If Islam as a whole has never had a substantive stance on state power, or governance in general, then I wonder why it, as a religious and new cultural movement, came out of Arabia with swords and spears in hand, looking to overthrow pretty much all existing communities that weren't willing to A) convert and/or B) be ruled under the thumb of Islamic law and governance.

I'd also say that because Islam has no equivalent of the Catholic Church, Islam is pigeon-holed into funneling most, if not all, of its religious authority into and through a governing state. Of course, the Catholic Church used the state in centuries past to enforce its religious doctrine to sometimes a large degree, but now that it doesn't have that kind of leverage and power anymore, it has relied on itself as an institution in itself to project itself out into the world. Can Islam do such a thing without the state's involvement? I don't think so. As I think Wayfarer has alluded to, a secular Islamic state is pretty fuckin' rare, especially one that is more like the United States, say, than a Sandy Arabia. Again, "we" separated church from state in the West, and the Christian churches are still very powerful in themselves, and are still able to evangelize in their own ways. I think that if you took away the theocratic leanings of many of the Muslim majority states, Islam would find itself in a super worrisome place without a centralized, and institutionalized, religious authority. At present, Islam is utilizing what ought to be secular states as the ground from which Islam is propagated, which is what I, at least, am not in favor of, and which needs to be addressed. And, while it is true that we have countries like Lebannon and Jordan who are trying their best to emulate the West, there's still a Sandy Arabia and a Qatar right around the corner.

As I think Wayfarer has alluded to, a secular Islamic state is pretty fuckin' rare, — Heister Eggcart

From Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_secularism






The role of Islam or religion in the Muslim-majority countries as outlined in the constitutions. Including Islamic or secular states.
RED: Islamic state
ORANGE: State religion
YELLOW: Unclear / No declaration
BLUE: Secular state

I can't. obviously, attest to the accuracy of this; but if it is accurate it certainly points to your conclusion being very mistaken.

Underdeveloped African countries and Turkey? John, c'mon.

Are you being deliberately simplistic?

Find me some graph that shows a similar color scheme for Christian majority countries.

While well-intentioned, it misses the point to look only at 'secular Islamic states'. A more telling metric would be to look at Muslims populations generally, and note what Roy simply calls de facto secularization. Because I'm lazy, I'm going to recycle some notes for a presentation I made a while back about this:

"In fact, the reality of the social positions of many of the 1.2 Billion Muslims around the world is that they have been and are very much already working, eating, sleeping, living among secular nation states, and that secularity is compatible, simply by the virtue of that fact that it is what is happening all around the world. This is a sociological argument, one that looks at Islam as it is practiced, not a normative one that simply looks at the forms and shapes the arguments ‘for’ or ‘against’ secularization are.

... The role of Islam, the way it interacts with the West, with secularism, and with other cultures is not defined actually by its religiosity, but by politics and existing structures of culture and state. Secularism is established by political means, or, to put it another way, the principal agent in the establishment of secularism is the political order, not changes internal to the Islamic religion. We can look as well at the parallel experience of the Catholic Church – when it finally accepted the idea of a secular republic after the Second Vatican Council in 1965, it wasn’t because a commission of theologians spent hours pouring over and rereading biblical texts, but because the Vatican Council really had no choice in the matter – the council was a consequence of the changes already brought about by secularization and it had to respond in a positive manner, or dissolve as an irrelevant institution."

Or, here's an actual scholar of this stuff: "Until the contemporary period, secularization in Muslim countries had taken place routinely, with no tension between secular and religious authorities (except in Iran in the twentieth century, but precisely because Iran has a form of church that does not exist in the Sunni world). In western Europe, conversely, the very nature of power was shaped by that tension. In this sense, Islam never had a theocratic ideal, neither in terms of institutions (the clergy before Khomeini never demanded power) nor even in terms of law: the possible institution of sharia as state law does not in itself define an Islamic state, as all advocates of political Islam have said, from Saïd Qutb to Khomeini.

De facto secularization has also affected Muslim populations, but there has been a refusal to apply to Islam the basic principles of the sociology of religion, which is concerned with the concrete conduct of the believer. This sociology arose from the study of the Christian populations of Europe, and it showed how the changes in the conduct of believers (among other things, the phenomena of de-Christianization) had nothing to do with changes in dogma: the reasons religious observance declined in Beauce but remained constant in Rouergue had nothing to do with theological debate. The same thing is true of Islam: there is an entire realm and process of secularization that has nothing to do with changes in dogma." (Roy, Secularism Confronts Islam).

Every attempt to analyse Islam on the basis of theology and not in terms of sociology and politics is vacuous.

and which needs to be addressed. — Heister Eggcart

What is your proposal for addressing it?

It's a complex issue, there may be either theocratic or ecclesiocratic states where the politic is closely associated with the religious. Take a look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theocracy#Christian_theocracies

Christianity is a much older religion than Islam, so just on the face of it, it is not surprising that predominately Christian countries have developed nearly universal separation between politics and religion earlier than Islam has. There are also many economic, geographical and historical factors in play. Thinking about complex issues simplistically leads to simple-minded conclusions. The tendency to want to view cultural issues simplistically is driven by either laziness or negative emotion or a combination of both, and leads to conclusions which are not rationally supportable.

Every attempt to analyse Islam on the basis of theology and not in terms of sociology and politics is vacuous. — StreetlightX

Why not all together? Excluding religious critique is equally vacuous in my estimation, as such would imply that Muslim doctrine plays no part in society, either at the macro or micro level, and thus doesn't deserve careful consideration.

What is your proposal for addressing it? — andrewk

I'd say this goes country by country. For example, getting away from Saudi Arabia and Qatar's fossil fuel economies would be helpful in leveraging better human rights compliance from their theocratic, Muslim governments. But, we can't seem to do that very well, so a whole lot of shit gets a pass. Similar economic shackling is involved in SEA, but there it'd be more of a grass roots effort to help educate local villages and small towns - that is, a bottom-up approach. I'm simplifying here, but I can only say so much in a forum post. I will admit to having not studied Islam in SEA as well, though, so perhaps there are nuances I've neglected :)

It's a complex issue, there can be either theocratic or ecclesiocratic states associated with religions. — John

True, but the difference between the Vatican, and even Tibet, with a Saudi Arabia, is that there really isn't any secular sphere in the former communities. There aren't secular people fartzing around in the Vatican that are bummed about the Christian law there because that's all there is. But in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, etc., there is an ever growing secular, consumerist culture that has begun to come into direct conflict with the governments that are paradoxically obtuse to such developments. I mean, if Tibet had a slave labor issue like Qatar does, then Tibet wouldn't get any sort of "pass" from me. I'd damn them to hell and back just like Qatar.

Christianity is a much older religion that Islam, so it is not surprising that predominately Christian countries have developed nearly universal separation between politics and religion earlier than Islam has. — John

Yes and no. As I said before, Muslim countries have no equivalent of the Catholic Church, a kind of guiding sub-institution to a secular state that informs society. If Islam came first, and without a largely centralized religious framework, then Muslim countries probably wouldn't have been able to progress as steadily as the Christian West has in reality. However, this all is speculation, even if I defend myself with books and articles in the dozens. My history background is reminding me not to do that, hehe.

There are also many economic, geographical and historical factors in play. Thinking about complex issues simplistically leads to simple-minded conclusions. The tendency to want to view cultural issues simplistically is driven by either laziness or negative emotion or a combination of both, and leads to conclusions which are not rationally supportable. — John

Okay, but I fail to see how I'm being overly simplistic in this thread. As I say above, I'm not ruling out any other additional angles we might use in order to better understand the whole picture concerning the topic at hand.

If Islam came first, and without a largely centralized religious framework, then Muslim countries probably wouldn't have been able to progress as steadily as the Christian West has in reality. — Heister Eggcart

Apologies for just jumping in and critiquing (my mental quota for posting here gets filled pretty fast, but I keep reading), but how does a purely theoretical concept like this support any real argument? Islam is an Abrahamic religion; removing it from it's proper context to theorize about that context removes the meaning of the context itself and doesn't present an actual argument. Sorry to be obtuse here; you've made some valid arguments as well. Just a fine point that always tends to push my buttons. Carry on with your well-reasoned critique.

But as to John's comment, and as a slight critique of his, and a slight credit to you, I think the distinction is that Islam is specifically Abrahamic, not just that it comes after Judaism. So, the grounding seed if you will of Judaism already existed for the pith of Islam to sprout, and the natural result was a decentralization of the new religion, based on a former center.

But in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, etc., there is an ever growing secular, consumerist culture that has begun to come into direct conflict with the governments that are paradoxically obtuse to such developments. — Heister Eggcart

That may be true, but those in power always seem to want to hang onto it; and it doesn't seem to have much to do with theological issues.

If Islam came first, and without a largely centralized religious framework, then Muslim countries probably wouldn't have been able to progress as steadily as the Christian West has in reality. However, this all is speculation, even if I defend myself with books and articles in the dozens. — Heister Eggcart

If Islam had come first and enjoyed the geographical and cultural advantages that Christianity has, then it might well have had a more centralized structure. If Islam had been around instead of Christianity then Constantine might have chosen it to unify his empire instead of Christianity. Of course, that is really pretty empty speculation; and if Hegel is right and history is a dialectic, then Islam as we know it could not have preceded Christianity in any case. You are of course free to cite "books and articles by the dozen" or present the arguments from those in your own words.

Excluding religious critique is equally vacuous in my estimation, as such would imply that Muslim doctrine plays no part in society, either at the macro or micro level, and thus doesn't deserve careful consideration. — Heister Eggcart

As I see it "religious critique" (if by that you mean critique of the actual theology of a religion) is relevant only insofar as the theology has a bearing on people's actual practices. And then it becomes a matter of critiquing something more substantial than the mere dogmatic abstract principles of doctrine. It is not easy to see how such things could even be effectively critiqued from outside the religion, in any case. Critiquing people's practices is sociological, political and moral or ethical critique; and I think that is what is relevant; it is what people do with "Muslim doctrine" that counts, and the very fact you have already pointed out, that Islam has no predominant cross-cultural central authority (and neither does Christianity these days; it has a couple or three) means that many diverse things are done in the name of doctrine.

I'd say this goes country by country. For example, getting away from Saudi Arabia and Qatar's fossil fuel economies would be helpful in leveraging better human rights compliance from their theocratic, Muslim governments. — Heister Eggcart

I agree with that.

In the next bit you used the abbreviation SOE, which I can't quite place. What does it stand for in this context?

South East Asia?

"Until the contemporary period, secularization in Muslim countries had taken place routinely, with no tension between secular and religious authorities (except in Iran in the twentieth century, but precisely because Iran has a form of church that does not exist in the Sunni world). — StreetlightX

Bullshit. Ottoman Empire.

Theocracy doesn't have to mean, and doesn't usually mean, that the head of state is identical to the religious leader. It's the relationship between the two that marks theocracy. The religious leader supports the legitimacy of the king and the king provides the religious leader with authority. Saudi is typical.

This arrangement produces a strong, resilient backbone for a society. Think about what has to happen to leave that behind. How is the government's legitimacy affirmed if a religious leader isn't doing it? How does a church maintain its authority without political back-up? What are the conditions which would force a community to abandon the time-honored formula of church/state union and try a real secular government?

Apologies for just jumping in and critiquing (my mental quota for posting here gets filled pretty fast, but I keep reading), but how does a purely theoretical concept like this support any real argument? — Noble Dust

I was merely stating my opinion. As I say later in the post you quote, I'd never really try and argue that opinion, as it's more speculative. I could, but I won't here.

That may be true, but those in power always seem to want to hang onto it; and it doesn't seem to have much to do with theological issues. — John

Take out Islamic law and the authority of those governments lessens to a great degree.

If Islam had come first and enjoyed the geographical and cultural advantages that Christianity has, then it might well have had a more centralized structure. If Islam had been around instead of Christianity then Constantine might have chosen it to unify his empire instead of Christianity. Of course, that is really pretty empty speculation; and if Hegel is right and history is a dialectic, then Islam as we know it could not have preceded Christianity in any case. You are of course free to cite "books and articles by the dozen" or present the arguments from those in your own words. — John

We're both speculating now, lol. As I just told Noble Dust, I never meant to defend my position on this/that.

Oops, I mean SEA, as in South East Asia. Apologies, I dunno why I was writing SOE, >:O

Here's where I think the heat is from around this issue: that to say anything about another culture, be it Islam or whatever, is basically racist. In a multicultural and pluralistic culture, the equality of persons and cultures is a basic principle. That is why StreetlightX believes that only a 'prejudiced schmuck' would bring it up - even through he doesn't believe for one minute that Islam is anything other than a 'human cultural practice', and so is defending Islam on grounds that Islam itself would never consider, that is, not as a religious ideology per se, but as 'the reality in the lives of millions of individuals'. So according to this argument, it's ultimate warrant or worth is not in the truth or falsehood of the teachings of its founder, which, in his eyes, can't have any divine warrant, but because individuals believe in it - in keeping with the ideals of democratic liberalism. So it ought to be respected basically because it 'works for them' - not because there's any truth in it beyond that.

Ross Douthat wrote a good OP on this subject in the NY Times called The Islamic Dilemma.

What should devout Muslims see when they look at America, or at the wider West?

This is the issue lurking behind a lot of Western anxiety about Islam. On the one hand, Westerners want Islam to adapt and assimilate, to “moderate” in some sense, to leave behind the lure of conquest, the pull of violent jihad.

But for several reasons — because we don’t understand Islam from the inside, but also because we’re divided about what our civilization stands for and where religious faith fits in — we have a hard time articulating what a “moderate” Muslim would actually believe, or what we expect a modernized Islam to become.

And to any Muslim who takes the teachings of his faith seriously, it must seem that many Western ideas about how Islam ought to change just promise its eventual extinction.

This is clearly true of the idea, held by certain prominent atheists and some of my fellow conservatives and Christians, that the heart of Islam is necessarily illiberal — that because the faith was born in conquest and theocracy, it simply can’t accommodate itself to pluralism without a massive rupture, an apostasy in fact if not in name.

But it’s also true of the ideas of many secular liberal Westerners, who take a more benign view of Islam mostly because they assume that all religious ideas are arbitrary, that it doesn’t matter what Muhammad said or did because tomorrow’s Muslims can just reinterpret the Prophet’s life story and read the appropriate liberal values in.

The first idea basically offers a counsel of despair: Muslims simply cannot be at home in the liberal democratic West without becoming something else entirely: atheists, Christians, or at least post-Islamic.

The second idea seems kinder, but it arrives at a similar destination. Instead of a life-changing, obedience-demanding revelation of the Absolute, its modernized Islam would be Unitarianism with prayer rugs and Middle Eastern kitsch – one more sigil in the COEXIST bumper sticker, one more office in the multicultural student center, one more client group in the left-wing coalition.

A Muslim commentator, also in the NY Times, asks Is Free Speech Good for Muslims? He also notes the 'paradoxes' of the relationship between Islam and free speech:

[Muslims] are threatened by Islamophobic forces against which they need the protections offered by liberalism — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, nondiscrimination. But the same liberalism also brings them realities that most of them find un-Islamic — irreverence toward religion, tolerance of L.G.B.T. people, permissive attitudes on sex. They can’t easily decide, therefore, whether liberalism is good or bad for Muslims.

He says that this

does mean that Muslim opinion leaders — imams, scholars, intellectuals — should give serious thought to a key question: Is liberalism a good or bad thing for Muslims? Should they embrace freedom or not?

Often Muslims support liberalism when it serves them and reject it when it does not. They use the religious freedom in the West, for example, to seek converts to Islam, while condemning converts from Islam to another religion as “apostates” who deserve death. Or ask for the right to freely organize political rallies in Europe, while you are crushing opposition rallies at home — as the Turkish government recently did during its spat with the Netherlands.

Such double standards can be found in every society. Mr. Wilders himself, who cheers for “freedom” while aiming to ban the Quran, is a striking example. But some contemporary Muslims do it too easily, switching at will between “our rules” and “their rules.” The prominent Turkish theologian Ali Bardakoglu, the former head of the Religious Directorate, wrote about this “double morality” in a recent book and called on fellow Muslims to be more self-critical about it. Muslims should not be, he argued, “people who can surf between different value systems.”

These are the kinds of questions that need to be asked. And Islamic leaders need to be deeply engaged in this dialogue. As it is, if the hardliners who had Ahok put in jail win the day in Indonesia, what are the prospects for such a dialogue?

Bullshit. — Mongrel

(Y)

And Islamic leaders need to be deeply engaged in this dialogue — Wayfarer

What Islamic leaders? Name one.

Every attempt to analyse Islam on the basis of theology and not in terms of sociology and politics is vacuous. — StreetlightX

Really jogs my noggin...

This is clearly true of the idea, held by certain prominent atheists and some of my fellow conservatives and Christians, that the heart of Islam is necessarily illiberal — that because the faith was born in conquest and theocracy, it simply can’t accommodate itself to pluralism without a massive rupture, an apostasy in fact if not in name.

I think the assertion that "the heart of Islam is necessarily illiberal" also can be said of Christianity. Religions must be fundamental or reactionary at "the heart", and it is their moral role that is problematic when it is mixed into with politics where pragmatism ought to reign. No religion "at heart" can stand pluralism.

This may be true, but the assimilation of Christianity into modernity has to a large extent destroyed it. Hence the worry that the same would happen to Islam.

No religion "at heart" can stand pluralism. — Cavacava

"There's a conflict in every human heart." -- somebody

Young Christians are more interfaith than their elders. I discovered this during some years living near a Southern Baptist seminary. One student told me that the real divide in Christianity in the US isn't between denominations, but between liberal and conservative Christians.

Is this a bad sign for the future of Christianity?

This may be true, but the assimilation of Christianity into modernity has to a large extent destroyed it — The Great Whatever

This is a topic that has taken my interest in the last week, after I heard a discussion between a liberal and an Evangelical Christian on ABC Radio National, in which the Evangelical said that Evangelicalism was better because when churches became liberal, they shrank.

I was convinced for about five minutes, because it's true that Evangelicism seems to be the only part of Christianity that is growing. But then I realised that that means Evangelicalism is better only if the sole measure of a religion's success is its size. Which implies that it is better to be a horrible Christian than not a Christian at all - a premise that only Evangelical Christians would accept.

When a church becomes liberal, it typically discards the threat of hellfire for nonbelievers and sometimes also the carrot of heaven as long as one believes (no matter how nasty one may be). As with any organisation propped up by threats and bribes, the membership falls as soon as the threats and bribes disappear.

But what's left is those that really want to be part of the organisation, rather than just being in it out of fear or greed.

To me that's a better outcome. Some people in the world have an emotional affinity with Christianity, and some do not. Since there are so many different available worldviews, in the absence of the threats and bribes that have been part of Christianity for most of its history, only a small proportion of all the world's people are going to want to be Christian. But that's good, because the people who are suited to being Christians will be Christians, and the others will be Buddhists, Jains, Muslims, Stoics, Epicureans, or whatever suits them.

Liberalisation of a religion destroys it only if one measures the success of the religion by numbers of members. Most people would instead measure the success of a religion by whether it brings spiritual fulfilment and community to those that are unable to find it elsewhere, without causing undue misery. I would suggest that, on that measure, liberal churches, despite their smaller numbers, are far more successful than Evangelical ones.

I suspect the same would apply to Islam. The emergence of more credible, easily accessible, liberal, moderate sects of Islam may reduce the number of Muslims, but it would not destroy Islam, and it would improve its rating against the above-suggested KPI.

Liberalisation of a religion destroys it only if one measures the success of the religion by numbers of members. — andrewk

1) A religion can't succeed with no members, or few enough that it has no cultural capital.

2) Liberalization in itself makes the religion less interesting in a liberal society, as it becomes just another wing of the larger secular culture. But religion is interesting precisely because it has content to it, and not as a consumer choice among a larger atheistic society that one takes it implicitly to be subordinate to.

Most people would instead measure the success of a religion by whether it brings spiritual fulfilment and community to those that are unable to find it elsewhere, without causing undue misery. — andrewk

What is spiritual fulfillment? Liberal religion can make one comfortable, but comfort and fulfillment aren't the same.

Point 1 is a truism, but does not apply to liberal Christianity. There are plenty of flourishing liberal Christian congregations.

I don't agree with claim 2.

What is 'spiritual fulfilment'? This means different things to different people. For me it means a bunch of things, including something like feeling a connection with something much greater than oneself, and coming to terms with the existence of so much suffering in the world.

Point 1 is a truism, but does not apply to liberal Christianity. There are plenty of flourishing liberal Christian congregations. — andrewk

Christianity in the western world is dying off, and liberal Christianity is basically atheism.

What is 'spiritual fulfilment'? This means different things to different people. — andrewk

Does it? People may have differing opinions on the matter. But part of the problem with the liberalization of religion is that a religion that has assimilated to a liberal society will fail to offer anything the wider society does not. And since liberal societies are by definition nihilistic, defined negatively in terms of their lack of values, this means a liberal religion will have very little meat to it. And so as you note, no one will stick around, because the religion no longer has any content.

liberal Christianity is basically atheism. — The Great Whatever

I don't agree with that unsupported claim either.

And so as you note, no one will stick around, because the religion no longer has any content. — The Great Whatever

I didn't note that at all. I presume your mistake comes from too hasty a reading, as I imagine you understand the difference between 'the membership falls' and ''no one will stick around'.

Nor do I agree with the unsupported claim that liberal religions have no content. I wonder if you have ever conversed with a liberal Christian about their beliefs and values, as none of what you say about them has any relation to reality.

Nor do I agree with the unsupported claim that liberal religions have no content. — andrewk

This is the logical endpoint of the liberalizing of Christianity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism

There is no content to UU that the wider secular culture does not provide (itself threadbare and defined negatively, in terms of tolerance).

You can spit out as many unsupported claims as you like. Other than informing us what your opinion is, they have no value.

I literally cited an instance of the liberalization of Christianity resulting in it becoming contentless. UU is a contentless religion and it admits as much.

To be liberal is to be contentless – liberalism is defined in terms of lack of content, and permissiveness. You yourself in describing it only defined it in terms of losing facets of a substantive belief that it once had.

You cannot ignore the existence of UU – it's a historical reality.

To be liberal is to be contentless — The Great Whatever

Nonsense.