Here's me playing "devil's advocate" again...

Yep... Here I go pointing out the obvious flaws in Ryan's twisted logic... AGAIN...

Ryan asks:

"... if "freedom", defined as both personal liberty and a national form of government, is the preferred state of the "evolved man", can we then say that Christianity is a more "evolved" religion? "

There is a fundamental flaw here in this sort of reasoning. You are asking for qualitative and quantitative assessment of something that can, by definition, have neither. When it comes to personal faith, even the personal faith of nearly one billion people, it cannot be qualitatively or quantitatively measured from an objective point of view.

In other words, you cannot look at it from a non-religious point of view... because then you lose all perspective of the individual's motive (even if the individuals number in the hundreds of millions). You cannot look at it from the view point of one faith versus another, because then you deny any attempt at objectivity completely.

No... the problem here is that we all have to determine what our own, personal choices are going to be. We will have to decide what we are going to allow as acceptable in our society, and what we are not... and we will need to be willing to live with the consequences of that choice.

If, as the Liberals would like, we choose to suppress the ability of the Christian majority in this nation to openly practice what they believe, while at the same time allow Muslims all the freedoms and rights that Christians are denied, then we can safely assume that we will see the gradual but inevitable shift within this country from "traditional" Judeo-Christian views to more radical, fundamental Muslim views... and this goes for everything from such hot-topic items today as capital punishment and abortion, to gay marriage and an open, homosexual lifestyle.

Far too many "liberals" in this country have forgotten that, while Christians (and not all of those) oppose abortion and gay marriage... they do so only within the bounds and precepts of acceptable legal process. They exercise their right to free speech and hold demonstrations to make their case, or will exercise their right to assemble and have a march to put a spotlight on their cause... but until the Law says something is or isn't "legal"... no one is punished for following another course of action. Far too many "liberals" haven't taken the time to imagine what would happen should the US fall under the grip of even as "enlightened" a Muslim government as that in Turkey, or Egypt, or Jordan... sodomy is a capital offense that does not require a "trial" at all... a woman can't claim to be "harmed" by a husband that beats her unless she can show that the beatings effect her ability to work and/or produce children... abortions are "sins" against the flesh of the unborn child's FATHER, so the pregnancy cannot be terminated against his wishes without the mother forfeiting her own life... both beheading and stoning are REQUIRED forms of capital punishment, in ANY Muslim state...

Ryan was right... he was being too PC by far. The problem isn't in asking whether or not Islam is a true "religion of peace" or a real "path to God"... the problem is in asking whether Islam is compatible AT ALL with what even the most liberal, progressive block head in the DNC would call the "American" ideal.

So, want my answer to Ryan's question? Well, here it is:

Nothing about what America was, is now, or ever should be in the future is in any way, shape or form compatible with Islam as 90% of its practitioners see it. If there can be no "equality between sexes" and no "equal justice under the law" and no "separation of church and state" then there can be no "America-loving" in the Islamic world.

The only thing that gives me hope is that... this wasn't always the case. Only fifty years ago, the burka-clad women of Egypt, Gaza and Lebanon were a rare sight indeed. One could have walked throughout the city of Riyadh in 1959 and not seen one in a hundred. If this is a "shift in sentiment" and not a trend that is destined to last centuries... then perhaps Islam can find it within itself to live compatibly with other nations and faiths.

I just don't see it now at all, though...

(I bet that opening line got you bent, didn't it?)