Is Islam compatible with democracy? Which is not a qualitative question.
Facts against ideology

same thing was said about Shintoism and democracy, worked out in the end. Of course it took the US military to put down oppressing forces

http://pizdaus.com/single.php?id=16232

Discussion in GB of almost 2 hours! I know you have no time or are not interested. But still…

It may not be on the forefront of your life now, but trust me, it will be…

http://kalcc.org/html/mp3player.html

Listen to this sometimes interesting and amusing discussion. It may be the last time it is allowed.

Cuz like… the first one is literal and the second is how Allah does the.. – oh forget it

Based upon the attack on the World Trade center it’s only fair Americans are suspicious of muslims…and the Cole, and the shoe bomber, and flight 93 and Padilla, and and and

The brilliance of GEN Petraeus’ strategy has been dividing the two; irreconcilables from reconcilables; real Muslims from apostates and heretics who use violence to achieve their goals. It is usually uneducated and poor Muslims who buy into the violence.

Amy Proctor on January 7, 2008 at 5:36 PM

real Muslims from apostates and heretics who use violence to achieve their goals

Muhammed who used violence to achieve his goals. Is he apostate?

(as always….apologies for spelling)

Second: This Constitution guarantees the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people and guarantees the full religious rights of all individuals to freedom of religious belief and practice such as Christians, Yazedis, and Mandi Sabeans.

GEN Petraeus has said over and over again that we have to reconcile with our enemies, not our friends. He received damnation from particularly Democrats who thought we were making deals with the devil by reconciling former insurgents to Iraqi political and social life. The opposite was true. If Pakistan feels they have a shot at entering into negotiations with the Taliban, that’s up to them. They can decide, just like we did in Iraq, which “bad guys” are reconcilables or irreconcilables, as Petraeus calls them.

Based on a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment we see in American blogs and elsewhere, it’s only fair Pakistanis are suspicious of American intervention. All the better for us if they can handle their own affairs without us.

The problem isn’t more Islam in Pakistan, the problem would be more apostates like Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Islam and democracy can and do co-exist in parts of the world. The brilliance of GEN Petraeus’ strategy has been dividing the two; irreconcilables from reconcilables; real Muslims from apostates and heretics who use violence to achieve their goals. It is usually uneducated and poor Muslims who buy into the violence.

You are exactly right with this:

Plus, asking them if they want government based on Islam is like asking Americans if they want Judeo-Christian based government. I’m certain that the poll would read the same way in America.

And then you are both right and (just a little) off with this:

It’s different than asking them if they want sharia. If you polled them whether or not they wanted sharia, it’d probably be closer to 20% said they did. Not good, but not the 90% numbers from this poll here.

If the poll said “sharia”, many would still be in favor, for the same reason you stated in your first point. It’s a vague identification; sharia can be read as a concept of being based in Islamic law to Muslims. It’s not viewed with the negative assumptions of a right-wing blog reader or secular humanist.

Only when you recite the particulars of sharia independent of the identification, or force Muslims to actually live under animated and rather strict sharia rule (as in Iran, Algeria until recently and parts of Iraq), do many/most Muslims with a foot in the 21st Century actually chafe at what that really means. And you’re right about the 20% in that case.

I know many folks dislike any comparisons between religions, but tabling false equivalency rebuttals and for the sake of illustration, it’s like asking a modern western Christian if they want to live under Christian values … when what that could mean (or be interpreted as) is asking them if they want to live under Oliver Cromwell or Cotton Mather.

Most committed Christians in the West do not like to live under very strict interpretations of Christian theology by historical or even modern standards.

It’s sad to say, but for all its flaws, Communism was much more successful in the governance of Islamic peoples than Democracy. In Central Asia, the various Stans under Soviet control saw women liberated from the village and their abbayas and given an opportunity for education and jobs.
In the last thirty years, sadly, Afghani women had it best, when the Russians were in control.

Nice.

About every three days, unknown to most Americans, an elite team of federal scientists hits the streets in the fight against nuclear terrorism…

Unknown… until now. Thanks, MSM.

Would they view THAT as preferable?

Democracy leading to sharia. I wonder if dubya and our State Dept ever think about this when we push it on cultures which look at denocracy as only a means to an end. Like the PLO.

a capella on January 7, 2008 at 3:52 PM

the problem is supporting pro-western Dictators in these countries, leads the left and paultard right to calling American an “Imperialist Nation” with “puppet States”, etc. Its were our partisian politics has led to.

they didn’t have this problem with Korea, where we put in pro-western dictators in early years then pushed for democracy and got it later on, after putting down the violent forces there first. This is basically what Rumsfeld wanted to do in Iraq but got over-ruled.

“Vote for the Candidate of the Party of Allah, or I keel you!”

“After everything else fails, we come in,” said Deborah A. Wilber, the scientist who directs the Office of Emergency Response at the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration. “I don’t believe it is a question of if it will happen. It is a question of when.”

It’s different than asking them if they want sharia. If you polled them whether or not they wanted sharia, it’d probably be closer to 20% said they did. Not good, but not the 90% numbers from this poll here.