Well, Christianity and Judaism also were conceived and practiced as "total solutions".

I don't know much about Hinduism and other Eastern religions, but I am pretty sure they, too, make no distinction between religious and secular spheres. Why should they? Most religions include moral instruction as well as spiritual doctrine.

Cordoning off religion from a secular governmental/public sphere is actually the exception over human history - it began with the Magna Carta and was largely promoted by post-Enlightenment Westerners influenced by Protestant ideas.

It is not without its problems, either - witness the ongoing political wrangling over "values" issues.

So the problem is not that Islam presents a unified moral theory, but that it has not yet undergone a Western-style religious "Reformation" and consequent political "Enlightenment".

(And truth be told, here in Israel we are working these issues out as well, now that the Jews have at last regained sovereignty.)

um... no.

Christ: "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's"

Sounds like compartmentalization to me.

(And truth be told, here in Israel we are working these issues out as well, now that the Jews have at last regained sovereignty.)

Is Israel a secular state, or sort of like Turkey, nominally secular?

"Well, Christianity and Judaism also were conceived and practiced as 'total solutions'."

I don't know, Ben; if you look at the early history of both religions, they were facing governments that were trying hard to suppress them. I think it was more a case of their having to band together for common defense in order to survive. This necessarily led to them becoming an enclosed community, from which they developed their own set of mores and laws stemming from their beliefs. I've never seen anything suggesting that either early Christians or early Jews had any sort of grand plan to establish a worldwide theological government, as Islam does.

According to ABC News anchor, Chris Cuomo, Christians shouldn't ever be criticizing Muslims because of the Crusades.

No, this did not come from The Onion.

Isnt that like saying 'Who cares if teachers seduce their stuents, Catholics have been molesting alter boys for centuries'?

Patrick Conoley is incorrect in that many religions have their own personal legal systems, either written or unspoken. Jewish Halakha and Islamic Sharia are two examples of written personal legal systems. The middle ages saw the Christian church with an unspoken legal system (think Galileo.)

America was the first country to explicitly separate church and state in its constitution. The problem is that while most modern religions are willing to be subservient to the legal system of a particular government, Islam is most definitely not. The real sticking point with this is that Sharia law is diametrically opposed to the US constitution and bill of rights.

What frightens me is that the goal of Islam is to institute Sharia law throughout the world. It will not rest until this is accomplished. They have a 1400 year history of success.

if you look at the early history of both religions, they were facing governments that were trying hard to suppress them
- - - - - - - - - - -
That doesn't mean they did not promulgate explicitly religious laws for torts, governance, and other things we now think of as secular.

Take a look in Exodus - right after the 10 commandments, Moses receives a long, detailed list of laws governing everything from labor relations to building codes. Later on there are laws about how the king and government shall wage war, personal status (marriage/slavery/indentured servitude/non-Jewish aliens).

Some version of this - tempered and interpreted by the Rabbinic tradition - was the law of the land in ancient Judea.

Christendom's laws emanated from the Church up to, and through most of, the Renaissance. The "render unto Caeser" bit was an expression of the monastic impulse in Christianity - but when the Roman Empire became the HOLY Roman Empire, the Church fathers created a hybrid of (pagan) Roman and Mosaic (Jewish) law. The authority for that law was the Church - which also crowned the Emperor as "defender of the faith". And it covered EVERYTHING.

The post-enlightenment division of church and state is very recent - and very specific to Protestant notions of individual autonomy.

Biff asks:
Is Israel a secular state, or sort of like Turkey, nominally secular?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Israel is a secular, parliamentary style democracy that treats religious issues more like European countries than America. Religion is viewed as a key component of national identity, and there is no strict separation of church and state. As in Europe, taxpayer money funds public religious institutions and observances.

Most European countries also have political parties with explicitly religious names and platforms. This is true here as well.

... there is also a large population of Jews from Arab lands, and fundamentalist Jews who are suspicious of modern developments. Some of these people are ignorant of the history that led to post-enlightenment secular states, suspicious of it, and therefore not very committed to it.

(And as in Turkey - a lot of their suspicion stems from the heavy-handed way "progressives" treated their more traditional-minded brethren, attempting to stamp out the old ways entirely and stampede people into modernity, while keeping the fruits of modern prosperity to a select secular elite.)

So we have fundamentalist parties led by charismatic holy men. These groups have not yet undergone a "reformation" and they engage the parliamentary process as a practical necessity, while claiming to await the king Messiah and the restoration of the Sanhedrin (= ancient Rabbinic senate).

There are other religious parties that embrace post-enlightenment political developments as a fulfillment of prophecy, rather than pining for ancient monarchy. They share this view with
the Likud - a party that appeals to traditional-minded mainstream Israelis who want Israeli public culture to be unabashedly Jewish but not a theocracy.

The details of what constitutes "public Jewish culture without religious coercion" are where a lot of internal political friction occurs. This is what I meant by "issues to work out" - what exactly is the public identity of a secular state defined by a largely religious heritage (Judaism).

On the other side of the political spectrum are Labor and other hard-left parties that want a totally secular state, with no Jewish character at all. These are the cosmopolitan socialists whose heavy-handed tactics in the early days of Israel have given "democracy" such a bad reputation in some more traditional circles.

So yes, there are similarities to the situation in Turkey. Although in Israel the trend is for the religious to accommodate themselves to modern political advances, whereas Turkey seems to be sliding back into Sharia.

The problem is not that Islam is a "total solution," the problem is that Muslims would like to impose that solution on everyone else, by force if necessary. And that's why Islam poses this huge threat and other religions do not.

islam would not be such a huge threat if other nonbelievers or other religous organisation just stop doing business with islamic people. islam by itself is weak when it is without support from other more advanced civlisation. The fact that islamic people copied and stolen alot from western civilisation and tried to claim that it is their islam "success" is itself a big deception to the world. Many believers of other faith and nonbelievers willingly collaborated or forced to work with islamic people out of no choice or due to deception by islamic people or due to greed/mutual exploitation and ignorance. islam like many other religious organisation is essentially a money making exploitive organisation that seek to exploit us nonbelievers and deceive other desperate nonbelievers or believers of other faith.
It is hard for a truely poor lone nonbeliever who do not wish to be friends with twofaced islamic people to survive in a predominantly islamic country. While believers of other faith who have their own organisation are known to work with islamic infested organisation, those truely poor lone nonbeliever who do not wish to have anything to do with any islamic people have a much harder time in a predominantly islamic country. They want the comfort of western life but at the same time they want to have the power to rule with their type of brutality that they were born with.

I think we don't need to understand their horrible quran or waste too much time on their islamic community obssession. What we nonbelievers need to do is try to avoid their horrible deceitful islamic world as much as possible.

I blame islamic people for everythng. I blame islamic people for provoking so much violence in the world. I blame islamic people for promoting so much terrorism. I blame islamic people for all the filth that they tried to push to us, nonbelievers.

I assume WLIL knows the meaning of taqiya and dhimmi. I would prefer greater choice than submit or die, but some are OK with limited, tasteless menus.

Re: compartmentalization
The history of Christianity for the most part has had a feudal clerical system parallel to the feudal secular system. (render unto Caesar).
I know of no major countries with established Christian churches today that are intolerant of at least other Christian faiths.
(Greece has an established Orthodox church, and Norway the Lutheran church).
While Christians may argue about selected points, e.g. abortion, homosexuality, there is no dialog going on the the "West" about a comprehensive religous ilegal system (Shari'a) to be enforced by religious police.