Terrorism is a distraction. It’s a distraction from the big question of our day, about Islam and violence. Only a tiny minority of Muslims affirm that sort of violence. A far larger proportion of Muslims condone another, vaguer sort of violence. It is this that we must confront.
I mean the violence of theocracy. Theocracy is the belief that one religion should be absolutely culturally dominant. Of course it thinks that the state should enforce this; if the state fails to do so it loses legitimacy. This theocratic worldview is the underlying cause of Muslim terrorism.
To judge from its founding texts, and its history, Islam is a religion that wants to be very firmly established. It wants to be the official religion of a nation, or empire. It rejects the notion that politics should be conducted without reference to religion, and it rejects the notion that various different religions should be treated equally.
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