The extremes of moderate Islam

by Janet Albrechtsen, The Australian, October 20, 2010

The last paragraph of the article.
"...In a BBC interview last month to coincide with the publication of his memoirs, former British prime minister Tony Blair described radical Islam as the greatest threat facing the world. He's correct. But a Western leader pointing the finger at radical Islam is the easy part. The harder task is for leaders and the rest of us: to request help in the form of far more moderation from those who describe themselves as moderate Muslims. Unless that happens, the clash of civilisations between Islam and the West will end very badly indeed."

Janet Albrechtsen raises important questions too often ignored.

The Western modern concept of religion is far too narrow to understand the socio-political dimensions of Islam. We see religion as a personal relationship with God (or more generally a meta-physical dimension). Islam, however, through the direct word from that other dimension dictates not only how Muslims should believe but how Muslims should compel others to believe, and there is nothing introspective about those teachings. To be tolerant in the sense of equality of ideas is not to have compelled and so to have failed, blasphemed, Islam as it is written.