This is essentially a secular meta-law. It forbids discrimination on religious grounds. By allowing Muslims to practice their religion, it allows Jews and Christians to practise theirs, except it would outlaw theocratic Judaism and Christianity which demonize and outlaw Islam. By the same token it outlaws theocratic Islam.

Karen Armstong is not an “Islamic Historian” she is an apologist for Islam.

Violence in the bible was towards very specific people and a determined time in history.

Violence in the Koran is a directive for all time, eternity…huge difference….

In the first 150 years of Islam it invaded and went to war with 83 surrounding kingdoms, simply for not converting to Islam.

Yes, I am a historian of Islam and I honestly can’t believe some of the comments I have seen on this thread.

Yes I have studied Islamic doctrin for my years.

Mark I would have to ask you where you are getting your info from on Islam and I would like to direct you to this article from Frontpage The Pope and Islam.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17772

It’s important in the discussion regarding IRA and Catholicism that IRA members were excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Therefore, regardless of what specific IRA members stated or media members wrote regarding the religous aspects of the “troubles”, the IRA was not backed by the Church.

While Islam does not have a heirarchy comparable to the Catholic Church, they do have Imams which are the faith’s teachers and leaders. It would seem that a majority of the Imams would declare a Fatwa against terrorism in the name of Islam.

As to the question, Mark, the two would be almost impossible to separate in practice. Try analysing - to give another example - how much of Polish nationalism under Communism was religious and how much secular.

For one thing, there’s no living tradition of Protestant Irish nationalism. In fact, there’s more warrant for describing the Protestant parties and paramilitaries as such - because of the extremely politicised religious tradition which dates back to the pre-1922 days when Northern Irish Protestants were a conscious minority in Ireland as a whole. Many of their strategies, and myths, are still those of a minority group.

I discussed this at greater length here.

This goes to the heart of my point, which appears to have been missed amidst quibbles and theological excursus.

In a condition (usually brought about by colonialism or imperialism of one type or other) where there is no democratic public sphere (see my link above for the argument regarding Ireland) nationalist opposition will manifest itself within religious movements, or be heavily entwined with religious imagery and culture.

The fact that there is no explicit Catholic doctrine cited by the IRA in recent times (though perhaps I’m being too rash in conceding this - it’s a while since I’ve done extensive reading on it) bolsters the point. So too are the Islamic precepts alleged to support terrorism distortions of that religion.

There were Catholic clerics in Ireland, too, up to the 80s who would condone and justify nationalist violence, for reasons which had little to do with the substance of the Catholic faith.

Surely it wasn’t Catholic mysticism, but Irish nationalist romanticism that formed the theoretical armature of the PIRA in the 70s?

More pragmatically, I think you’ll find that Benedict’s politics will be welcomed by the right on “culture of life” issues, but not on issues of economics and war. That’s when we’ll hear all sorts of qualifications from those who are ultramontanists in other spheres.

On the question of anathemas, I was referring to your belief that you can read people out of the Catholic Church so blithely.

As to your Sixty Minutes sheikh, he proves nothing about Islam.

You, further above.

His opponents - the relativists - are now the right wing postmodern Bushies and neocons.

I don’t want to have a thread disagreement either but this, self-evidently, is total nonsense. The truth is Ratzinger thinks in decades and couldn’t give a beret’s pop-pom about George W. Bush. This is what I mean about caricaturing Benedict as liberal hero. And I made no prouncements of anathema. I quoted the Pope himself who “condemned divorce, artificial birth control, trial marriages and free-style unions, saying all of these practices were dangerous for the family” and “fake.”

And if the Pope won’t call Islam a religion of peace, there’s certainly no reason for me to do so. Not, for example, in light of the so-called Sheikh on 60 Minutes who told his male congregants in Sydney to commit assault and battery on women. (For which he should have been charged and deported).

Evil? Absolutely.

I have no clear picture of what you mean by “a liberal take on relativism”. That’s a very confusing form of words. I’ve lost interest in scoring partisan points in comments, so I’m not inclined to respond.

All I will say - as my last word - is that Benedict would like people to be attracted to Catholicism because of the joy and beauty it encompasses. I’ll leave it to others to judge whether your style of pronouncing anathemas and judging whole religions as intrinsically evil is attractive or not.

Rob, nice gravatar.

That’s a reasonable comment about the way that Wahabbism gathered strength, but not its proximate origins.

I’m off for the afternoon. See you!

I thought Wahhabism was the response of what was, until the mid-1970’s hike in oil prices, basically still a medieval desert kingdom. With the availability of hugely inflated oil revenues, traditional Saudi morality was appalled at the growth of materialism, decadence and degeneracy it associated with the west, and sought to defend itself by a retreat to a pre-modern, medieval pure ideal.

(Only commented to see if my gravatar works. If it does, that long streak of a man waving is arms about is Wilhelm Furtwangler, non-pareil among conductors.)

One cannot dissent from dogma and the teaching authority of the epsicopal college and in any meaningful way remain a Catholic. A person in such a situation would be a mere fetishist: likes the art, likes the chant, likes the company, likes the view at Our Lady of Victories, likes old Fr Quinncannon, whatever.

For example, a man cannot ‘marry’ another man in Canada and, with him, adopt an IVF baby - created after a veritable holocaust of embryonic bio-externalities (deaths) - and call yourself a Catholic just because you believe in Jesus. You would no longer be in communion with the Church and - as Benedict himself would counsel - you could not and should not approach the altar for communion.

This is not legalism. It is akin to the ‘fraternal correction’ used by monks in medieval times (and still, for all I know): the reprimand is for your own good. The truth shall set you free, said the Lord. Ergo, falsehood will enslave you and the Church can’t allow that because she loves you. It’s a very grown-up nuance - lost on the whiners of the ultra-libertarian/utilitarian right and the relativistic/eogistic left.

The via media - the middle way (not in the Blairian/Clintonian sense) - is the trail Benedict is sure to blaze.