Those of you familiar with my old LiveJournal writings will remember that I occasionally joked that I was channeling Cato the Elder, he of “and Carthage must be destroyed” fame. As I was drifting off to sleep last night (and after linking to Doc Zero’s post), he came to me in a dream and said, “Mecca delenda est.”
The heck? Really?
Driven by Cato’s ghost, I have begun pondering the proposition. It is an odd thought for a modern American — we look upon religion as something separate from the state — but is not, so far as I understand, the way our enemies think of religion. For al Qaida (and those of its ilk, such as Iran), religion is government; they are inseparable.
The government espoused by Islam is not an acceptable one. If my sources are correct, sharia law is incompatible with the Constitution. Islam is, in this sense, similar to fascism and communism. If it is acceptable to resist Nazis and Commies (and it is), then why should the attachment of a god to the ideology suddenly make it tolerable?
If the Carthaginians were suddenly reborn, would we put up with Moloch simply because the sacrifice was religious custom? Or would we intervene, a lá Kosovo?
Is it acceptable for the orcs to pillage the country simply because Gruumsh demands such?
The answer is clear, but only if the assumption holds. Thanks to USC, I can follow up on this question; the Quran and the Hadith are both on-line. Hopefully the prose is nowhere near as turgid as Mein Kampf.
(For completeness: the Communist Manifesto.)