The Schiavo Case and the Islamization of the Republican Party (Blog)

[Ilsa]

I saw a reference to this on CNN Blog report today and thought it was interesting:

http://www.juancole.com/ (scroll down a page or two)
The Schiavo Case and the Islamization of the Republican Party

The cynical use by the US Republican Party of the Terri Schiavo case repeats, whether deliberately or accidentally, the tactics of Muslim fundamentalists and theocrats in places like Egypt and Pakistan. These tactics involve a disturbing tendency to make private, intimate decisions matters of public interest and then to bring the courts and the legislature to bear on them. President George W. Bush and Republican congressional leaders like Tom Delay have taken us one step closer to theocracy on the Muslim Brotherhood model.

The Muslim fundamentalists use a provision of Islamic law called "bringing to account" (hisba). As Al-Ahram weekly notes, "Hisba signifies a case filed by an individual on behalf of society when the plaintiff feels that great harm has been done to religion." Hisba is a medieval idea that had all be lapsed when the fundamentalists brought it back in the 1970s and 1980s.

In this practice, any individual can use the courts to intervene in the private lives of others. SNIP
SNIP

Republican Hisba will have the same effect in the United States that it does in the Middle East. It will reduce the rights of the individual in favor of the rights of religious and political elites to control individuals. Ayatollah Delay isn't different from his counterparts in Iran.

[Melodybe]

1. The Talibornagains from Dumbfuckistan!

[tubbacheez]

2. The fundies of all religions THINK they're fighting each other.

But, as any seasoned new-ager knows...



What you resist, persists.

[applegrove]

3. Reminds me of this quote - the hypocracy will cause them to be nuts:

Here is what some really smart guy said about tribalism and fundies trying to live in a modern world as it plays out in the Middle East:

"The indivisibility of any aspect of life from any other in Islam is a source of strength, but also of fragility. When all conduct, all custom, has a religious sanction and justification, any changes is a threat to the whole system of belief. Certainty that their way of life is the right one thus coexists with fear that the whole edifice - intellectual and political - will come tumbling down if it is tampered with in any way.... And the problem is that so many Muslims want both stagnation and power; they want to return to the perfection of the 7th century and to dominate the 21st, as they believe is the birthright of their doctrine".

"If they were content to exist in a 7th-century backwater, secure in a quietest philosophy, there would be no problem for them or for us. Their problem, and ours, is that they want the power that free inquiry confers without either the free inquiry or the philosophy and institutions that guarantee free inquiry... he tension between their desire for power and success in the modern world on the one hand, and the desire not to abandon their religion on the other on the other, is resolvable for some only by exploding themselves as bombs."

Theodore Dalrymple, The Times, April 15, 2004

I got this quote out of Gwynne Dyer's FUTURE TENSE: The coming world order. I think it is as true of people who want America to return to 1950 (if the religion is Patriotism) or the year 5 BC (if they are being forced into Christian Fundamentalism).