re: #13 Obdicut

Well, it doesn’t have to be a bright line. Our government has portions of it that are non-secular; almost all our anti-abortion laws are based in Christian teaching. So we have a mostly secular government with some unfortunate streaks of non-secularism in it. And, of course, we have ‘in god we trust’ on our money.

But in Syria, all legislation really is required to adhere to Islamic jurisprudence. All of it. So that very firmly and obviously makes it not a secular form of government.

Obviously, Gaddafi, creator of the “Islamic legion” wasn’t secular either.

Gaddafi and Assad were pretty loose about religion - Assad’s regime was forced to add some sort of deference to Islamists after a revolt there in the late 60s but in reality that meant nothing. Syria still was secular for all practical purposes. Qaddafi was nuts but he did not impose sharia law on his people.

We would have been better off if Qaddafi’s son took over Libya - educated in London - and maybe - against all hope - modernized it somehow. It’s a long shot but this is a cluster fuck right now in Libya and Egypt brought to you by American intervention through the offices of those psychos in Saudi Arabia.

Give me Assad Ba’athist any day over a Saudi backed jihadi.