Mohammed’s Ghost and the Incompatibility of Islam and the West
3/26/2009
A clash of civilizations is at the heart of it a clash of allegiances, for a civilization is defined by its pattern of allegiances. Therefore the clash between Islam and the West, is also the clash between what we give allegiance to and what they give allegiance to. It is also one of the best demonstrations of why Islam is incompatible with Western democracies.
Western nations expect Muslim immigrants to live by a code that separates civil and religious laws. The Western system assumes that Muslims will accept a division between the political and the religion, relegating religion to the mosque, while otherwise being Englishmen, Frenchmen and Americans. This concept however is innately foreign to the Muslim mind.
Nationalism in the Muslim world remains a far weaker force than religion and tribal kinship. That is why the post-Saddam Iraq so easily unwound into extended bloody bouts between Sunnis and Shiites. Most Muslim nations are in any case artificial, Egypt, Pakistan, Syria, the Kingdom of Jordan and their like were the products or the afterbirth of European colonialism. Their rulers may cultivate nationalism, but such nationalism is only skin deep.
Harold
ACGR's "News with Attitude" 