You mean "recent setbacks" in "moderate" Turkey like the election to power of an Islamic Party led by a obvious shariaist?
Yes, the election of Erdogan is what I meant, and the way he is pushing the envelope of Islamism as far as he can get away with. Which isn't all that far, thanks to Turkey's secular constitution.
That sharia in the countries you list are is not presently being enforced with the full power of the state no more makes Islam apolitical than any other political movement that is not presently able to enact its political program to the extent it would like.
The populations of those countries are overwhelmingly muslim. So what would you say is stopping them from enacting the full programme of political Islam? Could it possibly be that the populations of those countries won't support the agenda of political Islam?
However much you wish to close your eyes to the facts, killing people for "insulting" Islam or its "prophet" is part of sharia. It was implimented by state officials in supposedly "tolerant" Islamic Spain. The killing of Theo Van Gogh is therefore a bloody demonstration that sharia has arrived in the west.
There were plenty of things implemented by the governments of medieval Europe in the name of religion. The presence of Islamic or other religious nutters who would like to bring them back does not mean they stand any prospect of success.
That it is not YET being fully implimented everywhere does not alter the fact of its presence
You can drop the big dramatic "YET".
Sharia is not going to be implemented in Europe, end of.
In Islamic states the knowledge that one could be so killed is a powerful disincentive to criticism of Islam and such murderous acts in the west and the threat thereof has clearly had its effect on peoples willingness to say or print anything Muslims might find "offensive".
There is a problem with self-censorship in some of the more spineless areas of the western media, but still - Theo Van Gogh's death didn't stop the Danish cartoons, the publication of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Infidel", the knighting of Salman Rushdie, and it has had no discernible effect on the career of Geert Wilders other than a pathetic decision by the UK Home Secretary to ban him from the country, (which seems to have won him more votes among the Dutch).
It could be reasonably argued that the USA has advanced some way down the path of theocratic control with the influence of powerful religious groups on government policy. However "Theocratic Christianity"cannot seriously be said to pose the same level of threat to the USA as Islam which, aside from trying to advance its sharia agenda through such faux moderate organizations as CAIR, has been responsible for an unprecedented act of terrorism on US soil.
Political Islam and its Sharia agenda stand even less chance in the US than they do in Europe, in large part because of 9/11. The Christian fundie nutters are more of a threat, especially if you work in an abortion clinic, or you want to teach science to High School students without a religious agenda.
The concern is not with the effect of Muhammad's teachings on those of us who do not believe in them, but their likely effect on those who regard him as a divine messenger and the Koran as the divine word. To quote Theo Van Gogh's murderer:
"I did what I did purely out of my beliefs. I want you to know that I acted out of conviction and not that I took his life because he was Dutch or because I was Moroccan and felt insulted."
Get that?
"I shot [at police] to kill and be killed."
Somehow this self-proclaimed "Muslim" managed NOT to "interpret" the words "kill and be killed" in Koran surah 9:111 as "kiss and be kissed". How do you think he managed to do that - particularly when he was an apparent "moderate" before he became supposedly "radicalized"?
He wasn't an apparent "moderate", he was a total fucking loser all along.
Mohammed Bouyeri, was born in Holland, though his parents were from Morocco. As a teenager he tried to conform to the culture of his native city. He got drunk, smoked dope, and tried to seduce Dutch girls. After all, everything in the culture, from pop music to TV commercials, promises sex. This is a world away from home, where the saintly mother and virginal sisters must be protected from lustful eyes.
But things began to go wrong for Mohammed. The Dutch girls were not as easy as he thought. He lost interest in his studies. Subsidies for this and that failed to materialise. There were nasty brushes with the police. And his sister got a boyfriend. This enraged Mohammed. He felt dishonoured, useless, excluded. He was, in short, a radical loser, and Islamism promised righteous murder, martyrdom, and the feeling, however fleeting, of total power.
The reason Van Gogh became Mohammed's target was a short film he made with the Somali-born politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who wrote the script. The film, Submission, showed Koranic texts projected on to the half-naked bodies of veiled women who had been abused by men. Hirsi Ali blames Islam for the sexual subjugation of women and the misguided and frustrated machismo of men. Her take on secular European society is the exact opposite of Mohammed's. Where she sees liberation - above all, sexual liberation - he sees dishonour, decadence, filth and confusion. The freedom of living in Holland allowed her to flourish, while it made him feel small and hateful. And that is why he wanted to destroy her, and with her the civilisation that made him feel like a radical loser.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/feb/25/terrorism.commentSo which "type" of "Islam" has the most followers?
The various types that don't prey on total losers and give them the comforting illusion that they're Pinky and the Brain.
And those "interpretations" would have been as intellectually dishonest as your continued assertion that Islam can be anything anyone who calls themselves a "Muslim" wants it to be.
Or as intellectually dishonest as the Anglicans allowing gay bishops, or the Methodists allowing women to preach, or the Catholics and Reform Jews suddenly deciding to interpret the Book of Genesis metaphorically after they realised Darwin wasn't going away after all.
I have pointed this out to you before, ALL religious people cherry pick. It would be impossible to live completely by the book of any of them, so which bits they pick will depend on the psychology of the person.
But neither Sunni nor Shia have ever "interpreted" Islam in a sharialess, jihad-rejecting fashion.
But they do interpret "sharia" and "jihad" in different ways, don't they? You've been given various examples of that in this thread.
They were shoulder to shoulder with him on the issues that matter eg the desirability of murdering Salman Rushdie
That's one of the few issues that they ever have agreed on, and despite their unity Salman Rushdie is still alive, he married a hottie half his age, he's more famous than ever, and his oh so "offensive" book is a bestseller. So where did it get them?
Topic: Clarifying the Council's position: Against Political Islam not Muslims