Well, I think my point here is merely that I am uncomfortable making general statements about Islam, because I don’t know enough about either history or Islamic studies to do so.
I respect that you may be more knowledgeable than me and so I appreciate you taking the time to respond and point out my errors. Thank you.
I know that Canon Law is not a civil law at this time. In that past, in some places, it functioned more as civil law in my understanding, but at this time it only applies to Catholics who wish to voluntarily be in good standing with the Church.
It is intrinsic to Islam that it be officially recognized as the state religion? Islam is “incomplete” if Sharia law is not enforced? Forced conversion is encouraged and indeed required? Really? “Islam” has a system in place to execute unbelievers? See this is the kind of generalization that makes me uncomfortable. But I am not going to play Islamic scholar and attempt to refute your broad statements. It would be a waste of our time, since I do not have that expertise.
I don’t think I’ve “fallen” for anything with my understanding of history. There have been organized attempts to evangelize the aboriginal populations that did not respect their cultures, to put it very mildly indeed.
Of course the atrocities that Catholics committed in the past are inimical to the faith. Can we not say the same for historical atrocities committed by Muslims? Or does that only go one way.
Thank you for your candid response. I’ve done some research into Islam, and I’ve often been surprised (and shocked) at what I have found.
I highly recommend
jihadwatch.org for an objective, truthful analysis of the Islamic teaching and agenda. Many Muslims castigate this site as having hateful, “Islamophobic” content, but they cannot dispute the veracity of the claims it makes. Robert Spencer (who runs the site) simply takes excerpts from the Koran itself, quotes highly reputed Islamic scholars, and makes the resulting deductions. He is
far more knowledgeable than I am on this topic.
The rest of what you wrote is a caricature of the Sharia Law, and is something a conventional minded modernist would typically say. You should know that even non Muslim historians, such as Richard Fletcher (author of The Conversion of Europe: From Paganism to Christianity) have pointed out that the conversion rate to Islam was very low within the first couple of centuries of the Arab conquests, and that it was from the third century after the conquests onwards, that the conversion rate grew fast (although he only uses Spain as an example).
You should also know, that the peak of the Roman Church and Western Christendom was in the High Middle ages, when governments were a mirror image of the caricature you made. This was even encouraged by the Church theologians of the time, especially the Dominicans, and including Thomas Aquinas.
My “caricature of the Sharia Law” is a summary of what I understand it to lead to.
As I understand, Jihad comes in several stages. In the earlier, stages, Islam appears to be peaceful and easily intermingling with other religions, but in the latter stages, as Muslims gain political and social power, the nasty stages of Jihad come forth (as prescribed by Sharia Law).
Here’s one way to break down Jihad:
Stage 1: Stealth
At this stage, Islam is weak; its members are too few to enact real change. It is lawful for Muslim to lie and deceive at this time, by the principle of “Taqiyya”, so that they are not destroyed.
Propaganda and politics are used to try and increase the numbers of Muslims in the region.
Stage 2: Preparation
Islam is gaining in numbers and power. They begin exerting political pressure to label those who are against Islam as bigots, and they infiltrate organizations, governments, and societies to gradually influence their members to favor Islam. They begin spending a lot of money and time in enacting cultural change to support Islam.
Stage 3: Attack
Finally, Islam has sufficient numbers, political power, and material resources to engage in active war. They take over completely, using the power of law to jail or execute those against them. They use violent force to coerce conversions, and Sharia law is fully enforced, along with all its unethical restrictions on women, etc.
If the resources of that country are sufficient (and sometimes even when they are not), the Muslims begin to wage war on neighboring countries to repeat the process of conversion. In some cases they merely recruit people from conquered nations to go live in unconquered nations and begin the process of social change from within.
