– in Afghanistan. The Muslim practices relating to women are severely punishing; not only physically but emotionally and with life-long debilitation. In Afghanistan the church side dominates the state side without question. Note the following excerpts from the Associated Press:
“Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers unexpectedly decided against reopening schools Wednesday to girls above the sixth grade, reneging on a promise and opting to appease their hard-line base at the expense of further alienating the international community. The international community has urged Taliban leaders to reopen schools and give women their right to public space.”
Islam dominates every aspect of daily life. Very frequently government legislators and judges are imams (priests) as well. When the United States wrote the original Constitution, it declared that religion was free to practice as it desired and the state had the same mandate. Fortunately, the Reformation had begun beforehand or the U.S. may have found itself in a situation similar to Afghanistan. The reader may recall the bitter confrontations between early ‘denominations’. The Christian religion absolutely is totalitarian and can muscle in on the State’s authority with little difficulty. This occurs consistently in the United States because ‘freedom of religion’ was free to run without a leash.
The clash between the freedom guaranteed to the people via the vote and the mandates of religious practice are in constant battle, to wit: abortion, gay rights, segregation, state practices like marriage, zoning, tax shelters and advocating conservative causes like Trumpism and immigration – the last two clearly matters of state.
Given the totalitarian conflict between church and state, money grubbing between capitalism and socialism, national demolition between Trump and the electorate, existence of privacy between big data and the individual citizen and the imminent flooding of Tiger Woods’ 41 million dollar home in Florida, We the People are in good shape. Indeed good shape – would you rather live in Afghanistan? Or, sigh, Denmark?
Ancient Mariner