I should've inclulded this in the previous post.

Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mali, Morocco, Turkey & Yemen are all democracies, all overwhelmingly Muslim.

Indonesia's "democracy" doesn't look much like one, to most of us.

Bennie

In December,in Malaysia, Islamic authorities gave Malaysian mountain-climber M. Moorthy a Muslim burial against the wishes of his Hindu widow.

In Aceh Singkil, a church which was holding a revival meeting was burnt down on 1 September 2006 by an angry Muslim mob. This was accompanied by threats that all other churches in the area will be burnt.

In a village near Banda Aceh seven houses built by a Christian organisation for Christian victims of the 2004 tsunami cannot be occupied by the Christian families they were intended for. Local Muslims organised public demonstrations outside the houses. The same Christian organisation had built over 200 houses for Muslim victims, but only Christians were prevented from occupying their houses.

you call that democracy

ybgirp,

Sheikh Tag's view are not religious but political. He seems capable of manipulating religion and political events to create a position.
(same as Coach and Boaz:))
I am a great believer that once religion is to become a public: either a unifrom, a title, a discussion topic, then it becomes a political matter.

Answering your question, I don't support any theocratic governance or leadership. Their roles are in mosques and churches to preach good values. We have an Iranian and an American model of presidency where both believe they are inspired by God.

Yeah right!
Peace,
T

As much as we might want to seperate religion and politics it is impossible. I know that at least Judaism, Islam and Christianity talk about a God who is interested and involved in every aspect of your life. That includes birth, death, marriage, employment, politics and so-on. A Christian, Jew or Muslim in politics is going to make decisions based on his or her belief. Secular Humanism and Maxism also have religios attributes.

So if you want to know how your polititian is going to vote then you need to look at their belief system or world view. You then need to understand what that world view says about various issues.

Be carefull not to make assumtions. Many people think they can predict how a muslim of a jew or a socialist might vote on certain issues. Study the options. you may be surprised at the hiden agenda some people have.

Tennyson,
Nor does Singapore’s. But you get that.

Proverbs,
Are you seriously surprised Banda Aceh has problems maintaining the rule of law? Or was this was a government initiative? Mosques (and churches for that matter) in NSW have been vandalised; our government knowingly sends refugee applicants back to their country of birth to undergo forced abortions, perhaps death; a mob of Sydney youths assault a group of fellow citizens in broad daylight because they look different; a small Sydney community campaigned long, hard and dirty to prevent a place of worship being built near their suburb, for the simple reason it was to be called a mosque, not a church. These instances and yours are newsworthy for good reason. Doubtless if we troll through enough newspapers and anecdotal reports we can engage in sophistry at 20 paces.

The assertion was made, “Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Budhism (sic) etc are all compatible with Democracy. Islamism ain't.” I appreciate why casual observers of this site think this - but is it true?

Interesting point you’ve made about the separation of religion & politics. In some countries (such as the US) political candidates combine them to garner votes. From that point it’s usually a matter of who’s holier than thou - and for atheists, that’s everybody - which is why, against all the odds, not one US senator or member of congress has declared themselves an atheist. But once the cat’s out of the bag…well, do we really want to go that way? Hopefully the electorate will continue to regard such political posturing with healthy scepticism