SHACKLEFORD AT JAWA ARGUES THAT ISLAM AND ISLAMISM ARE 2 SEPARATE THINGS - I DISAGREE

THE JAWA MASTER: Islam isn't the problem, Islamism is.

Inasmuch as I've written hundreds of posts on Islamists and Islamism it's a bit tedious to have to do it one more time.

Islam is a system of beliefs -- a faith. Islamism is a political system in which there is no separation of church and state and religious law prevails. Islamists are those who believe in Islamism.

As a political matter I've got not problem with Islam or Muslims. If you want to pray five times a day, build a mosque in my neighborhood, and never know the delicious goodness of pork I really don't care.

It's only when you start demanding -- as a matter of legal requirement -- that I stop making fun of your prophet that your religion stops being a religion and quickly becomes a form of political fascism.

I'm not a Muslim so I am not in the business of deciding whether true Islam demands the implementation of sharia or not. Plenty of Muslims tell me that it doesn't. Others tell me it does. That's something for them to work out, not me.

I DISAGREE:

I asked Rusty to tell me if he thought Mohamed was just a Muslim who practiced the faith of Islam - or was he an islamist?

And to tell me the answer to this, too:

Was Bin Laden emulating Mohamed or being a bad Muslim? And tell me this: can you emulate Mohamed and be a bad Muslim?

Think about it.

The truthful answers to these questions tell you everything you need to know about Islam.

I argue that most MUSLIMS are good people - who do not emulate Mohamed, and most can't read Arabic and don't know much about their faith beyond what their harmless well-meaning local Imam tells them.

But recent history is replete with dozens if not hundreds and even thousands of cases in which these harmless Muslims were radicalized and became what you and many others call "islamists". They were radicalized because radicals could easily show them that Mohamed and the Koran and the hadiths and the Sura justifiedwhat you call "islamism".

MAYBE I AM WRONG? If I am then Shackleford - or anyone else for that matter - must show me how folks like Bin Laden and Zawahiri and Khomeini and Khameni and Nasrallah and the entire Supreme Council of Iran got Islam wrong; show me how they "misunderstand" islam.

Lookit folks, it's really simple - and even the VERY progressive pro-West, lesbian Muslim Irshad Manji gets it: Manji argues that what Islam needs is for the Koran and hadiths and the Sura to be taken FIGURATIVELY and not LITERALLY.

In other words, she tacitly admits that the Koran and the hadiths and the Sura are LITERALLY replete with horrible edicts - edits which, if taken LITERALLY, do implore the "believer" to commit misogyny, and terror, if not genocide. This makes it inherently incompatible with our civilization.

I think that admitting that Islam is inherently incompatible with Judeo-Christian Civilization, Western Civilization and the Enlightenment is important - but it's just the first step.

Muslims must take the next 1000 steps - and either radically alter their faith at its very core and foundation, or leave it in ash heap of history along with the many other religions people no longer practice. Until they do, thousands of dangerous islamists will be born or made every week.

WHAT CAN WE NON-MUSLIMS DO?

We do not need to go kinetic. Repeat: We do not need to go kinetic. We can do peaceful, non-violent political things - (things I have advocated for several years).

We can start by taking a serious step on the diplomatic front:

We could shun all nations which permit misogyny and thereby violate the UN's Declaration of Universal Human Rights. These nations - nearly all majority Muslim - should be kicked out of every international "club" and be forced to operate without trade or the World Bank or IMF or WTO until they change their laws ad basic practices and teachings. (This means countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia would have to be shunned.)

We should no more accept islamo-misogyny than accept slavery.

That would be a good place to start.