[Eric]

A state based on Islam is much different from one based on Christianity, at least "main stream" Christianity. As any historian worth his salt will agree, as a society grows from primitive tribalism into an ordered civilization, a common religion permeates all its activities and helps to form all its characteristic institutions. The rise of medieval Islam provides a typical example. In such circumstances the creation of political institutions quite separate from the organization of the accepted relgion seem hardly conceivable. Christianity, on the other hand, irrupted into an ancient civilization that already had its own established hierarchy of government and its own sophisticated treadition or political thought based on non-Christian concepts. The Christian church had to develop its own structure of governing offices, sometimes parallel to but always apart from those of the secular hierarchy. So in a sense, Willow, there is no such thing as non-political Islam. Islam is a religion which is also a governing system. And the question that we have to ask ourselves is: Is integration of these two beliefs even remotely possible?