Random thoughts for the day
A few weeks ago a friend, noting how much Republican politicians on TV talk about "values", described the said politicians as "full of values". It was such an apt phrase that, by now, my reaction to almost all Republican rhetoric is to think "what a load of values" or even just "bullvalues!" And of course Huckabee is so godly he thinks his values don't stink.....
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Men, women, Jews, Muslims, white people -- I wish I had a dollar for every group which I've seen described as "the last group it's still acceptable to be prejudiced against".
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People think that western Europe has no equivalent of America's Christian Right -- a grim religious totalitarian movement seeking to impose its rigid, misogynistic, sex-phobic, homosexual-hating taboos on the entire society. They're wrong. Western Europe does indeed have an equivalent movement -- it's just that it's Islamic, not Christian.
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After Archbishop Williams's blather of accepting some aspects of Shariah law in Britain, it was odd to see him being defended by people who would rightly be raising pluperfect hell if a similar suggestion were made about implementing aspects of Biblical law here.
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Men, women, Jews, Muslims, white people -- I wish I had a dollar for every group which I've seen described as "the last group it's still acceptable to be prejudiced against".
= = = = =
People think that western Europe has no equivalent of America's Christian Right -- a grim religious totalitarian movement seeking to impose its rigid, misogynistic, sex-phobic, homosexual-hating taboos on the entire society. They're wrong. Western Europe does indeed have an equivalent movement -- it's just that it's Islamic, not Christian.
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After Archbishop Williams's blather of accepting some aspects of Shariah law in Britain, it was odd to see him being defended by people who would rightly be raising pluperfect hell if a similar suggestion were made about implementing aspects of Biblical law here.
Labels: Islam, Politics, Religion, Western Europe
posted by Infidel753 at 9:02 AM
2 Comments:
I found some links discussing this subject. One link here I found had this interesting observation:
Most controversially, there can be demands for the incorporation of religious decisions into law: using the secular law to enforce the decisions of private religious bodies (Muslim divorce tribunals) or religious people (rabbis, imams). If granted, this would elevate religious bodies to the status of the lawmakers and, as such, quasi-instruments of the state.
I'm wondering what the Archbishop's motives are. I'm thinking he'd like to have similar powers himself. I've always suspected that American Religious leaders any way were a bit jealous of the power of Law that Islamic leaders enjoy.
I fear you may be right. Any religious belief system is inherently anti-rational and anti-liberal. Its leaders will inevitably seek to resist the rational and liberal social evolution which erodes their power, even in they have to reach out to unlikely allies in order to do so.
The British like to believe that the fact that their country has an established church is harmless, because their society is so secular and the official religion is so watered-down. I fear they may soon discover just how naive this belief is.
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