Real Theocracy
Hotair.com links to a BBC show in which a reporter went undercover into British mosques and filmed various speakers. It’s tempting for Westerners to imagine that most of Islam is a reasonable, peaceful religion, and that the Muslims who strap bombs to their children are just fringe lunatics.
For Americans with liberal or anti-Christian inclinations, it’s difficult for them to resist projecting their view of Christianity onto Islam. In this view, most Christians are perfectly normal and acceptable as long as they don’t take their religion too seriously, and then there are the kooks out there on the fringe who get just a bit too excited about the whole God thing. This view usually lumps together the Mormons, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and Catholics who actually believe themselves bound by what the Pope says, along with any smaller Christian groups that worship too energetically or take the Bible too literally.
I think that’s a ridiculous caricature of American Christianity, but let’s leave that topic for another day. It’s much more important right now to understand how poorly that cartoon fits with modern Islam. If a Christian suggests that a schoolchild should be free to pray in class, then the ACLU screams theocracy even though it knows that the charge is absurd. But the Muslims really do want theocracy, and they say so quite plainly when they think that only other Muslims are listening.
It may turn out that one of the most serious casualties of the Left’s war on religion is the destruction of religious words in our language, and our consequent inability to think and talk clearly about religion. ‘Theocracy’ is a perfect example. The word once had a definite meaning, and there are many Islamic governments that fit it perfectly. But the Left has abused that poor word for so long that it’s just a political buzzword now, the sort of thing you expect to hear from the Left if President Bush were to ask Americans to pray for our troops’ safety. So now we have no word left to use when faced with real theocracies, or with British Muslims who talk seriously among themselves about imposing them.
The BBC show is on YouTube cut into three parts: 1, 2, and 3. It’s vital to understand that the Muslim clerics in these videos aren’t on the fringe of Islam. Several segments come from the largest mosque in London, which has received substantial support from the British government. These men are seriously preaching thoughts nearly inexpressible in America: the complete subjugation of women, the death penalty for homosexuality or for leaving Islam, the democratic destruction of democracy, and the religious imperative to kill unbelievers—especially Jews.
The good news is that the situation in Britain is now dire enough that even the BBC has taken notice. The bad news is that the response by the BBC and the British government will almost certainly be more of the same multi-culti liberal mush that has brought them so far down the path to destruction. But at least we Americans can watch, and learn.
Update (1-18-07): Here is a National Review editor reviewing a book titled American Fascists — The Christian Right and The War on America. And that’s not an ironic title; the author is completely sincere in his belief that America will soon become a fascist theocracy. A sample: “A group of religious utopians, with the sympathy and support of tens of millions of Americans, are slowly dismantling democratic institutions to establish a religious tyranny, the springboard to an American fascism.”
It’s unsurprising that someone would write such a book. This is a big country. It’s disappointing that a major publisher like Simon & Schuster would print it, and discouraging that it would reach an Amazon sales rank of 584. But this is what should really make you sick: The author, Chris Hedges, worked for 15 years at the New York Times and won a Pulitzer Prize. It’s an excellent demonstration of how deeply the old-school media outlets hate Middle America.