The Appeal of Islam

For some time now, the Left has held a horrid fascination of Islam. Appalled by its religious nature, they are often the first to spring to its defence, and make for some of its most ardent converts, all the while denouncing Christianity in no uncertain terms.

For some while, I merely put this down to ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’. I have long since added something far more fundamental to that notion, summed up fairly nicely by this article:
ISLAM: Why hundreds of ordinary West Aussies change faith

Converts say that in Islam they have found clearer answers to questions of spirituality than in Christianity, a stronger sense of community and rules to live by.

"There are guidelines for everything. It shows you how to do the right thing, to be nice to people," said Mr Cremer, a former Catholic. "The Bible does this as well, but it has been translated too much, it has been tampered with too much.
A fascinating insight, given it describes an older Christianity in so many respects - that is until the secular Left got its claws into it.
"People say they want freedom, they want liberty," he said. "But the bottom line is people want to know what they can and can't do. They want rules, they want guidelines, something to believe in, something to follow.

"In Islam, there's a rule for absolutely everything – how I eat my food, how I go to the toilet, how I get married, how I lend money."
In principle, I think he’s right (though lacking the ability to observe, given a lot of what he speaks about is actually embraced by our society, but without those extra dollops of arbitrary 'compulsion', which is quite possibly his real complaint). As for the impact of Christianity’s loss of rules, look no further than the fast dwindling ranks of the Uniting Church (for example, and in stark contrast to those parts of the Catholic Church not tainted by the ‘Uniting’ way). In essence, though, many people fear freedom; freedom to win and freedom to lose. Hence the appeal of the alternative: the heavy Statist hand of structure, authority and rules; the notion of Big Brother; the great leveler.

Handmaidens in authoritarianism and equal enemies of Western capitalism, democracy and freedom, it’s no wonder the Left sees so much in Islam.

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