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September 09, 2008

Q: What's the difference between Islamic Fundies and Palin?

A: Lipstick.

So says Juan Cole; author, blogger, professor and an expert on Islamic Fundies and other things Islamic, Middle Eastern and South Asian.

Didn't know that modern Islamic fundies are evolution-hating young-earth creationists like Sarah Palin?

Well they are.

Didn't know that Sarah Palin's stance on abortion is actually to the Right of the Parliment of the Islamic Republic of Iran? That the cleric's who over-rode the Parliment's proposed law did so to retain a harshly restrictive law virtually identical to what Palin preaches?

Yep. It's true.

Palin has a right to her religious beliefs, as do fundamentalist Muslims who agree with her on so many issues of social policy. None of them has a right, however, to impose their beliefs on others by capturing and deploying the executive power of the state. The most noxious belief that Palin shares with Muslim fundamentalists is her conviction that faith is not a private affair of individuals but rather a moral imperative that believers should import into statecraft wherever they have the opportunity to do so.

The kind of "reform" that Sarah Palin represents is not the kind of reform I am the least bit interested in seeing come to fruition.

Posted by Kevin at September 9, 2008 08:34 AM