Islamic Theocracies
What comes to mind when you think of Egypt? Pyramids and sand? Perhaps you think of hieroglyphics or the ancient exodus of Israel, but now you can add another bullet point to your associative memory list: a Theocratic judicial system.
See Blogger Gets 4 Years for Insulting Islam.
Judge Ayman al-Akazi issued the verdict in a brief, five-minute session in a court in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. He sentenced Nabil to three years in prison for insulting Islam and the prophet and inciting sectarian strife and another year for insulting President Hosni Mubarak…
…Seconds after he was loaded into the truck and the door closed, an Associated Press reporter heard the sound of a slap from inside the vehicle and a shriek of pain from Nabil.
Theocracies have been on my mind lately thanks to Thivai; I thought we were arguing about one of my recent posts, but after some clarification I realized that we have similar thoughts to the place of Religion in the Political sphere.  It is important to understand that Seperation of Church and State is a wonderful thing. The key is to recognize that the Church is not banished from the state, but that it is given no preference because if you start to prefer a Religious Ideology over all other Idealogies you wind up beating up on anyone who thinks differently.
Historian Bernard Lewis in his short history of the Islam, What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, argues convincingly that one of the keys in the development of Western “Christian” civilization was Jesus’ statement “Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.” That statement, argues Lewis, brought justification for a two-pronged society. On one hand you have a people that are free to have their own faith and beliefs and are allowed to live those out, but on the other hand those same people are called to recognize that they exist in a secular culture and are obligated to do their best to coexist peacefully with that culture, indeed they must even contribute to it.
Islam, laments Lewis, has no such dichotomy. It makes total demands on its followers and says that Caesar is either a Muslim or an Infidel. And that, perfectly displayed in Egypt, is part of “what went wrong.”