1. Politics
Are Muslims democratic or authoritarian? In a sense, the Islamic world is out of step with the current political trend of moving toward pluralistic democracies.
These democracies, fashioned largely after the United States model, have as one of their key characteristics the separation of church and state.
This is not a congenial model for Muslim countries where the ideal is not separation of church and state but the identification of the two under a single, Muslim dominated leadership structure. In other words, in the Muslim world, President Bush and Pope John Paul would be the same person.
Given this difference in viewpoint, the question is whether a form of political leadership congenial to Islamic theological views and nonantagonistic to democratic ideals can be developed.
2. Jihad
Why are Muslims so intense about their religion? Muslims, like Christians and Buddhists, have a very powerful missionary tradition, a theological mandate to spread the influence of their religion worldwide.
This practice is included in a wider mandate to fully realize the injunctions of the Koran called jihad.
Because Muslims do not have a strict separation between the theological and the political spheres, this missionary mandate is often indistinguishable from the political aims of Islamic governments. In practice this means some of the tools of statecraft — political negotiation, economic leverage, and military might — have sometimes been employed in the spreading of religion. In practice this is not much different from some of the methodologies used by Christians and Buddhists.
In Islam, however, the theological warrant for such practices is much clearer and less controversial.
3. Religious Pluralism
Traditional Islamic teaching has no place for secularism and polytheism and merely tolerates the other monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism. This religious/political exclusivism is at odds with the notion of different religions enjoying equal freedoms under secular pluralistic democracies.
4. Human Rights
Islam has often been called a communitarian religion, not an individualistic one. This means that when it comes to balancing individual rights with community responsibilities as defined by religious teaching, the community responsibilities usually win out.
This puts many Islamic moral and ethical emphases at odds with Western individualism. (RNS — taken from “The Pocket Guide to America’s Religions”)
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