APOSTASY?

Mood: trying to not think about politics
Music: Bite the Hand That Feeds, Pt. 2 - Agent Orange

Yep, apostasy, I can't belive it either. I mean I can't belive that term still has some meaning in the world today! What an anachronism.

According to several newspapers including the New York Times (In Kabul, a Test for Shariah,) Abdul Rahman faces a death sentence in Afganistan for converting from Islam to Christianity. It's continually amazing to me just how antiquated a modern religion can be. While George Bush is compared to Hitler in the U.S., we have a major religion (over one BILLION muslims) who's followers make George Bush look as liberal-minded as Ted Kennedy. Seriously, I'm stunned that the freedom loving left in America has taken to propping this religion up.

I may or may not have written somethng previously about Shariah a year or two ago when a woman in Sudan (?) was going to be stoned to death for adultery. She wasn't even a muslim! Now this? Mr. Rahman is not even an isolated case... NYT reports that at least four others have been put to death for apostasy in the last decade. The offending nations? Sudan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. I remember that shortly after the September 11th attacks a very astute commentator noted that people were clammoring for the U.S. to bomb Afganistan back into the stone age. He pointed out that Afganistan wouldn't even notice because they already live in the stone age. It was true from a physical standpoint, but also from a social standpoint.

Bernard Lewis's book What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response details the Muslim resistance to modernity brilliantly. While Islam was THE cultural force to be reconned with in the world, the Islamic world advanced. Former Christian nations were overrun and converted across Africa and the Middle East. Then something lit Europe's fuse in the 1300s. The insignificant European peoples started pushing back when the Muslims pushed... and they started winning. The basic problem for muslims is that Islam forbids the adoption of infadel customs. So, while Europeans were experimenting with secular governments, freedom of speach, freedom of religion, emancipation, universal sufferage, Islam took these social advancements as affronts to Islamic beliefs. The Muslim believes that if Muslims are defeated it is because they are not being good enough Muslims. Because Islam was victorious prior to the 1300s, the Islamic world firmly believes that to get back in Allah's good graces, they must return the world to it's former condition and resist all modern ideas.

This is the foundation of classical Shariah. Shariah is the system of laws put in place in the first millenium. They are cruel and absolute (think of the Christian Inquisition of 1184... same time period.) Shariah is popular in Islamic countries because it puts Muslims there firmly in the Islamic tradition and therefor on the path to regaining Islam's lost glory.

While modern America has a few nuts out there like Pat Robertson who think that America's vulnerability to terrorism was due to homosexuality and generally declining morality. Now Mr. Robertson is just one crazy guy with a TV show... but Shariah is like giving Pat Robertson free reign to put America back in God's good graces. Just try to imagine it...

I'll wait...

Pretty scary huh?

Well, just remember that 1/5 of the world is muslim and at least ten countries describe themselves as musilm nations with provisions for the use of Shariah. Given a choice... hell, I think I'd take Pat Robertson.