Mr. Long,

Your views on democracy are as outdated as the idea of the Caliphate you deride. The Republic of the Founding Fathers is dead, crushed under the weight of the Oligarchy holding the true power behind our parliaments. We exercise democracy for five minutes in the polling booth, then we return to our all-consuming torpor. All we do is elect the elite we would prefer to rule (out of the two choices on offer, tossing a double-headed coin). Liberal representative democracy is designed, all the way back to the Founding Fathers you are so fond of, to divert and suppress popular rule, turning government of, for and by the people into a tragic cover story. Anyone who thinks the Bush Administration is working in the interests of the American people, rather than for their rich elite, is part of the problem.

Only the strictest of Muslims would desire the return of the Caliphate, many educated and urban Muslims would be horrified at the thought. This only becomes an attractive proposition if the other choice is greater Western imperialism and oppression. The same way we are creating terrorism by our actions around the world, we are creating the Caliphate as an option for oppressed Muslims. Respect and engagement is the best way to win over the Islamic heart and mind, not exploitation and murder. Our 'leaders', and the Caliphate of the radical Muslim have the same goal, to disempower the People and impose autocratic rule; our way is just a lot more subtle and effective. Mr. Long, you seem to be having a bet either way, supporting a corrupt and flawed 'democracy', while helping to create the Caliphate with your fear mongering.

Power is the problem, it can only safely be handled broken up into billions of little pieces so each one of us is wielding our share.

Earthrise

It is not a "small minority of nutters" among Muslims that causes problems today. It is Muslims. Either they teach hate and do violence (radicals) or pretend that Islam is peaceful and make excuses (the moderates).

Look at Islamic societies around the world. You see intolerance, discrimination and human rights abuse. Look at recent essays on Pakistan. Look at Iran. Look at Indonesia. Look at Arab countries. It is the same everywhere. If there are so many moderate, enlightened Muslims, where are they? In the West, of course. Yet if Islam were to dominate here, human rights and equality would be thrown out with pork. I do not trust Muslims; they are not honest about Islam. I have never found a Muslim that will be honest about the hate in the Quran, and the evil actions of their prophet. Just excuses or silence.

It is getting worse. Look at the Islamization in Turkey, Pakistan and other places. Here is a post on Egypt:
http://kalb-baladi.blogspot.com/search/label/Life%20in%20Egypt
Read the June 30 post on the Ultra Religious Invasion..

"It saddens me when I see the Egyptian society becoming a backward ultra religious male dominated and female oppressing society. I was invited to an engagement party and the scene there was horrifying:
The father of the bride borrowed his neighbour's appartment in order to seggregate men and women. The women in the girls flat and the men in the neighbour's flat." etc...

The radicalization is happening accross Europe, in the US and Australia.

You cannot be a Muslim - and democratic, liberal and for equal rights. Read the Quran. Under Islam, or in a Caliphate, non-muslims are 3rd class people and under sharia must never offend Islam or muslims.

Here is another post about a fatwa against liberal ideas:
http://www.mideastyouth.com/2007/07/17/liberals-under-attack-by-fatwa/#comment-55156
Notice my (usual) comments.

Muslim must blame their problems on anybody and everybody but Islam. Things are going to get worse. Will the West take 500 years of enlightenment and throw it in the garbage because people don't want to offend a barbaric, oppressive ideology? That is the question.

Kactuz

Thanks to Bush, Blair and Howard there will be for the first time a Shia Caliphate stretching from across the countries Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Yemen, Bahrain and down to Lebanon; around the Persian Gulf, the overwhelming majority is Shiites. As soon Halliburton has milked Iraq for all its worth the US would withdraw from Iraq. The Shia majority and Iran waiting on the sideline would take over Iraq.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1983863,00.html

Democracy or the Caliphate? This question is academic for Europe because within a few generations most of Europe would become a Sunni Caliphate. The non-Muslims European (mainly the whites) population are in a steep decline whilst the Muslims are reproducing themselves at a very fast rate. Only Serbia, Russia and Israel are able to act as a bulwark against the caliphate which would seek to destroy everything non-Muslim.

The culture of Islam hating non-Muslims is embedded in the Koran and also evidenced in history. Muslim apologist and sympathisers would claim that the Koran has been misquoted but history and current affairs have proven them wrong. No Muslim, no matter how liberal, is ever going to be critical of the Koran

In other words, don’t listen to what a Muslim tells you, look at what they do to non-Muslims in a Muslim-majority country.

The following is a website tracing the how Muslims spread their religion through terror and how they threatened non-Muslims to accept Islam. The contributors to the website include professors and members of the faculty from the Universities of Stanford and Michigan (Ann Arbor), Kansas State University, Ohio State University, and the London School of Economics
http://www.historyofjihad.org/america.html?bl=showcase

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200603/FOR20060321c.html

*OT* I'm afraid, but this did make me laugh out loud.

>>The father of the bride borrowed his neighbour's appartment in order to seggregate men and women. The women in the girls flat and the men in the neighbour's flat.<<

On my first visit to Sydney back in the mid-sixties, I was invited to a party in Neutral Bay. The blokes stood at one end of the room talking about footy - in which I, as a visitor, had no insight or interest - and the girls gathered at the other end, talking girl-stuff. It was utterly bizarre, and totally tribal - occasionally one of the girls would peel off to make sure her man had a fresh beer in his hand.

Tribal customs of this kind change over time, usually as the result of exposure to more civilized behaviour.

Pericles,

Ha, ha, ha - you say?

I don't see anything funny about what is happening to women across the Muslim world.

Discrimination against women is not a 'Tribal Custom' in Islam, it is incorporated into the soul of that ideology. If you care to read the ahadith, you will see that they say women are difficient in intelligence, worth half a male, most of the people in hell are women and that women are not worthy even to lick the puss from their husband's bodies, and so on. Kind words from as religion of love and peace, or not?

Yes, things will change over time - things will get worse. They are already getting worse.
http://www.bigpharaoh.com/2005/07/page/3/
Look at the post about 'Egyptian Women Emancipation' (July 6)

Read the UN's 2002 report on the status of women in the Middle East, written by Arab experts, not Western activists. You can find it on the Internet. It talks about the increased discrimination against women and the lack of opportunities (disenfranchisement is the word they use, I believe) for women in the Arab (ie, Muslim) world. The key word is INCREASED.

Let me say this once again, in case it wasn't clear. There is nothing funny about discrimination against women. There is no humour in genital multilation. There is no honor in honor killings. There is no excuse for the way that Islam treats women. There is nothing to laugh about when the subject is oppression and inequality.

Kactuz

I wonder what possible interest many people have here in demonising Muslims. I can see you all Jew-hating in Nazi Germany, or cheering on the KKK in Alabama. What possible motive is there other than hate, if not some instinctive reflex to protect your ill-begotten lifestyle at the expense of the Other?

Why would you misrepresent Islam otherwise? It is not Islamic to honour kill, or to perform female 'circumcisions'; these are local tribal customs. The fact that they are also Muslims is irrelevant. Why are Anglo Christians murdering innocent Iraqi children, or why are Israeli Jews oppressing a whole people? Are all Christians warmongers, or all Jews stormtroopers? Please. And before you bring up the headscarf, take a look at some of my old family photos. Strict Methodist women with hair in a severe bun, neck-to-toe black dresses and harsh frowns on their faces. Not that long ago in the scheme of things.

Yes, many Islamic countries do not allow for the level of freedoms for women that we do. Neither did we 150 years ago. Are they culturally behind the West, in some ways they are. In others, we are going in totally the wrong direction, destroying our own communities, families and mental health with adolescent materialism, liberal selfishness and capitalistic greed. They don't want to be like us; I don't either. Our centuries-long imperial assault on their nations and resources has played a part in their 'backwardness', coupled with their rightful distain for our hyper-liberal/materialistic lifestyles.

If we left them alone, they would quickly have their own Reformation, democracy would grow and civil rights would be won. At the moment we have sent them into their foxholes, bunkered down against our cruise missiles and cluster bombs.

LEAVE THEM ALONE! (for all our sakes)