"Reformist" Islamic leader: secularism is incompatible with Islam

so then, does this mean there cannot be tolerance and that there shall not be equivalence (even though, say, Christianity and Islam are "the same.")?

what will all the PC folk do now?

"This (baseless) concept is inherited from Greek philosophy, especially that of Aristotle who argued that God neither controls nor knows anything about this world."

Ah yes, the Stagirite, whom Muslims love to tell us they rescued from oblivion, they translated his texts, they did everything to keep him alive.

The real story is that Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews did the translation, not of all of Aristotle, but of only a few of his works, and while those works were received with interest in the Western world, they were received with indifference by Muslims, save for one or two who were dangerously close to being considered freethinkers.

"If they [people] do not do so [follow Allah's commands as communicated in the Koran and clarified through the Sunna], then they commit Kufr, aggression, and transgression." -- Qaradawi

Qaradawi just revealed why "self-defense" in Islam is actually comparable to the Western sense of offensive warfare. Kufr, according to Qaradawi, entails transgression -- and aggression. The mere act of Kufr is an act of aggression that has to be stopped, and if it isn't stopped non-violently (which it usually won't be, in freedom-loving people), then it must be stopped violently. And if whole societies are practicing and disseminating Kufr, it becomes obligatory for Muslims to wage war on the people of those societies, in order to stamp out that Kufr.

"If they [people] do not do so [follow Allah's commands as communicated in the Koran and clarified through the Sunna], then they commit Kufr, aggression, and transgression."
-- Qaradawi

In other words, according to Al-Qaradawi's perfectly standard Muslim view, the mere act of not following Islam, of remaining a non-Muslim, is an act of "aggression" and Muslims are justified in making war on those who have committed such "aggression" against them.

If you are a non-Muslim, and you complacently believe you have done nothing to cause Muslims to make war on you, you are quite wrong. You don't have to do anything, except remain a non-Muslim, and to refuse to yield to Muslim demands.

Sounds like there's dubious thinking going on all over the place here. Mr. Esposito would be wrong, if he's saying that somebody merely asserting that traditional Islam doesn't accept secular governance is some kind of Islamophobe.

Sheikh Qaradawi seems to, as presented here, have a narrow, crabbed view of the Western conception of God, one that is little more than an Enlightenment-flavored, deistic view of God, perhaps accurately reflecting Thomas Jefferson's and Joseph Priestly's ideas, but not being anywhere near a full-bodied, broad-based treatment of 2,000 years of vibrant, robust Christian thought on the subject.

But if Jihad Watch is continuing to somehow imply that there's something positively monsterous about religious establishment in government in general, then there doesn't seem to be strong, scholarly understanding of the Catholic Christian thought that has undergirded Western thought and civilization.

The Catholic Church has never authoritatively taught that government should have no official religion, and when it has taught on the subject it has held, more or less, the opposite, an authoritiatve teaching which, in its base form, remains official authoritative teaching to this day.

I have yet to notice Jihad Watch, including its Catholic leaders, recognize and explain this theological situation.

"Wherefore, civil society must acknowledge God as its Founder and Parent, and must obey and reverence His power and authority. Justice therefore forbids, and reason itself forbids, the State to be godless; or to adopt a line of action which would end in godlessness-namely, to treat the various religions (as they call them) alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and privileges."
-Pope Leo XIII, Libertas

"Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced."
-Pope Leo XIII, Longinqua

"That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him."
-Pope Pius X, Vehementer Nos

"With God and Jesus Christ excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation."
-Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas

And the Second Vatican Council's Dignitais Humanae, the last time the Church spoke officially and authoritatively on the subject, states that while there are certain rights that should be observed with regard to all, regardless of religious affiliation, "it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ."

Beyond Christianity, traditional Judaism has no acceptable notion of secular governance with regard to its normative, standard teachings of what a halachic state for Jews in the Holy Land would look like, as intrinsic to a number of mitzvot is the theocratic civil empowerment to punish transgressors through the strictures of the state, such as Shabbat violating being subject to legal punishment, including possible execution.

Also, as I understand it, depending upon the standing and interpretation one gives to the Manu Law Code, one could well make a case that Hinduism has no traditional recognition for separation of government and religion.

If 'separaton of Church and State' is somehow to be raised to some kind of de fide dogmatic level of thought, then it is in contradistinction to the religious traditional views of a number of religions, not just Islam. If Jihad Watch is evangelizing for the religion of Americanism, then it should clearly, openly state that and explain why those who are adherents to traditional religions should abandon them and convert to Americanism.

For Christians who are interested in more on this subject, I can recommend a few engaging Catholic works, such as Ken Craycraft's "The American Myth of Religious Freedom", Charles Coulombe's "Puritan's Empire", and, based on what I have seen of it, Christopher Ferrara's soon-to-be-released "Liberty: The God that Failed".

Oh dear. I see I started typing without first looking above. But a slightly different wording of the same point can't, I suppose, hurt.

fairufzan suffers from "Rip Van Winkle Syndrome" -- i.e., he must have sat down under a tree approximately 250 years ago and taken a nap, and just woke up a few minutes ago.

The West has undergone colossal changes in the restructuring of political structures since that time. Christendom has dissolved. In its place a new configuration has formed. This began to occur, of course, longer ago than 250 years, but its full force only began to become clear in the 18th century, when various nation-states began to become formed out of the sociopolitical substance of prior centuries.

Whether the legal-political hegemony of secularism throughout the West is a "de fide dogma" is beside the point; it is a de facto fact.

Many Christians today may lament this fact; many of them may read the words of the 19th and early 20th century Popes quoted by fairufzan with admiration and agreement; but there isn't much they can do about it, short of galvanizing major civil wars throughout the West to revive Christendom's political order. While they may lament the present order's godlessness, and while they may admire and agree with those quoted Popes, I dare say that the vast majority of Christians throughout the West have no intention of concretizing their feelings militarily or para-militarily on this issue, and are content with simply trying to make society more ethical according to their Christian conscience through legal means -- voting, demonstrating, raising public awareness. Same goes for Jews and Hindus, and the followers of all other religions save one: Muslims. They are the only ones who never evolved to a reconfiguration of their fundamental fusion of state and religion, such that they could, in sufficient numbers, compartmentalize religion and sociopolitics. Muslims can't, became mainstream normative Islam forbids such compartmentalization, and forbids the sociopolitical practice of humans creating laws -- an abomination in mainstream normative Islam.

Christians -- and even more so Jews, Hindus and Buddhists -- have a rich tradition from their own religion to draw from by which what is inside -- the heart, the soul, the conscience -- is more important than external relations and their regulation through laws. Thus they have been amenable to accepting the modern fait accompli whereby they have no choice but to withdraw religion from the public sphere as expressed and enforced through laws, and relocate its substance in the heart, in the home, in the family, in a community of like-minded souls, and in the church.

About one thing fairufzan is correct: it is either illiterate or disingenuous of Christians today to pretend that in times past Christians did not champion -- and enforce -- the politico-legal symbiosis of church and state; and to pretend that such symbiosis contradicts Christianity. If it did contradict Christianity, then most Christians -- including thousands of great illustrious ones -- for a good thousand years from the 4th century to the Reformation -- were contradicting their own religion.

Correction to the last sentence of my 4th paragraph:

Muslims can't, BECAUSE mainstream normative Islam forbids such compartmentalization, and forbids the sociopolitical practice of humans creating laws -- an abomination in mainstream normative Islam.

...",Allah revealed His divine guidance to humanity, made certain things permissible and others prohibited, commanded people observe His injunctions and to judge according to them. If they do not do so, then they commit Kufr, aggression, and transgression."

The koran also revealed that allah is a trickster and a deceiver; and that his sidekick, muhammad, endorsed lying as revealed in the hadiths. Quite the demonic duo, eh?

Truthophobes HATE IT when I point these things out ...

Qaradawi markedly resembles Peter Ustinov. That photo puts me in mind of some 60s screwball comedy set in Europe where Ustinov is caricaturing an Arab in full regalia -- back in the good old days when you could make fun of Arabs.

I thought immediately of Ustinov's portrayal of Herod in the film Jesus of Nazareth.

"...establishment dhimmi pseudoscholar John Esposito" --Robert

Esposito is more of a happily willing, true-believing Islamic activist and propagandist than a dhimmi. [Granted, Esposito is well-taken-care-of (e.g., see Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal)].

I would think that "dhimmi," as applied loosely and figuratively to a non-Muslim scholar in the modern western academic context of Islamic Studies and related departments, would refer to someone perhaps cowed and pressured against his will by Muslim colleagues and superiors into a position where he had to, for example, make published statements that he did not believe were accurate, or to withhold information that could present Islam in a bad light. In other words, such a cowed scholar could continue his career, continue to get published, continue to receive promotions, appointments, grants, invitations, etc., and continue to be free from any attacks from his peers, provided he remained cowed and adhered to the pro-Islamic propaganda. In other words, if he protects Islam, his pious Muslim or Islamic activist peers will protect him.

I suspect that the majority of non-Muslim scholars of Islam in the West nowadays are not of that type. I suspect that they are closer to the Esposito, or Carl Ernst, or Karen Armstrong type, i.e., they literally believe what they are saying and are under no major direct explicit coercion to say what they say or do not say about Islam. I suspect that those who would become the truly cowed or "dhimmified" scholars are sufficiently inhibited by what they see in Islamic studies at the undergraduate level that they choose not to pursue it further. Thus we don't see them. Those who rebel and examine Islam from a critical perspective would probably not even make it through at the undergraduate level; they would have to pursue their interests independently, outside the membership of the departments and indeed outside of academia. (There are of course exceptions to this).

Hahahahaha, that was great Champ. "The Demonic Duo"

Any Muslim who is loyal to country before faith is not a real Muslim.

We hear Qaradawi is very influential. And now Robert shows us Qaradawi's opinion in respect to Islam and Democracy.

Again we see that the position of, say, highly respected and influential Islamic Islam-experts, professionals so to speak, is in conjunction with the position of:

Highly informed and logical Islam-critical Islam-experts, also to be called professionals by now, getting ever more highly respected and influential.

Against both these kinds of experts we have the so-called "Moderate Muslims" (MM's, the "tepid" ones) and PCMC's who try to deny any incompatibility/ contradiction between Islam and Democracy and who equate almost all criticism, exposure, protest and holding accountable on/ of Islam and Muslims with hate-speech or fear-mongering.

But concerning knowledge of both Islam and Democracy (and both have finite essences which can well be studied) I think it is logical to conclude that the 2 kinds of Islam-experts, the "professionals", simply have a much better case than the often ignorant, anti-racism-prejudiced MM's + PCMC's. And what the professionals really say should become public knowledge, it should at least be pondered hard by ever more media and politicians and taught in schools and universities.

Islam is a choice, not a race. And I agree with Channe that a Muslim that is not loyal to Islam first, before being loyal to any country, is not a real Muslim. More important, a Muslim, we now see, must be loyal to Islamic legislation before manmade legislation, when the 2 contradict.

Muslims must take responsibility for that choice and for their unity behind it and their support and enabling of it. While it really is in opposition, in practice and intentional and often oppressive, violent and deceitful, to Democratic government system en values. In both Islamic AND Democratic countries.

If many Muslims were understanding this and honest about this and still choosing Islam, they would have to acknowledge that such a choice validates considering them guilty until proven innocent, justifies downright discrimination against them securitywise.

Or they would have to denounce Islam or the version of Islam of Qaradawi in both declarations and general behavior.

Now, most Muslims, and most citizens of Democracies too, make an outright enormous ignorant or hypocritical impression on the "Islam&Democracy-professionals" and those who are well informed by them.

As they do indeed denounce the Islam-version of the Islam-critical Islam-professionals even where that is totally identical with the Islam-version of the Islamic Islam-professionals.

I noticed faiuzfan didn't mention any Islamic leaders quotes from days gone by...

champ,

I spoke too soon about Ashanti -- turns out the slave trader is an evil white guy played by Ustinov. From the IMDB site:

A Middle Eastern slave trader (Peter Ustinov) abducts a World Health Organization doctor's wife in this action-packed adventure. Desperate to find his missing spouse, Anansa (Beverly Johnson), Dr. David Linderby (Michael Caine) teams with a soldier of fortune (Rex Harrison), a pilot (William Holden) and a nomad (Kabir Bedi) for a treacherous rescue mission. Omar Sharif co-stars as the sheik who purchases Anansa from her kidnapper.

It looks like "Prince Hassan" (Omar Sharif) may be at least an ambiguous character.

Damn, I haven't had my second cup of coffee yet. I didn't even read my own cut-and-paste: "A Middle Eastern slave trader...

It looks more hopeful that this movie will not be PC MC. I look forward to the day when the Motion Picture Association adds to their rating system, along with "PG-13" etc., "PC MC" to warn viewers that the movie will present false information about Islam.

Mr. Spencer,

Your comments appear to be an unfortunate muddle of foggy-headed thinking that does not accurately reflect Church teaching. You certainly can personally believe as you wish but this should not be confused with what the Church teaches.

And your characterization of parts of my post are simply sloppy and inaccurate.

Nowhere did I quote some unnamed person's erroneous view of Dignitatis Humanae. In fact, if you read the document you will see that I quoted directly from the document itself. The fact that you apparently didn't even recognize that would seem to indicate that you have a rather shoddy understanding of what the faith has authoritatively taught and presently does teach.

The question is simple: does Catholicism officialy, authoritatively teach that church and state must be separate? It doesn't. It doesn't even teach that separation is a preferable ideal among multiple acceptable options. The authoritative quotes from the papal encyclicals I cited demonstrate that.

There is absolutely nothing authoritative in the Second Vatican Council's documents, nor anything in any authoritatively binding magesterial pronouncement from the papacies of Paul VI, John Paul II, or Benedict XVI that says otherwise.

If you are claiming otherwise, then please do present clear, precise officially, authoritative teaching from the Church that mandates church/state separation. I don't see where you will be able to do so.

While I don't know your level of scholarship regarding faiths like Hinduism and Buddhism, if your statements regarding Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are any indication, it appears that there is a genuine dearth of theological knowledge and understanding on your part.

fairuzclown,

why do you insist on displaying your stupidity?

"The question is simple: does Catholicism officialy, authoritatively teach that church and state must be separate? It doesn't. It doesn't even teach that separation is a preferable ideal among multiple acceptable options"

There is no question!

Catholicism doesn't have a mandate to rule the world, to replace secular governments, to kill unbelievers and to enslave them, terrorize them etc etc.

Another echo in the room...

Hesp,

If you read my post carefully, my conception does allow for both of the first types of dhimmis you mention. Also, if you understand the meaning of dhimmi, your suggested third category, of a dhimmi who genuinely committed rebellion viewed so gravely by the Islamic authorities as to warrant the death penalty (e.g., insulting Muhammad publicly) would have by definition violated the dhimma and thus would no longer be a dhimmi but would be a harbi.

I stand by the point that there is a difference between a prototypical dhimmi, living under gravely coercive restrictions due to circumstances beyond his or her control, and a relatively free and indeed zealous, happy, healthy, unhindered Islamic activist/propagandist such as Esposito. I think the term "Islamic activist/propagandist" is much more accurate than dhimmi. There is a risk of trivializing the term by applying it too broadly. Dhimmis were for the most part victims who deserve our sympathy. Not so for Esposito and co.

Kinana, I agree with you on one level -- the strict and literal application of the term dhimmi would necessarily require certain conditions, such as non-Muslims living under the dhimma requirements in a polity where Islam with its Shariah law rules.

There is, however, room for Spencer's use of it, insofar as he's using it ironically, not literally -- pointing out the bitterly amusing irony of free individuals living in a free non-Muslim polity behaving as though they were dhimmis.

Not believing Mohammed is a true prophet is 'AGGRESSION' which must be punished under Sharia law.

Most Muslims have yet realized that free democracies have provisions in their constitutions that make the establishment of discriminatory Sharia difficult if not impossible.

I do expect Sharia provisions to be thoroughly rejected supreme courts in practically all free countries...on constitutional grounds.