freediver wrote on May 9^th, 2012 at 8:09am:

They fought over power (sometimes to the death) with popes and monarchs in their turn deposing (or attempting to depose) each other. Although popes usually had more luck deposing monarchs than the reverse.

Protestantism represented a greater threat to Rome than to European monarchs, yet it was European monarchs who did the popes' bidding. In that sense, the pope exercised the power of a king of kings and in every sense the popes (from the Dark Ages until the Protestant reformation) exercised true (and mostly unquestioned) political power usually trumping that of individual European monarchs.

NorthOfNorth wrote on May 9^th, 2012 at 10:38am:


Filling a mandate vacuum is not the same thing as being unable to give it up.

You still seem to be missing the point. Allowing the pope to interfere in politics is not the same thing as forbidding the pope from stepping back from politics. This is not an argument about the good or bad things that different religious leaders have done in the past. It is about doctrine and barriers to reform. You could go back and forth forever bringing up examples of when the church interfered in the state and when it did not. This would get you nowhere, because it misses the point. Christianity gives clear doctrinal endorsement of the separation of church and state.

Under Islam, any legislation or politics not derived from Islam is forbidden. Democracy is forbidden. Relaxing any of the strict Islamic laws is forbidden. Promoting such a reform gets you stoned to death. This is not optional. I do not say this because some Muslim reformer got stoned to death 800 years ago. I say it because that is Islamic doctrine.

Islam spells out a warfare as a means to achieve these goals. This does not mean religious leaders giving approval or disapproval for state decisions. It means Muhammed himself picked up the sword and killed people, took the women as booty, and rode of on the horses.

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And later gave it up. Do you see the difference?

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Tell me north, what is the difference between excommunication and execution?

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This is not about whether the vatican is enlightened. This is about whether Christian doctrine is a barrier to reform. Obviously it isn't. This does not mean you simply ask the powers that be for a major political upheaval and they say sure thing, there is nothing in the bible that says you can't.

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Like what happened to henry VIII or Elizabeth I?

Can you see the difference between the human tendency to grip tightly to power already acquired, and a doctrine of power? One is human in origin, the other stems from the religion. I'll give you a hint - one is a far more significant barrier to reform. The other can be painted in the same way, but only if you reject perspective.

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I am putting it into perspective.

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Can you explain why the Catholic church didn't just invade England and chop their heads off? Surely if they had genuine power over all of Europe this would have been easy?

If I sanction the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan does that make me the Caliph?

I am not ignoring it. Nor am I denying that it had authority. Like I said, I am attempting to put it into perspective for you. The difference is the mandate to rule. The pope has a strong religious mandate over the catholic church. But as a political leader he has a very week religious mandate - to the point that at the height of the pope's historical power he never actually ruled himself, but attempted to control things by controlling the monarchs. And when the monarchs defied him the pope still had to do his bidding by 'sanctioning' the actions of other monarchs. By your own words, he did not order these monarchs to do anything. If anything, Catholic doctrine prevented the pope from seizing genuine political power. Catholic doctrine limited the pope's political mandate to the point where if the pope ordered the people of Europe to rise up and invade England, they would have ignored him. The Catholic people themselves saw the pope as a religious leader, not the ruler of Europe. Despite your claims that the pope ruled over Europe for nearly 2 millenia, Europe was never politically unified in that time.

This is in stark contrast with Islam, where religious authority means judicial authority, and military authority, and political authority.

Can you now see the difference between the influence of the doctrine and the influence of the people themselves? The individual people will always seek to hold onto or increase their power. In the case of the pope, the man was willing, but the doctrine prevented him from ever seizing genuine power over 2 millenia.

In the case of Islam, Muhammed seized power with the sword and gave a religious mandate over everything to himself and the Caliphs that followed.

Hence, Christianity enabled the separation of church and state, despite the best efforts of every pope that has ever lived. Islam did the exact opposite, to the point that Muslims now do not know who to slaughter and when to do it without a Caliph leading the charge.

freediver wrote on May 9^th, 2012 at 10:09pm:

I'm not arguing that the Koran makes more explicit claims of its leaders' right to rule, I dispute that the Popes did not also claim the same from a scriptural basis and through subsequent church doctrine. Nor did they give up power easily and were ultimately forced to do so at gunpoint.

In the case of Christianity, as interpreted by the Church of Rome, Christ gave Peter and his successors the keys to heaven and granted him authority to bind and loose on earth and in heaven. It's no coincidence that St Peters Square is shaped like a key.

In the case of the Caliphs - "Although theocratic and absolute in theory and in principle, the sultan's powers were limited in practice. Political decisions had to take into account the opinions and attitudes of important members of the dynasty, the bureaucratic and military establishments, as well as religious leaders.". Many Caliphs were also deposed.

In the cases of the Caliphs and the popes, their power was constrained by the interests of other same-faith rulers competing for temporal power.

How would Shi'ites and Sunnis agree on who should be Caliph today, I wonder.