What I believe or don't believe is neither here nor there.  It is still true that sharia and secular liberal democracy are irreconcilable because by definition they mean opposite things.
It is a logical statement, not a political one.

Soren wrote on Sep 26^th, 2015 at 5:31pm:


There you go, Brain, not even a stab.

Old boy, your preferred "secular" liberal democracy has a state religion and an unelected monarch (who is also the head of that religion).

By your definition, your own preferred political model of mother England is not a liberal democracy. By extention, Australia shares that monarch and that state religion, so it cannot be a liberal democracy either.

The biggest Muslim country of Indonesia, on the other hand, has an elected head of state and no state religion. By your definition, it is a liberal democracy, not a caliphate.

It is a logical statement not a political one, innit.

polite_gandalf wrote on Sep 26^th, 2015 at 7:08pm:


Oh, indeed, as are statements like this:

Quote:


The old boy's definition of liberal democracy must also, by definition, exclude the US constitution.

Lucky what the old boy believes or disbelieves is neither here nor there, eh?

Brian Ross wrote on Sep 26^th, 2015 at 2:13pm:



And you imagine yourself a 'liberal', open-minded man  - even though your reflex is to label any and all different views as phobias.

Soren wrote on Sep 27^th, 2015 at 10:31am:


It’s your definition, no? Liberal Democracy is secular. Amerika is sharia.

They can’t be reconciled, old chap. We can’t go back on it now.

Soren wrote on Sep 27^th, 2015 at 10:18am:


But you haven't provided a definition which we can all agree on, Soren.   

Aristotle:

Another cause of revolution is difference of races which do not at once acquire a common spirit; for a state is not the growth of a day, any more than it grows out of a multitude brought together by accident. Hence the reception of strangers in colonies, either at the time of their foundation or afterwards, has generally produced revolution; for example, the Achaeans who joined the Troezenians in the foundation of Sybaris, becoming later the more numerous, expelled them; hence the curse fell upon Sybaris. At Thurii the Sybarites quarrelled with their fellow-colonists; thinking that the land belonged to them, they wanted too much of it and were driven out. At Byzantium the new colonists were detected in a conspiracy, and were expelled by force of arms; the people of Antissa, who had received the Chian exiles, fought with them, and drove them out; and the Zancleans, after having received the Samians, were driven by them out of their own city. The citizens of Apollonia on the Euxine, after the introduction of a fresh body of colonists, had a revolution; the Syracusans, after the expulsion of their tyrants, having admitted strangers and mercenaries to the rights of citizenship, quarrelled and came to blows; the people of Amphipolis, having received Chalcidian colonists, were nearly all expelled by them.
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.5.five.html

Sooner or later either the intruders are kicked out or or they subjugate or expel the locals.

You cannot have a political entity like a city or a country where there are competing ideas of what it means to govern and be governed. There is no 'multicultural' political system - you cannot have a sharia rule and secular liberal democratic rule at the same time. It will come to grief, this sort of thing always has and always will.

Show us a political entity where this is not true.