More Shapeless Musings on Islam and the West

I started down this road while reading news coverage of the women in Iran who have been sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery. Keeping in mind that in those cultures, adultery is basically (or exclusively) a woman's crime--men don't commit adultery, only women; and that the accusation itself is all but considered proof of guilt.

(I had also read something recently about Islamic female genital mutilation / "circumcision".)

The fact that our President (or his representatives) expect to sit at a table and negotiate with representatives of such a country and such a culture, trying to get them to give up their nuclear ambitions, shocks me. I have a hard time thinking that I am from the same species (heck; from the same universe) as people who as a matter of course sentence potentially innocent women to die by stoning.

A friend of mine responded to the first note by pointing out the difference between the West, with some form of separation of church and state, and theocratic Islam.

I, like her, am troubled by people who seek to obliterate the distinction between church and state. People who talk about America being a "Christian nation" make me nervous--and I am a very conservative Christian.

It's not that I don't think the statement "America is a Christian nation" is true in a handful of ways: we DO have a common heritage, shaped and informed by Christianity; and Christianity is the religion that most citizens claim.

But I fear that's not what my friends mean when the start talking about "A Christian Nation." Some of them, at least, are referring to a kind of theocracy, forced or coerced conversion to Christianity. Those things are anathema to me.

One of the fundamental problems I have with Moslems, or with what I perceive to be the majority of Moslems, is that their religion denies other groups the right to exist.

There is a vast gulf between the Evangelical who thinks that non-Evangelicals are in danger of going to hell and the Moslem who thinks that non-Moslems are going to hell, and he's going to help them along the path, if they refuse to convert.