Washington Post:: There Is No "Muslim World" - by Aloysious Mowe

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There Is No "Muslim World" - by Aloysious Mowe

Tempting as it might be to adopt Samuel Huntington's Manichean view of global conflict or some variation thereof, President Obama has to resist the impulse to speak of Muslims as a single bloc. This master of language knows that words matter. It may be convenient to speak of the "Muslim world" in a speech, but there are dangers in painting with so broad a brush when it comes to the articulation and implementation of policy. It makes no sense to speak of a "Christian world" as though it were possible to extrapolate, from their religious affiliation, the shared values of all Christians everywhere. Even within a major denomination such as Roman Catholicism, there are major disagreements as to how the hierarchy of values should be stacked. Some U.S. bishops made opposition to abortion the one and only criterion for how one was supposed to choose a candidate to vote for in the recent elections. The outcome of the elections showed that the majority of U.S. Catholics had greater moral discernment than some of their shepherds. There is no Muslim world, only a variety of nations with Muslim majorities. Some of these call themselves Islamic states, but the extent to which even these are governed according to Islamic principles and under Islamic law is a matter for debate.