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Divine inspiration at least opens the door
to ethical standards.

As to what to do about being the infidel in need of slaying, my friend, the late Jeff Cooper, summarized it in three words:

Front Sight. Press.

Remember Freds’ “divine dictation”. When Christians say that the scriptures are the “Word of God” they (with darned few exceptions) mean divinely inspired. However, the defining force, and maybe the dominant force, in Islamic belief is that the Quran was dictated verbatim to Mohammed who proceeded to transcribe it without error.

It seems to me that when that form of thinking is significantly reduced, behavior will improve. In short, a cultural transformation is required. Hopefully, the direct contact Iraquis have had with American soldiers will at least initiate such a transformation.

As to our Savior having been in human form, I recall Screwtape complaining to Wormwood about “the accursed advantage of the Enemy Above”. The divinity of Jesus is what will probably pull us through——in mysterious ways.

Now I have floundered enough for one evening. Will check back tomorrow. Thanks for sharpshooting my thesis.

A dictating anthropomorphic deity that prevents Muslims from thinking in transcendent terms is the problem – is that it? have I got that or am I misinterpreting?… I have to say, that’s probably not it. After all, Christianity’s God took on human form – in order to reach us, to save us. Somebody further up the thread said something about conversion to Christianity being the best hope for changing the Muslim world. If only that could happen in great enough numbers, wow, the problem would be solved in no time, at least as far as jihad goes. Personally, I don’t think the general behavior of the Muslim world can change for the better as long as the overarching identity of their society is the Islamic one. If you reformed Islam to the extent necessary to render it forever content with peaceful co-existence, then it would no longer be recognizable as Islam. It would be, essentially, something else. The only way to deal with Islam-on-the-march is to defeat it, imo. And one way of contributing to that defeat is, as Peter Boston said, to refuse to cede any political or economic power at all to Muslim institutions.

But my usual brashness now asserts itself after all.

What Fred said about “divine dictation” would seem to be the key element. That would require an anthromorphic god, would it not?
A transcendent god would simply not operate that way.

And if a deity is anthromorphic, then “sock puppet” seems to be an apt expression.

If and when the generality of MUslims start thinking in transcendent terms, then their
general behavior will probably change for the better. Then they will understand the difference between church and state. But not before.

Whenever I read a commentary like the above, I often reflect that the exact nature of Islam is really irrelevant. The crux of the matter is always reduced to the fact that the traditional judeo-christian culture which has prevailed in the western world for the last 2000 years is dying.

I disagree. The West isn’t dying – only Europe is. The West is spreading to Russia, China, India, etc. Islam isn’t spreading, it is relocating.

You raised some valid issues, and maybe it is worth revisiting Belloc about this. Honestly, I’ve never read his work and it now has me interested. It’s just that all of my reading about Muhammad and the Qur’an, up to this point, makes me think he made it up as he went along, casting about for symbols, stories, and disparate traditions in an attempt to pour old wine into a new wineskin. I must admit that a book by Ali Sina, which I recently had read, has made a lot of sense to me and confirmed some of my suspicions about how Islam took shape.

Maybe I am being a bit narrow in my understanding about what a heresy is, phenomenologically. I had always assumed that heresies do have a systematic quality about them. There tends to be a degree of organization to a heresy that I don’t see in Islam. In other words, a degree of sophistication and elegance, vs. the primitive nature of Islam.

I did not mean to be condescending in my initial rebuttal to your point. Truly, I did not. If it appeared that way, my apologies.