On Oct 23, 2007, at 12:32 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Islam is the only medium of effective internationalism that can resist
> the empire on the front line of the Great Game of the 21st century
Yeah, sure. There are few forces in this world stronger than oil companies bearing checkbooks.
After reading, or at least being exposed to, several gigabytes of declarations like this, I'm still not clear on what you mean by "Islam." It's not like the Catholic Church, where there's an actual institutional structure headquartered in a city-state. There are many varieties and styles of Islam with no home address. Islam can inform a wretchedly reactionary state like Saudi Arabia, a quasi-democracy like Iran, a strange cult like Farrakhan's, and the lives of a millions of regular people who just want to live their lives and get by. "Islam" is no more organized than "Protestantism," except in the fantasy life of some jihadis and a Japanese exile in Ohio.
Doug