your appeal to liberal democracies, such as France and Germany, which are not prepared to take action against it. If you are using it as a call to action, then you have to make your appeal to America that is DOING the action. Yet you denigrate Bush, and by association Blair, Berlusconni, and Howard, whose nation is the only one among all other nations, that can defeat DECISIVELY l'infame.

Did you expect Bush, after the crashing of l'infame into the twin towers to finish up as a political paralytic?

Blog: NEMESIS http://congeorgekotzabasis.blogspot.com

Is someone permitted to agree with Pierre? And won't someone who isn't a Moslem give Islam a break? In its fundamental tenets, apart from the creation thing and people hearing God's voice, which it shares with Christianity, it involves considerably less a departure from the world of reality than Christianity (virgin birth, a demi-god/guru who could walk on water, wine turning to blood when the right spell is uttered), and therefore on first blush is more worthy of sitting in partnership with rational government, if you're prepared to contemplate such a thing.

Which I'm not, as it happens, but nor are all Moslems. There are several examples of nations in which Islam is the dominant religion of the people but which are not islamist states - most notably Turkey, Malaysia, and Iraq (OK, it was a dictatorship, but so was most of South America), as there are of predominantly Christian nations in which the Catholic Church has a firm grip on the tools of the state (Philippines, to a degree Ireland, and South America again). And the degree to which the so-called Christian Right is getting its tentacles into government in America is truly scary.

I don't notice many Christians outside of the mainstream Protestant faith groups protesting about that. Could it be that they don't care about a single religious fraternity running the world, so long as it's their own? Why can't they just be content to overrun Heaven?

PS I posted the following in response to the another article, but it fits better here (apologies to those for whom it is a boring duplicate):

I get the impression from certain professed Christians on this forum that they are just as much theocratic fundamentalists as the Islamists they criticise.

One of the most noticeable trends in the Western world since Osama took over the mantle of Marx as Mr Evil, is the surge in activity of fundamentalist christianity. As a secularist/pluralist/democrat, I feel increasingly like a raison* in an overcooking fruitcake.

*[linguistic pun alert: raison = Fr. "reason"]

The implication of the article is that Islam was peaceful to start with and that the followers are not living up to it's ideals.

More likely it was violent during Mohammad's life time and continues to this day.

You might want to look at the skeptics annotated Quran http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/

Or some of the histories on www.thereligionofpeace.com .

If someone can prove that Mohammad didn't endorse mutilation, the killing of apostates, and a "convert to my religion or I'll kill you" approach, I'd be prepared to consider otherwise.

Coach says this is a "a good article that unfortunately will miss its audience." Correct on the first point and proven in the second. Pierre Tristam says: "The threat to the West is as familiar as the reactionary next door."

Redneck calls Pierre a Frog and to not go "go crawling to the yanks to pull you out of le ordure again." This is very amusing stuff from Redneck, especially if one knows that Pierre is American!

His grievous attack on Scout in another thread was far less amusing.

David BOAZ provides a list of some very imaginative fears. He is obviously unaware that Turkey has had separation of religion and state since the 1920's. I've asked him repeatedly now to check his facts before he posts.

Thor says, "In order for a Muslim to be a citizen of a nation state he must renounce Islam", which is "apostasy", which is a capital crime in Iran according to Amnesty Intl. So the millions of Muslim citizens in Western Nations are going to demand Sharia law and then have themselves killed?

Pulling apart these extremist posts is getting easier and easier.

Themistocles: Try not to fit the article into a post 9-11 frame of reference. It doesn’t work. The article is about the dilution of traditional liberal-democratic values, which Pierre is saying is and always has been our best defence against terrorism and against fundamentalist religion/Islam. I'm not convinced they have been that diluted.

And to be fair to the truth, Skeptor, I agree with your post in principle however Muslims do believe in Jesus and the virgin birth. Iraq and Malaysia are officially Islamic countries. Turkey, Indonesia, Albania, Syria and Lebanon are not, although Ache province has Shari’a courts and the President of Syria must be Muslim. Lebanon is officially multi-religious and has Shari’a courts for its Muslim majority.