[Eric]

I live in a country of immigrants ... and most seem happy to live under Canadian law and the protection of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. There is a small group of extremist, you got it, muslims who pressure governments, provincial and federal, for sharia law for muslims. It aint going to happen here. The only groups who are allowed to have some form of local cultural and spiritual laws, specific to themselves, are the First Nations people. This is fine by me and a lot of Canadians because First Nations were here before the rest of us.

But, as I think I mentioned in another thread, for many muslims, religion and the state are inseperable, like it was in Christendom in the middle ages. In the western tradition, the anti-sacerdotal movement begins in earnest in the late 12th century, and was resolved in favor of the secular state by the 15th century with the firm establishment of the centralized national state. Long gone are the days when popes could depose kings, based on a few contentious verses in the bible. Laws are no longer the word of some god that not all choose to believe in (Sarah Palin comes to mind as one leading western political figure who doesn't seem to have advanced all that far from the middle ages in her political thought) I see this whole thing as a clash of two radically different traditions. Let's hope you guys don't lose the battle, or you will all be headed for some form of modern, twisted Canossa.