If these folks are for real, and if they can be influential among American Muslims… then the future for *everybody* could be a lot brighter than it often seems.
American Islamic Forum for Democracy
I heard part of an interview with one of their leaders on the Dennis Miller show yesterday, and the guy seemed on the ball and reasonable. “Separation of Mosque and State” was their motto.
My problem with Islam is not the theology. As Heinlein noted, “One mans theology is another mans bellylaugh,” and that’s certainly true WRT Islam… but it’s no more true for Islam than it is for Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Scientology, or any of the myriad of other religions people have invented over the millenia. No, my problem with Islam is that its a *political* religion, and a universalist one.
Judaism is a political religion… sets up systems of laws and leadership and such. But Judasim is *not* a universalist religion. Not only do they not make much effort to convert non-Jews, they make it something of a challenge to convert (“You want me to cut off my *what?*”). So the political aspects of Judaism are intended solely for the Jews, not the gentiles living around ’em.
Christianity is a universalist religion… there are Christian missionaries of every stripe every damned where trying to convert everydamnedone. Christians, many of ’em anyway, want *everyone* to be Christian. But Christianity is, on the whole, not a terribly political religion. “Render unto Caesar” is the beginnings of a separation of church and state. Obviously, history has shown that the various Christian sects dearly love to be in charge of everything, but there is no agreed upon “system.” We’ve seen Christian commies and Christian anti-commies; Christian republicans and Christian monarchists. America is one of the most Christian nations on Earth by any measure, and yet we have a system of government in place that is wholly agnostic, and in fact adopted from good ol’ Germanic heathens.
But Islam is not only universalist in that Islam states that everybody should be Muslim, it’s also a deeply political religion, as expressed via Sharia. *If* the political aspects could be chainsawed off of the religion, I suspect the vast bulk of the problem between Muslims and everybody else would go away. While I’ve little hope for that happening elsewhere, it has a chance here in the US. Muslims form only a small percentage of the population, and apart from places that got unfortunate mass dumps of, say, Somalian refugees, American Muslims have in general done what most immigrant groups have done: assimilate. An Americanised Islam has a chance of forming… perhaps a new sect, not Sunni, not Shia, but Yankee (“Yan Qi?” Dunno, looks Chinese…). An Islam that is as Americanised as the Minnesota Lutherans would be a positive boon not only to America, but to Islam as a whole.
