Posted on 11/13/2001 4:04:01 PM PST by Pokey78
THEY are celebrating in the streets of Kabul. Imagine that. Oddly enough, the great mass of ordinary Afghans do not seem to regard the collapse of Taliban rule as a tragedy. They do not look at the trail of dust left in the wake of those fearsome, indefatigable warriors who ruled in the name of their own faith, and mourn their passing. Nor, apparently, do they see this rout as a defeat of their own sacred culture by the Great Satan. Beards are being shaved and women are coming out of hiding in Afghanistan's capital with unabashed joy. It would seem that there were some differences of opinion about the nature of Islamic belief even in the fastnesses of the most profoundly Muslim country in the world.
Why should this surprise us? Did we really think that there was an entire race of human beings who believed that this life was nothing - absolutely nothing - but a preparation for a glorious death? That there was a whole nation of women who were prepared to live and die with fewer freedoms than a serf? Or, for that matter, that there was an entire society of men who had such a pathological loathing of women that they would prefer to see their wives and daughters die rather than allow a male doctor to attend them? Could anyone in his right mind actually have believed this? But if we did not believe it, how could so many serious people have spent so long tiptoeing reverentially around the subject of Islamic fundamentalism?
For once, I am in agreement with those who say that this international crisis means that we have to examine our own attitudes to other cultures and nations. You bet we do. We ought to look at those jubilant men and women in Kabul who are at last able to enjoy the most basic human freedoms and pleasures, and ask ourselves how we could ever have imagined that they were so utterly unlike ourselves.
Certainly they looked alien enough, with their medieval dress and their other-worldly asceticism: the female code of complete concealment of the body and face made it particularly difficult to imagine that somewhere in that curtained enigma was a modern woman who might laugh, make love or even watch television. It was all so strange and so apparently authentic. In some of the more neurotically guilt-ridden Western circles, this counted as oddly refreshing: here was an avowedly pure society, utterly untouched by the corruption of Western capitalist decadence. There was a bit of a problem about the women, of course. Most of the Left-wing breast beaters who loathe American capitalism also have a few reservations about beating women who display an inch of skin or who would like to be able to earn a living. But never mind, it's their culture isn't it? It must be respected and perhaps even, in its absolute rejection of our values, admired.
Well, in the streets of Kabul, they don't seem to think so. While some of our opinion formers were wittering about the dangers of allowing American imperialism to triumph over a sincere, if eccentric, religious faith, the people of Kabul were praying for release. The Arab "street", as we have come to call it, may shriek proudly for the cameras about American aggression while they ceremonially burn the American flag, but in Kabul they were waiting to be liberated. Those bombers flying overhead were their deliverance from a form of life which, in any Western country, would constitute cruel and inhuman treatment under the European Convention on Human Rights.
But then, it is the absolute sanctity of the concept of "rights" that may be at the bottom of our confusions. The notion has become so hopelessly entangled with moral relativism as to become either meaningless or positively pernicious. How do we measure the right of a people to their own religious and cultural values, balanced against what Western secular societies believe to be the fundamental civil rights of life and liberty?
If the Afghan people really had preferred the social and emotional security of a profound religious commitment to the economic and political freedoms of democracy, wouldn't that have been their "right"? The obvious problem with this is that it is absurdly contradictory. It is tantamount to saying that people have a right to live under tyranny if they enjoy it. But we have no way of knowing whether people enjoy living under tyranny because, by definition, they are not allowed to express a preference - at least, not until the B52s start flying overhead.
Perhaps moral relativism will simply collapse under the weight of its own absurd logical conclusion. In the current edition of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, a college student is quoted as saying: "Of course I dislike the Nazis but who is to say they are morally wrong?" Well, sure. Hitler perpetrated the most systematic mass murder in human history but - hey - who am I to judge?
Certainly the relativists are having a bad time at the moment. First, they exulted over America's defeat at the hands of terrorists. Then they warned about the arrogance of Western power trampling the truly devout Muslims of Afghanistan. We would be bombing this poor, simple country into the Stone Age, they said. Instead, we seem to be bombing it happily into the 21st century.
Maybe we need to become less obsessed with the notion of universal human rights and more concerned about universal human desires. Almost everyone, it seems, wants to live this life with some degree of self-determination and sense of self-worth before contemplating the challenge of the next one. Most people want to do this in relative peace and security. The conditions that are, on the historical evidence, most likely to give rise to this possibility are liberal democratic government and free market economics. Nobody needs to apologise for propagating them.
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