Quote:
Originally Posted by tame_deuces
I'll try and make this as simple as possible:
In western democratic countries we have our current legal systems due to a series of contributing historical events which made the legal system an institution of an state and not religion. For this to happen, there must be a concept OF state. Nobody in this thread has said that the Peace of Westphalia alone somehow proves that Islam is worse than Christianity.
In contrast, in muslim countries (with the exception of Turkey) the legal systems are largely the result of a series of contributing historical events which have made the legal systems an institution of religion and state, also known as the Fiqh system of law. The exact form varies; sometimes Sharia is incorporated into official law while at other times the countries have dual legal systems. Why is this worse? Fiqh law is very bad at recognizing equal rights, and the lack of civil law concepts often makes the courts beyond reproach. I also personally find religion as a valid legal code to be abysmally bad.
On the issue of the (admittedly minor) Westphalia point, recall that you originally said: "...it has been greatly reduced in impact by the peace of Westphalia. All these events lack counterparts in the middle-east...".
I am contending that the dominant impact of Westphalia - the geopolitical organization into nation states - DID have a counterpart in the middle east in that this is their current organization. And yes clearly this is needed as a precursor to both current legal systems, but this is a similarity not a difference. I am not contending that there are not significant differences between the legal systems that comes from many factors, including the ones I cut from your quote. Anyways it doesn't seem like you really disagree with this point.
On the more important point of whether this comparison between legal systems in western countries and muslim majority countries, I strongly disagree that this is a reasonable justification of the statement "Islam is worse than Christianity". I think western legal systems are better than most others around the world, including but not limited to ones in many muslim majority countries. But it seems hopelessly naive to try to shoehorn this as simplying that islam is worse than christianity. For instance, when living in the west, neither christianity or islam has any bearing in the legal system, it is just a non factor for contrasting differences between these two religions as practiced in the west. One goes to entirely secular courts. And of course there are christian countries like uganda that have clear religiously motivated bills for things like killing gays. It is just an entirely unreasonable and cherry picked association to take western legal systems, put that as a point in Christianities favour, and declare it better than islam. I am reminded of all those religious debates where christians look at the horrors in nominally atheist communist regimes and declare christianity superior to atheism.