Mirabile Dictu! An Actor Who Understands What He's Portraying!

[bluesqueak]

[Don't ask me what happened there; apologies to those on email or 
digest who may get this message twice]

> > Laura:
> > 
> > As long as Christianity and Islam see each other as opponents, 
> > they both pose a mortal danger to the entire world.  

Naama wrote:

> Historically, this split (of secular vs. religious 
> spheres) developed from Christianity itself. From early times it 
> was seen as proper that there should be pope and king - seperate 
> rulers of seperate domains. 

Pip!Squeak writes:

This wasn't a development *of* Christianity as much as it developed 
from the political structure that Christianity was born into. 
Christianity spread within the Roman Empire. The Empire had NO 
secular/religious split; the Roman state included the idea of the 
Emperor as semi-divine.

So early Christianity was forced to develop a model for running its 
affairs which *did* split the secular and the religious spheres. It 
had no choice. For quite some time, any known Christian would not be 
in the power structure. In fact, they were in opposition to the 
current power structure (which Jesus seems to have been perfectly 
well aware of, much more so than his apostles).


Barb has pointed out the enthusiastic way in which Christians did 
endorse a Christian state religion whenever they had the 
opportunity. The development of tolerance came more from the fact 
that any dissenters always had the early model to fall back on. 
Christians didn't need the support of the state. In their early 
history they'd learnt to run their affairs without it. It was always 
possible (though frequently painful) for minority Christians to 
return to that system.

In the end, it was the model of Christianity that separates the 
secular and the religious spheres that became the dominant one. 

Naama:
> In Islam, the ideal ruler (the Caliph) embodies both spheres. Or, 
> rather, there was no split - life - personal and political - is to 
> be regulated according to Islam. Add to this the injunction to 
> Jihad - spreading Islam by the force of the sword - and you get an 
> extremely intolerant political culture. 
> 

Pip!Squeak:
I agree that Islam has difficulty with the split between secular and 
religious. Unlike Christianity, it gained political power within a 
few years of its foundation. It *doesn't* have an early model of how 
to handle yourself in a non-Islamic world.

But I think the real problem is that the conservative Islamic world 
cannot conceive of any non-Islamic idea being preferable to an 
Islamic one; and I'm really not certain that this *is* doctrinal. I 
think it is more cultural; for many centuries the Islamic countries 
were dominant technically and politically. Things Islamic quite 
simply *were* better than things non-Islamic. More tolerant, more 
advanced, more civilised.

> Laura:
> > 
> > I refuse to be afraid of Islam.  I know too many good, kind, 
> > admirable Muslims for that.  I'm not happy with some of its 
> > practitioners, but I'm not happy with a good number of my fellow 
> > Jews either.  The fact that practitioners choose to corrupt a 
> > good doctrine doesn't make the doctrine corrupt.  

> Naama:
> As I tried to show above, the intolerance is not a symptom of 
> corruption of doctrine. It is part and parcel of the doctrine  
itself -as it is in 
> Christianity and Judaism. The difference in tolerance lies in the 
difference between 
> the societies/cultures, not between the religions.  

Pip!Squeak:
Doctrinally, Islam is tolerant. It regards other religions such as 
Judaism and Christianity as second class, but it tolerates them. 
It's actually explicitly stated that religion should not be imposed 
by compulsion.

Islam was often spread by Jihad; but it's historical fact that the 
religious minorities often found they were better off in 
their `conquered' state than they had been in their `unconquered' 
state. If you wanted to stick with your non-orthodox religion, then 
for many centuries you were actually better off under Islam.


What the conservative Islamic cultures don't have is the 
European/Western idea that 'good things can come from other 
cultures.' 

Western Europe was pretty much forced to develop this idea; the 
collapse of the Roman Empire destroyed the then current 
civilisation. Western Europe fell from flush toilets and central 
heating right back to mud huts (in some places). We had centuries of 
looking at other cultures and seeing that they were doing things ... 
well, *better*. 


>From this developed the grand European tradition of travelling 
abroad and seeing how things were done elsewhere. And if you saw 
that something was being done better, you either stole it, bought 
it, or (last resort) tried to work out how to do it yourself.


And, as the centuries passed, it was observed that this strange 
theory that 'a good idea is a good idea, wherever you found it' 
worked. Whereas the cultures who thought that 'good ideas are only 
found in OUR culture; everybody else is just a bunch of ignorant 
barbarians who couldn't possibly know anything of interest' tended 
to slowly decay.

And, trying to return to the topic, I think this is the real 
difference between Islamic fundamentalism and Western civilisation. 
And why we genuinely have real difficulty understanding the other 
point of view. 

The Islamic conservatives see Islamic civilisation as better. It's a 
system that has worked for over a thousand years. And non-Islamic 
cultures are still what they were for centuries - the 'ignorant 
barbarians'. We have no good ideas to offer them. They *cannot* be 
good ideas; they come from outside the Islamic culture.

Whereas the Western civilisation thinks that 'a good idea is a good 
idea, wherever it came from.' And it thinks that you can always 
improve things. That's what its history tells it. It really doesn't 
understand the mindset of 'we already have a better system, and we 
don't need any ideas from any one else.'

[Of course, there are many, many *individuals* in Western 
civilisation who do have that mindset.]

So you get this awful culture clash of the West happily giving away 
all these neat ideas that we've found work really well. We see this 
as generous. Meantime we study their culture to see what goodies 
they have. This is 'cross-cultural communication'. [grin]

And meantime, conservative Islam is saying 'why are you trying to 
destroy our culture with all these non-Islamic and therefore second-
class ideas? And if your culture is so great, why do you keep 
stealing everything from us?'

Of course, the picture is complicated by the fact that Islam is not 
a monolith. Not all the Islamic countries are conservative, not all 
Muslims are conservative. But yes, I agree with Naama that the clash 
is cultural, and looking more serious by the year. I just don't 
think it is actually part of the Islamic doctrine. It's the way the 
doctrine is being interpreted.

Pip!Squeak