"And I agree with it, Cathedrals are part of our culture and we must keep them, but when I see all the luxury at Vaticano and how good bishops and deacons live, while their religion clearly says a man of god has to meet vows of poverty to be closer to Jesuschrist, and when I see most people at church are there to show their new fur coats, ... things like that turn me fool about church and religions in general.
Because there are real 'sons of god' helping the homeless and unfortunate with the few they got to live, sacrificing their life for the others in distant countries, and they, the real christians, arent reflected in that shameful court of richmen."

True that, but that's not what I meant by preserving religious tradition

I would vote for an atheist as well as a religious man. I don't care.

"But only if he promises to eliminate ALL the church priviledges and give all that (WASTED!!) cash to workers."

I disagree on that. I do think some religions earned the right to exist, if only for cultural reasons. UNESCO protects buildings, sites, impertant natural habitats and cultural events. I think they should consider to add religious rituals (like the friday prayers in Islam and so on) to that list.
The cultural significance of these rituals obliges us to fund them, as well as to maintain the religious buildings we hold them in.
The group of people that's still going to church etc is getting smaller, they shouldn't be paying for all the church's costs. They simply can not finance it. And the cultural significance of religion applies to all anyway

"Nolio is in Florida, if they swim naked they become infected with dengue,yellow fever, malaria and Lyme disease."

You forgot oil-poisoning..

"They rule by demanding strict obedience to Islamic principles and Sharia Law, harshly prohibiting any sort of free discussion or referendum on how else society should be run. Claiming a divine right to rule would be superfluous really. Belief that they had divine warrant and permission was implicit in everything that they did."

But exactly that makes a theocracy. It requires a religious authority that (at least manages to partly) regulate every aspect of society. The taliban were the other way around, as Islam leaves very little room for a religious class. But this is semantics.

You're probably right with Iran. But I meant it more historicly though.
I must disagree on the Taliban though, as they make no exclusive religious claim to make a foundation for their regime. They use religion to justify their political, legislative and juridical actions though, but they never made exclusive claims that god put them in the position to rule.

Theocracy is something that's always been hard to combine with Islam. There's no anchoring point for a theocratic ruler, except for the Kaliphate. And there hasn't been a ruling Kaliph for quite some time...

"However, virtually every historian regards the period when C

Smoking them?

You could however made a thread in general without the "european/american rivalry".

nothing really

The fact that I didn't read it as much has just one simple cause: our papers don't think the world's interest doesn't focus on America's regional political trifles. Although the politics forum has largely degraded to the point where it nearly always covers american topics, you should know that people from other countries don't spend as much time on the matter as Americans do.

As I said before, if the imam is promoting radical ideas, get rid of him. But on the other side, he's entitled to the same degree of freedom of speech as those "God hates fags"-idiots and other (Christian) fanatics.
For the rest, why would a mosque near ground zero even be a victory mosque? From a religious point of view it can not even be a victory mosque, as Islam's "competitors" would be Christian or Jewish buildings. If it would replace or be installed next to a dissapeared religious monument, it can rightly be a victory mosque. Otherwise you're confusing religion and politic acts. After all, there's next to no Islam involved in the 9/11 terrorist acts itself. The only Islam involved is in the rhetoric of Al Qaeda and, indeed, the rhetoric of religious fanatics, but those are irrelevant to the installation of a mosque itself..