Wednesday, October 7, 2009

In Islam there is no "live and let live" attitude

Excerpt from An Open Question to Osama Bin Laden — or Any Other Islamist, by Raymond Ibrahim.

Non-Muslims have for centuries been finding the question of achieving permanent peace with the Islamic world a vexatious problem. Professor of law James Lorimer (1818-90) succinctly stated the problem over a century ago:

So long as Islam endures, the reconciliation of its adherents, even with Jews and Christians, and still more with the rest of mankind, must continue to be an insoluble problem. … For an indefinite future, however reluctantly, we must confine our political recognition to the professors of those religions which … preach the doctrine of “live and let live” (The Institutes of the Law of Nations, p. 124).
In other words, political recognition — with all the attendant negotiations and diplomacy that come with it — should be granted to all major religions/civilizations except Islam, which does not recognize the notion of “live and let live,” as evinced by, among other stipulations, the Koran’s commands to its adherents to “enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong,” (e.g., Koran 3:110), that is, enforce Sharia law upon the earth.