On Boston suspects: Maher To Defender Of Islam: Equating Christianity And Islam "Liberal Bullshit"

[starroute]

88. Islam does have some hangups that Christianity doesn't

One is that after getting the crap kicked out of them, first by the Mongols and then by Tamerlane, the Middle East became poorer, less willing to innovate, and more set in an archaic form of tribalism.

Another is that there's very little separation of church and state in Islam. Christianity had to contend from the start with the Roman Empire, and even when the emperors became Christians and started appointing the archbishops, there was a degree of separation. But the Persian Empire crumpled before the onslaught of Islam, and the caliphs were both religious and secular leaders.

The fact that Mohammed had declared there would be no priesthood in Islam, although it seemed like a good idea at the time, also meant there was no way for a strong church and a strong state to coexist, creating a useful balance of powers.

And a third might be that Islam didn't absorb a healthy dose of paganism the way Christianity and Buddhism did. It's very otherworldly, very purist, and inclined to be suspicious of the ways of the world. Even that no-drawings-of-Mohammed thing doesn't mean no nasty caricatures -- it means no drawings, period, because that would be a kind of idolatry.

At present, all these things are reinforcing one another. Muslims, on average, tend to be out of tune with current Western mores. They resist adapting to those mores because they see secular society in general as impious and un-Islamic. And they have no basis for acknowledging that secular society and a strong current of personal religion can coexist. As long as those things are true, they may condemn the actions of the extreme fundamentalists, but they're also compelled to regard them as defenders of Islam against outside attacks. And they themselves are going to have to figure out a way past that trap.