Islam is “fundamentally a form of government" rather than a religion because when a state finds itself with a majority population of Muslims they have a duty to submit the whole population to Sharia law, a controversial cardinal has said.
In a telephone interview with David Gibson of the Religion News Service, Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke said that individual Muslims “are lovely people” and can speak “in a very peaceful manner about questions of religion”
“But my point is this," the Rome-based US cardinal asserted, "When they become a majority in any country then they have the religious obligation to govern that country. If that’s what the citizens of a nation want, well, then, they should just allow this to go on. But if that’s not what they want, then they have to find a way to deal with it.”
He said that in some cities in France and Belgium with large Muslim populations “there are little Muslim states” that are effectively “no-go zones” for government authorities – an assertion that is widely disputed.
But Burke claimed “these things aren’t anomalies for Islam. This is the way things are to go. … And if you do understand that and you are not at peace with the idea of being forcibly under an Islamic government, then you have reason to be afraid.”
“I think the appropriate response,” he said, “is to be firm about the Christian origin of our own nation, and certainly in Europe, and the Christian foundations of the government, and to fortify those.”
He said that form of government permits all people to exercise their religious faith – “as long as it’s not against good order” – and “practices that tolerance which follows from Christian charity.”
“I think we have to insist on that. We have to say no, our country is not free to become a Muslim state.”
This is not the first time that Burke has warned of the dangers of Sharia Law in western Christian society. In an interview with the news website Atlantico - which is the French equivalent if Huffington Post - in October last year, a month before the terror attacks in Paris that killed 149 people, he warned France of waking up one day and finding it was a Muslim state.
"For me, the anguish felt was justified. We must remember that Islam is a government, not just a religion. This religion in its political dimension has the ambition to rule the world. When a population, for example in France, becoming more Muslim, we must face the possibility of one day living under an Islamic government, with all the consequences that entails."
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