It Can Too Happen Here and It Just Might

I was watching a program on PBS last night, just before I went to bed, and I wished I hadn't. It consisted of various interviews with what we would call moderate Islamic imams, Muslims who oppose the conservative movement to form an Islamic state. (The Muslims who favor the formation of an Islamic state, as it turned out, think they themselves are the moderates.)

What I inferred from the program was this: The people interviewed were not Muslims living in the Middle East. One controversy over an Islamic state was in Canada, one in Denmark, and one in fact was in the United States. There are mosques in these countries, led by imams who are working for an Islamic state (that was never totally defined). Their idea of an Islamic state is that an area is converted to Islam and is under Islamic law, so that government and religion go hand in hand. It did not sound like these imams were going to be content with having their own little private areas of authority in the communities where they live. They sounded to me as though they were speaking of nations, not local areas.

I also concluded that the pro-Islamic state imams are nothing but petty tyrants. They suppress opposition, distort the truth, and one of them was caught on camera talking about killing the moderate who led the opposition to him. These imams are more interested in poolitical power than in their religion, from the looks of it.

That scares me. This is happening in the West! Maybe if I were a man it wouldn't be so upsetting, but as a woman I have no reason to be interested in the conservative versions of Islam. Who is it who stones women for marital unfaithfulness, imagined or real? Who is it who forbids a woman to be away from home unless a man is with her? And who makes women wear those uncomfortable-looking outfits? Not even in color, for pete's sake, but unrelieved black!


The thing that really hurts me the most is this: I think God is more concerned about how we treat each other than He (or She, or It) is about what we believe. And when we kill others over an issue like right beliefs, we are totally barking up the wrong tree. God is so far beyond all our efforts to understand and explain Him that it is downright ludicrous. We get so carried away with our doctrines and theologies, and they accomplish very little when all is said and done. It is good that we codify our beliefs; we need that foundation for how we live. But let's put it into perspective. They are only beliefs about God, and they cannot be taken as incontrovertible fact.

The Christian takes Jesus as the example, and Jesus never turned anyone away from him because of what the person believed. If Jesus didn't, then God doesn't, because Jesus shows God to us. That's proof enough for me.


I am perfectly content to let the Muslims believe as they wish, and worship as they wish, and honor God as they wish. (But I do wish they would stop killing innocent people in the name of the God of love!) All I ask from them is that they grant me the same freedom.