Any competing belief system is a catastrophe for Islam because its existence points out a) muslims have failed to establish dar al Islam across the world b) it may cause a mental pause c) people may see the benefit of something other than Islam d) wild slutty womens will spontaneously appear --all catastrophic.

Posted by: A_Plague_on_Both_Houses at January 5, 2008 9:59 AM

Notice also the use of the tactic of saying that conversion creates an "instability" in society. This is the classic tool for abrogating "there shall be no compulsion in religion".

See Sachedina on this one. Part of a larger article at:

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/abdulaziz_a_sachedina/2007/07/a_crisis_of_interpretation.html

QUOTING

Consequently, although classified as a capital offense (hudud crime) in the Islamic penal code, apostasy was and remains the only crime that presented Muslim legal authorities with a serious dilemma. The verse of the Qur’an that provides the jurists with the original ruling unambiguously characterizes apostasy as a non-capital offense. The Qur’an says:

And, whosoever turns (yartadid) from his religion, and dies disbelieving - their works have failed in this world and the next; those are the inhabitants of the Fire; therein they shall dwell forever. (K. 2:217)

Clearly, the problem is that while the Qur’an favored an overall tolerance of religious pluralism, the social ethics delineated by the Muslim jurists regarded pluralism as a source of instability in the Muslim public order. The so-called wars of "apostasy" (ridda) under the first caliph Abu Bakr (d. 634 CE) in the aftermath of the Prophet's death in 632 CE served as a grave reminder to the jurists to provide measures that would deter disruptive activity in the community.
Moreover, in an Islamic context, the Muslim political authority, is solely responsible for determining that the act of ridda (as in the "rejection of" or "turning away from" the Muslim public order) is regarded as meriting certain punishment. The reason is that in the absence of the “church” and the “ecclesiastical body,” it is the responsibility of the civil authority to determine the ridda's criminality and take appropriate action to deal with it. Since its determination as ridda was restricted to the political authority required to protect the common good of the community, a number of Muslim jurists classified irtidad as part of the ta`zir ("chastisement," "deterrence") crimes that "infringe on private or community interests of the public order," and for which punishment is instituted by the legitimate political authority. Consequently, the burden is placed on the public authority to lay down rules that penalize all conduct that seems contrary to the public interest, social tranquility, or public order.

Hence, civil considerations surrounding the question of sedition and civil strife have shaped the interpretation of the act of apostasy in Islam. The harsh treatment of apostates in Islamic law was promulgated without making an indispensable distinction between the Qur’anic doctrine of freedom of religion which insists that no human agency can negotiate an individual's spiritual destiny -- and legitimate concerns about the Muslim public order. As long as apostasy remains a private matter and does not disrupt the society at large, there is no particular punishment in the Qur’an. However, when it violates sanctity and impinges on the rights of Muslims to practice their belief, then it is treated as a physical aggression towards the faith. At that point it is no mere apostasy; it is, rather, treated as an act of sedition that causes discord and threatens the unity of Islamic community. It is only in this case that apostasy is punishable by the severest penalties, framed as self-defense against a violent rebellion against God and the Prophet, to be countered, in turn, with violence if necessary.

There is a self-evident problem in any Islamic criminalization of apostasy defined in the strict sense of public abandonment of an institutionalized religion for another; a mere expression of religious dissent against the established community, which the Qur’an grants as a basic individual right, cannot constitute a criminal act punishable in this world. The Muslim civil authority has the ultimate responsibility for using its discretionary power to assess the level of discord created by a public declaration of an apostasy and to lay down the appropriate measures to deal with it.

END QUOTE

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair at January 5, 2008 10:17 AM

The Taliban and Al-Qaeda (who have no compunctions about killing Moslem women and children) are NOT trying to
"destabilise the country, .... the region and the world" ?

Allah Forbid!

So if Afghans convert - there goes the neighborhood?

Islam is not a religion - it is a system of thought control worthy of Nazism and Communism.

Time to start treating it as such.

Posted by: tanstaafl at January 5, 2008 10:50 AM

Clerics?

It rather say nomenklatura

Posted by: FreeSpeech at January 5, 2008 12:37 PM

The only hope for Muslim lands is that a sufficient number of people either see Islam for what it is, and remain only Muslims-for-identification-purposes-only Muslims, or that they embrace something else, and that something else is likely (though need not) be Christianity. If in Iran a fashion for Zoroaster developed, if people in Bangladesh, seeing the global-warming handwriting on the wall, and knowing that they are going to be needing to have the goodwill of the Hindus of India, start to look into their Hindu ancestors and the reasons why those ancestors became Muslims in the first place, and perhaps turn back to Hinduism (the problem of caste remains -- which caste should they be assigned to? How was it done with Sonia Gandhi, or did she get special privileges?).

As for what would constitute a "sufficient number" of such people, I don't know. Anyone's guess. We do have the example of Turkey. In Turkey, after 80 years of Kemalism, about 25% of the population can be said to more or less -- very much more or less -- the inhabit the same universe of rationality that Western non-Infidel man inhabits -- but that clearly has not been enough to constrain the primitive masses, or Islam, their Total Belief-System, that is back with a rasputinesque you-can't-keep-a-bad-man down vengeance, and is gradually undoing all the knots that Ataturk had so systematically tied.

Posted by: Hugh at January 5, 2008 1:13 PM

Muslims who oppose Christian missionary efforts are hate mongers. Christians have a human right to be able to tell others that their religion is the best. Just as Muslims can tell others that their religion is the best.

We must not pander to Muslim hate mongers who deny non-Muslims human rights.

Posted by: James Martel at January 5, 2008 2:03 PM

The only thing that will help in the very long run is to leave the Taliban countries and let them rule themselves in full isolation from the rest of the world.

Why spend more human lives and material resources on such an impossible project as to reform Islam? Let the Islamists and other Muslims fry in their own fat for as long as they chose.

Capture the oilfields by military means, sell the oil on the world market and set aside the "petrodollars" for a distant future generation capable of investing them for the benefit of their nation.

Posted by: Osmund Bindalen at January 5, 2008 2:32 PM

Jeffrey Carr do you agree with them?

Posted by: interestinconundrum at January 5, 2008 4:04 PM

There are and have been indigenous Christians in Afghanistan. There are Afghani Christian exiles living in the US and in Canada. There once was an indigenous Afghan Jewish community and may still be a handful left in Afghanistan. Could these religious communities ever return to their homeland? Probably not; with the encouragement of American constitutional lawyers and billions of US dollars, the 'new' Afghan government is also an Islamic based government. No diversity allowed, except, of course, if Afghan Muslims immigrate to the West, where they can enjoy the freedom to practice their religion. It's all very discouraging and disgusting.

Posted by: maryrose at January 5, 2008 8:45 PM

A 'catastrophe' indeed, were Christianity to gain a firm foothold in Afghanistan!

Hey, if that happened, people there might even learn that the moral law - 'thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet'- applies to one's relations with *everybody* all the time, rather than being something you can coolly ignore whenever it suits you.

They might learn the Golden Rule: "love your neighbour as yourself", "do to others [ALL OTHERS] as you would be done by".

They might (as did the warring tribes of Europe) very slowly and painfully, with many lapses, learn the art of real peacemaking, the kind that seeks win-win situations rather than "I only win if you are dead". The number of tribal grudges, feuds and assassinations might gradually decrease. People might spend more time growing food and building things, than fighting - and so there would be more food to go round, and fewer skinny starving children.

They would learn, from the example of the Biblical God, that when one gives one's word, one keeps it, come hell or high water; they would have the example of everlasting covenant, rather than the treachery and expediency exemplified by the Treaty of Hudaybiyya. As people learned to trust, and to keep their promises, more things would get built better, or fixed.

Men would learn that they were supposed to love their wives and treat them gently, - and that beating was *not* commanded, under any circumstance.

They would learn "rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice", and that music and song are perfectly permissible indeed desirable in worship, and that it's OK to paint pictures, and that women can show their faces in public.

They would learn that "the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, kindness, gentleness, self-control".

The Hebrew scriptures would teach them that thieves should pay restitution to their victims. The Christian scriptures would teach them that the penitent thief must work hard with his hands and thus make up for his past sins. No more hands cut off to turn people into beggars.

Since all modern forms of Christianity set big store by the Word, nonformal literacy classes would proliferate and more women and girls would learn to read.

Gee, how DREADFUL! (sarc).

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at January 5, 2008 9:15 PM

Yet fatheads like D'Souza deride people like us who criticize Islamic democracy as secularist liberals. If this is what democracy is going to look like, then bring back the Soviets

Posted by: Dumbo at January 6, 2008 12:50 AM

"catastrophe will emerge"??? Does that mean that what Afghanistan has been like is normal?

Posted by: flowerknife_us at January 6, 2008 1:01 PM