A belief has been growing in my mind that political structures that have a large religious component have been playing shell games with their extremists. Sinn Fein and the IRA often come to mind, working things so that you can keep your guns and yet have a deniable seperate entity for propoganda and political interaction.

Of course, this gets applied to the Muslim question. In the little bit of reading I've done, it seems that government and religion aren't seperate in Islamic States (duh I suppose). In the veil roe I read how thoroughly integrated Islam is in every aspect of a Muslims life. If this is the case, why don't we hold governments accountable that have out of control religious movements? If a head cleric is calling for Jihad, why is that different from a leading politician declaring war?

In the West we have a history of this as well. It wasn't that long ago that there was the fear that Catholics were agents of Rome. Given some of the actions in the last elections in both Canada and the US, this thought is regaining merit.

Perhaps this is a loop hole that has developed due to our beliefs in freedom of religion. Freedom of religion is certainly an important freedom and not one to tinker with lightly. But, isn't it time we start to look at how religions are functioning with Government and International conflicts? In the US the Republican party has become the Evangelical party, is this going to be a good thing for the US in the long run? If we don't want theocracies, what types of limits should we entertain so that we allow maximum freedom while maintaining legitimate seculuar governments? If a country is going to war by mobilizing their religious armies why is that different and worthy of different laws (Geneva convention) than wars with secular armies?

   

I think there is some merit to the idea.

In order to treat Islam as being synonymous with Islamic governments, there has to be a Caliphate in place. That hasn't been true for 80 years or so, but we might be able to do it in a more limited way. For example: did you realise that the President of Iran, for all his yelling and posturing, is really little more than a figurehead? The real power in Iran is the Supreme Ruler, Ayatollah Khamenei. He has the authority to bitchslap the president any time he feels like it, and he's probably the person we should be talking to -- no point in bothering with Ahmadinejad at all.

Outside of Iran, the governments are capable of arresting and prosecuting religious leaders, but, like in most countries, they have to be able to charge them with something. And they have to be willing to stand up to outraged followers of that cleric as well. I don't think that places like Saudi Arabia or Indonesia generally have one guy who is The Undisputed National Cleric, so it probably wouldn't work the other way around at the moment. But there may be exceptions.

And Iran is certainly one worth thinking about.

   

Since this is a relatively new threat, the balance is between what can be considered a state. Islam can't be considered a state, even if it's acting as one. We're fighting any enemy we can distinguish, it seems.

Campaigning from the pulpits is always a bad thing, because it always places blame and does a pretty good job of deflecting it.