Is Mohammedanism a religion?

This is a question whose time has come: Is Islam (Mohammedanism) a religion?

At first glance the question appears absurd. Mohammedans pray five times a day, believe in an afterlife (70 virgins for martyrs), and reverence a monotheistic deity called allah and so. These indeed are concepts that Western thinkers (atheist or religious) ponder on as articles of faith and religion. The point that Richard Samuelson makes (on a blog post so entitled) is that Mohammedanism goes beyond the West's concepts of religion.

Mohammedanism merges the socio-political life of a person’s community with that of their religious concepts. He argues that Mohammedanism does not have a concept that separates governance of humanity from the governance of deity. The Mohammedan concept is totally alien to Western Culture and thus should be dealt with as a political movement.

Political Movements range from Democracy, Communism, Nazism, Capitalism, Libertarianism, Liberalism, and Conservativism and so on. Defining Mohammedanism as an enemy to Western Culture enables Westerners to get a handle on addressing its enemy without warping the conscience as related to what is "Politically Correct."

This is something that may need some thought as Islamofascism becomes more determined to undermine the West.