jet_lagg wrote:It's also true that pretty much all Christians give themselves wiggle room. So fucking what? Do you honestly believe Muslims don't? "Of course Mohammed didn't literally fly to heaven on a winged horse. It was a spiritual journey." "Of course there wasn't a literal flood that wiped out the species. It's a metaphor." It's not different kettles of fish. It's different flavors of the same lunacy.
To a degree, yes, but the biggest question with religion isn't about the supernatural phenomena, it's about morality and the political and legal enforcement of morality. The supernatural phenomena can be hand-waved, rationalized or assumed to be metaphorical (although post-modern attacks on science from philosophers like Feyerabend or Kuhn are one of the reasons why pseudo-science which defends the letter of the books, like creationism, is becoming popular among people who think of themselves as intellectuals).
However people who believe in a winged horse or in the dead coming back to life aren't socially dangerous, as long as their ideas are kept out of public school curricula (which isn't easy due to political pressure, but can be done). That's not the case for someone who believes in cutting off the hands of thieves, stoning adulterers, killing unbelievers, practicing genital mutilation, or forcing people to submit to religious rule (or, for Christians, someone who believes in forcing LGBT into "reparation therapy", or that god will take care of global warming and it's blaspheme for humans to intervene, or in prohibiting abortion or divorce, etc.) and wants to use political and legal force to enforce those beliefs.
The difference between islam and christianity comes down to the theoretical possibility of a difference between religious and secular authority, or, if there's enough push in the right direction, between secular and religious laws (which can, again with a lot of pressure, turned into a difference between secular laws and private religious morals, creating the separation of church and state, an essential element of liberal democracy).
It's not that christianity it's better than islam, it's that it's weaker, more vulnerable to secularization, thanks to a much clearer distinction between the sacred and the profane. What islam lacks is this separation, even on a theoretical level. A Christian secular leader could fight with the Pope and decide to break away with his own church (it happened with Anglicanism, and to a certain degree with those nobles who supported Reformation).
In islam there are no popes, and the caliphs are both the supreme civilian and religious authority (the difference between Sunni and Shia are about which lines of successors of Mohammed is to be considered the legitimate one, Abu Bakr, Mohammed's father in law, or Ali, Mohammed's cousin).
Like Popes are the Vicars of Christ, Caliphs are the Vicars of Mohammed, but they're also the rules of all muslims and all muslim lands (Popes became powerful alongside Emperors and Kings and other secular authorities). What happened in islam was that while the Shia diverged from the Caliphate into their own system (where the supreme religious authorities are distinct from civil authorities but superior to them) in the Sunni world several dynasties of Caliphs have ruled until relatively recent times (the Ottoman Caliphate ended in 1924 when Ataturk abolished it).
Sunni, in general, see the office of caliph as an elective one (although the procedures for the election, and who is entitled to vote, when and how vary) while the Shia favor a bloodline.
Anyway the situation today, for pious muslims, is one of uncertainty, of an interregnum between caliphates. Civil authorities are seen in a bad light, not only because of the widespread corruption and abuses from most secular leaders in the muslim world, but also because they're not the caliph. Many long for a return of the caliphate, of a single political and religious which encompasses the entirety of islam. (Of course in practice this is laughably unlikely and it's not what anyone with an ounce of pragmatism wants, but it's good propaganda for groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, who wish to re-establish the Caliphate, at least theoretically).
That's how Al-Baghadi can style himself as the new Caliph, as the supreme religious and political authority, and get muslim acolytes from all over the world. The pious Sunni muslims who reject Al-Baghadi don't do it because they think that the office of caliph shouldn't exist, but because they don't believe he's a legitimate Caliph (basically there hasn't been any election and they wouldn't vote for him).
The presence of the caliphates has inhibited the independence of secular from religious authority. Secular leaders, like Ataturk, had to fight against islam, to promote secularism inspired by the "west" instead of simply creating their own branch. Even today most secular authority in the Middle East and North Africa are perceived as illegitimate by a sizable part of the population of their countries simply because they're not the Caliphs (the Kingdom of Morocco is probably the only major exception).
That's why in Syria after the breakdown of the tribal, semi-secular Assad government so many Sunni muslim groups clamored for a Caliph. That's one of the reasons which gave some legitimacy to ISIS, for example. That's also one of the reasons why "democracy building" is so hard in the middle east, bordering on the impossible.
