I would note that there were no questions in your first comment, only statements. All of which are false.
1) Nobody told the Catholic Church to piss off until about 1789 or so, by which point theocracy lost its bite to the degree it had and religion was replaced with the racist conceits of late-19th Century Europe. White supremacy replaced Christianity but both met the same need. With of course those who were still the uber-devout as prone to racism and defense of slavery as anyone else.
And in the 20th Century, well....between the fascists and the communists Europeans really showed how to shoot yourselves in the foot twice.
2) Most of the Muslim world exists under various secular Westernized dictatorships. The Muslim world includes everything from Morocco to Indonesia, and only two countries are actually theocratic: Iran and Saudi Arabia. The majority of it is various strands of secular dictatorships which repress everybody, Muslim, Christian, and Jew alike.
3) They must be equally to the West then, given that European countries censor things like Holocaust denial, given that the Grundgesetz outlaws certain political parties (albeit 30% of Germans would vote Nazi anyway so it's perfect political sense), and given that the West contains a lot of countries with state churches. If Theocracy is religion and the state together, then by that logic, a state which recognizes and patronizes a particular denomination is....
4) I've already answered your point that it's not religion that's the problem it's when Kings use it to safeguard themselves. But that results in the Catch-22 of religion and culture technically being near-identical the further away one is from the French Revolution.....
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Date: 4/5/10 16:02 (UTC)1) Nobody told the Catholic Church to piss off until about 1789 or so, by which point theocracy lost its bite to the degree it had and religion was replaced with the racist conceits of late-19th Century Europe. White supremacy replaced Christianity but both met the same need. With of course those who were still the uber-devout as prone to racism and defense of slavery as anyone else.
And in the 20th Century, well....between the fascists and the communists Europeans really showed how to shoot yourselves in the foot twice.
2) Most of the Muslim world exists under various secular Westernized dictatorships. The Muslim world includes everything from Morocco to Indonesia, and only two countries are actually theocratic: Iran and Saudi Arabia. The majority of it is various strands of secular dictatorships which repress everybody, Muslim, Christian, and Jew alike.
3) They must be equally to the West then, given that European countries censor things like Holocaust denial, given that the Grundgesetz outlaws certain political parties (albeit 30% of Germans would vote Nazi anyway so it's perfect political sense), and given that the West contains a lot of countries with state churches. If Theocracy is religion and the state together, then by that logic, a state which recognizes and patronizes a particular denomination is....
4) I've already answered your point that it's not religion that's the problem it's when Kings use it to safeguard themselves. But that results in the Catch-22 of religion and culture technically being near-identical the further away one is from the French Revolution.....