The biggest fight anybody will be engaged in during this century will be the fight against theocracy.

Theocracy is always dangerous and unhealthy but some theocracies are more dangerous than others.

Islamic theocracy is the most dangerous kind because it is absolutist and it does not recognize the legitimacy of any secular authority. Only an Islamic regime is legitimate, putting up with a secular regime is simply a tactic, not tolerance and acceptance, just patience. Islam is also a fundamentally violent religion. While Christianity has allowed violence to be used as a tool of expansion through the mechanism of Crusade it has been many centuries since this has been regarded as legitimate activity and there is no biblical authority or demand for crusade or violent expansion of the faith built into the religion. In contrast Jihad is a duty of Islam.

Religious tolerance is a tactic that Muslims sometimes use just as democratic elections are a tactic that Communists and Fascists sometimes use. Communists use elections to come to power when they think this a better tactic than bloody revolution. The same thing is true with Muslims and pluralism. Democracy, secularism and pluralism are anathema to Islam: only Allah should be allowed to make laws, people exist only to obey those laws and execute the will of Allah. People making their own laws insults the principles of Islam. Nations that exist without obeying Islam are effectively mocking Islam, as Islam is the only way any other way must be wrong and evil and must be removed. This fundamentalism inherent in the religion make Islam a particularly difficult religion to live with when this aspect of its teachings is encouraged.

Tolerating the intolerant can be a bad strategy. People who live in secular pluralist societies should be extremely wary of making any overtures to Islam just as they would rightly be very cautious about allying themselves with Fascists or Communists. It is the duty of Communist to overthrow "bourgeois democracy" and it is the duty of Muslims to overthrow any secular form of government, in both cases when the time is right.

Freedom of speech and freedom of expression rightly allow Muslims to peacefully worship. No further legal protection is needed for any religion. No religion needs specific legal protection beyond the right to express and assemble peacefully.

European democracies, whether they be nominally secular or Christian, (the reality is that all of modern Europe has a mixture of Christian and post-Christian secular values) should be very wary of making too many concessions to Muslims unless or until concessions are made in the other direction. Anybody who acknowledges a higher authority than the state must be taken at their word. If Islam is more important to them than the country they live in then it is madness for their country to pretend that they are loyal citizens. I am on record as preferring a one world government and an English republic, I have no doubt that this would be considered more than enough reason to prevent me joining MI5. Are Muslims excluded from the armed forces? If not, why not? The question has to be raised, it will not go away. We might hope that Muslims raised in Europe will absorb secular, democratic, liberal and pluralist values without anybody making any efforts to teach them but the evidence suggests that many, especially those who feel economically marginalized, are finding fundamentalist and even militant Islam to be very attractive and they are explicitly rejecting western values. As immigration from Muslim countries is on-going and the Muslim communities have a higher birth rate this integration problem is going to get worse.

Wishful thinking is never an effective strategy to resist the onset of intolerance or theocracy.

My own strategy for neutralizing the theoretical threat of a Muslim takeover of Europe is to encourage immigration from non-Muslim countries to balance it out and to halt any new inward migration from Muslim countries, especially the process of allowing Muslim communities to recruit foreign Imams. As long as Muslims know they will always be a minority it will always be in their interests to promote tolerance and pluralism in their country. It is when Muslims become a majority that the dangers of theocracy emerge, that distant prospect should be removed. Britain and other western European nations with low birth rates should be actively recruiting immigrants from non-Muslim parts of the world until it becomes obvious that there will not be an inexorable rise in the proportion of Muslims leading to a Muslim majority.

Having a minority religious community should not be a problem for anybody but having a migrant community with aspirations to take over a country is something else entirely. Surely Muslims will be able to empathize and understand the dangers and the fears of a growing minority community in your midst which has dreams of creating its own state dedicated to foreign beliefs on your lands. Do I have to spell it out for you? I-S-R-A-E-L

Many Muslims de-emphasize those teachings of Islam which can be awkward in modern life just as Christians ignore those teachings that they find inconvenient, for instance how can you square the Sermon on the Mount with the pride, arrogance, selfishness, intolerance and greed of most American Christians? I do not wish to suggest that Muslims are all planning to turn the world into an Islamic state overnight. Muslims have co-existed with Christians and people of other faiths and none in many parts of the world, sometimes in places where they have been in a minority and sometimes when they been in a majority. Many secular states exist with Muslim majorities, and Turkey even manages the trick of being (in large part) Muslim, secular and democratic. It is possible for Muslims to contribute to a democratic secular state.

On the whole I think the British approach to handling the challenge of Islam has been superior to the French approach but I suggest the ideal strategy would combine elements of each. I am strongly against the setting up of state financed Muslim schools. I think that religions should get out of the business of mainstream education. Religion is a matter for adults to choose not for the state to connive with the parents to indoctrinate the children while they are too young to make a real choice.

If parents want their children educated in their religion then they can set up classes on Saturdays and Sundays, and let the proper schools offer these weekend schools use of their classrooms at a fair rent.

Schools should not be forced to accept the nonsense that Islam demands that girls wear ridiculous head-to-toe clothing or veils. This is not the core of Islam, the only requirement is for modesty. School uniforms should allow for modesty for all students but not for massively conspicuous assertions of religious affiliation. Just as Islam does not require the wearing of a jilbab neither does Catholicism require the wearing of a crucifix and so schools have every right not to allow them as part of school uniform or dress code.

I think everybody should be very clear that being born a Muslim does not mean you must remain a Muslim. The idea that Muslims are off-limits to proselytism, deprogramming and conversion has to be challenged. It is not acceptable that it is considered reasonable to let Muslims proselytize and spread their beliefs in the name of freedom of religion, assuming that anybody marrying a Muslim (or indeed a Catholic) will as a matter of course convert and yet at the same time allow them to be immune from any attempts to change their beliefs.

Christian Theocracy

Christianity is not a dangerous religion for a state because the teachings of the religion specifically endorse secular government (render to Caesar that which is Caesar's) and nations and princes are not seen as antithetical to the interests of the Church. Of course that doesn't mean Christian theocracy isn't a threat to people.

Christians are not instructed to take over government, if anything the warnings in the Bible are to stay away from doing so. However there is still a risk from Christians, especially in America where doctrines and congregations flow rapidly. For many decades Christians had been largely uninterested in politics but recently there has been a big shift.

New issues have been developed to get committed Christians to become committed voters. The two most obvious issues have been abortion and homosexuality, but other right wing and reactionary so-called family values issues have also been mobilized.

In civilized countries abortion and homosexuality are issues of conscience for legislators, never a subject of party politics and rarely ever a subject for political controversy. The idea that the most powerful man in the world got into power largely because of his stand on such issues is taken as positive proof that America, Jesusland, is a backward place that is at least a century away from being civilized.