Contrary To Misguided Journalists, Religious and Political Leaders, Islam is Not a Religion As Christianity Is

[From article]
“I worry greatly that the rhetoric coming from the Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, is sending a message to Muslims here … and … around the world, that there is a ‘clash of civilizations.'”
So said Hillary Clinton in Saturday night’s New Hampshire debate.
Yet, that phrase was not popularized by Donald Trump, but by Harvard’s famed Samuel Huntington. His “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” has been described by Zbigniew Brzezinski as providing “quintessential insights necessary for a broad understanding of world affairs in our time.”
That Clinton is unaware of the thesis, or dismisses it, does not speak well of the depth of her understanding of our world.
[. . .]



Did the worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor, 9/11, have nothing to do with the Islamic faith?
Did Fort Hood and the San Bernardino massacres, the London subway bombings and the killings at Charlie Hebdo, as well as the slaughter at the Bataclan in Paris, have nothing to do with Islam?
Does the lengthening list of atrocities by terrorist cells of ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Qaida, al-Shabaab and the Nusra Front have nothing to do with Islam? Is it really illiberal to inquire “into the religious opinions” of those who perpetrate these atrocities? Or is it suicidal not to?
There has arisen a legitimate question as to whether Islamism can coexist peacefully with, or within, a post-Christian secular West.
[. . .]
As of 1960, the Great Wave of immigration into the United States from Southern and Eastern Europe had been halted for 35 years.
And the children of these millions had been largely assimilated and Americanized.
Yet, 50 years after the Turkish gastarbeiters were brought in the millions into Germany, and Algerians and other North Africans were brought into France, no such wholesale assimilation had taken place.
Why not? Why are there still large, indigestible communities in France where French citizens do not venture and French police are ever on alert?
[. . .]



Iran holds presidential elections every four years, but is a Shiite theocracy where the Ayatollah is a virtual dictator. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni kingdom and home to Wahhabism, a Sunni form of puritanism.
Those ruling regimes are rooted in Islam.
[. . .]
Where Islam is the ruling faith, the Quran is secular law.
[. . .]
Historically, Christianity came to dominate the Roman Empire through preaching, teaching, example and martyrdom. Islam used the sword to conquer the Middle and Near East, North Africa and Spain in a single century, until stopped at Poitiers by Charles Martel.
And this is today’s crucial distinction: Islam is not simply a religion of 1.6 billion people, it is also a political ideology for ruling nations and, one day, the world.

http://buchanan.org/blog/islam-and-the-west-an-irreconcilable-conflict-124463

Islam and the West: An Irreconcilable Conflict?
Monday - December 21, 2015 at 10:11 pm
By Patrick J. Buchanan