re: "Islam’s sterilizing homogeneity."

Col. B. Bunny at Eternity Road examines history and culture.

Money quote(s):

"The Golden Age of Islam. Puhleez. More like the Gold Age of Plunder plus living off the doomed remnants of local Persian and Egyptian scholars and artists who had a chance at independent thinking before the Islamic Curtain of Intellectual Darkness descended."

Yeah, that's kind of the under-mentioned part of the PC "cultural and scientific contributions of Islam" riff. And they're off to a great start doing it to Europe, btw.

"As we all know by now, outright rejection of Muslim doctrine is apostasy and it and its country cousins are a green light to the murder of the apostate by the do-it-yourselfers perpetually on duty in Muslim lands for housecleaning of this type. A fatwa by some imamical jackass in the Hindu Kush seems to be sufficient authorization for DIY teams (aka mobs) in Morocco to dispatch too-independent thinkers, though I get the impression that a “boys will be boys” approach will be taken in the case of too much local initiative, too much zeal in the service of Allah. There’s no shortage of Islamic zeal anywhere in the world and what’s one more dead infidel in a crowded world anyway?"

This is one of those under-mentioned downsides to Sharia. Next slide please.

"Also good for anyone in Muslim lands to avoid is blasphemy, an exceedingly elastic concept, that encompasses, for example, Christians who get into neighborhood, land, water, or business disputes with Muslims. After reading about several cases, I gather that it is a common practice for Christians in disputes with Muslims to try to gain a psychological advantage over their Muslim opponents by insulting to Mohammed or Islam. An example of this might be, “Sir, kindly permit me to say that I think your idea of the boundary line between our two properties is in error. Let us obtain an actual plat of the properties and see where the line lies.” Naturally, blasphemy charges (with death penalty) are brought when Christians insist on such reckless and insulting ways of settling disputes."

In a seminar-type setting today, a colleague made an ignorant comment about how the U.S. tries to implement U.S.-style democracy in other countries. She was referring, I believe, to Iraq and/or Afghanistan.

Hello? In neither case have we done anything like establishing a U.S.-style representative democracy. In both cases we've helped establish European-style parliamentary democracies, which are not the same things at all.

(Don't believe me? Tell me who America's prime minister is?)