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Support for Israel has little to do with religion per se. US evangelicals justify their support through religion, but they do so with all their views. Instead it has to do with Western vs. non Western - Israel's dominant culture is that of the Ashkenazim - i.e. of a European cultural group, There's the Cold War legacy, the guilt over the Holocaust and more broadly the Western tradition of anti-semitism, made more relevant by the taking up of Western antisemitism by many Arabs, and the general tendency to support states over non-states except when the state in question is strongly antagonistic to Western countries (the only exception to that in recent times that I can think of is East Timor).
But all of your points are excellent. I responded to the proselytization issue in my reply to NordicStorm above.
I was aware when I wrote this that what I listed aren't necessarily real similarities. (Male circumcision however is male circumcision, regardless of whether it is a Jew or a Muslim who does it.) What I was trying to get across is that to me as someone who was raised in the Christian tradition, Judaism is every bit as strange and alien as Islam. In some respects, Islam is less alien than Judaism. Islam at least recognizes that Christ spoke God's word, even if it denies his divinity. Furthermore, Islam recognizes that God is God for everyone, whereas according to Judaism (and to a lesser extent the dispensational premillenialist variety of Christian fundamentalism), God really only cares about Jews. I find the idea that God would have a special interest in a particular ethnic group utterly bizarre and pre-modern.
When it comes to Islam, I am bothered by the current Western tendency to see it as an Other. I miss the days when a group like Siouxsie and the Banshees could employ Arabian motifs in their music, and everybody thought it was cool. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
(Male circumcision however is male circumcision, regardless of whether it is a Jew or a Muslim who does it.)
Don't worry, all the religions are equally strange and alien.
I miss the days when a group like Siouxsie and the Banshees could employ Arabian motifs in their music, and everybody thought it was cool.
So why is Goth/Punk "alternative" and not mainstream?
I think this is related to my point about religion not having a role in public life in the West, which I make in reply to a post by wchurchill below. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
Isn't embracing some sense of being the other an essential part of being human? A way of recognizing and affirming our common humanity?
Interestingly, given the topic of this diary, Orthodox Judaism and Islam are tied at 22 and 23 (26%). A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
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