More on Islam

In an earlier posting, I cited Milo's three points about Islam. There are, in addition, two overarching issues. The first is that in many Western countries Muslim immigrants resist accepting the unwritten rule of all such migration: assent to the norms of your new country. Instead, Muslims, many of them at least, expect us to modify our behavior, customs, and laws to adhere to their own preferred models - models which have singularly failed in the unhappy nations from which they have fled.

Secondly, Islam is a system of total social control in which individuality is ruthlessly, sometimes violently suppressed. Why would anyone agree to such incursions? Well, some do, as Erich Fromm showed in his book The Fear of Freedom (UK title).

A while back I was sitting on a bench near the Episcopal cathedral here and fell into a conversation with a young woman. She said that a verger had approached her about becoming an Episcopalian. She remarked that being Jewish she didn't think so. Instead, she was considering converting to Islam. Why? Because she liked the idea that it imposed boundaries.

In its extreme form this flight from freedom recalls those old ads in the tabloids which went something like this. "Respond respectfully to this request from Master Abdul. This will be the last decision you will ever have to make.