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In reply to the discussion: Many millions of Muslims 'fundamentally incompatible with the modern world', says Tony Blair [View all]karynnj
(59,501 posts)and then allowing the most fundamentalist clerics to define the values of the religion which are then encoded into law.
In the US, I have heard both Republicans and Democrats, including some of the ones I like most, speak of their religion as informing their position on various bills. Democrats refer to how their religious values mean that they have to fight for the poor, the hungry, the homeless and those without health insurance or on what is a just war. Here, the values of the legislators, whether from their religious tradition of not, drive the bills they write. Where this differs from a state outsourcing the writing of its laws to a religious entity is that these same Democrats uniformly support that state and federal laws are written by the legislators and they, not religious law, are the laws of the land. (To change a law, the change needs to be Constitutional and have the needed support in the legislature and executive branch.)
Where I see the line where things are not reasonable is where any religious group wants state or federal law in the United States to be changed to be their religious law. Our law is not "what the Bible says" or what (Jewish) halaka says or Sharia law.
However, I have no more problem with a Muslim who says that he PERSONALLY abides by Sharia law, than I do with an observant Jew who abides by halaka or a Christian who says they live by the word of Christ ...... as long as they are not breaking the laws of the country.
In majority Muslim countries, we could push for them to not allow the clerics to define the laws. However, even if the writing of the laws was the province of the legislators, it would be surprising if Muslim values did not inform their legislators as Christian and Jewish values inform many of ours. Even if they were strong democracies - which they aren't, laws reflect the values of the people. Pushing them to add provisions to their law that protect minorities might be the only way to moderate the resultant laws.
While I agree with you on women's rights and LGBT rights, I think that while we can advocate for them, I do not think we can reject every country that is at a different level on these than we were. We need to differentiate between countries that do not share our values and countries or entities that are promoting terrorism. The existential problem is terrorism - and to make the level of that lower, we need to work mostly with the countries that we know do not share our values.