Posted on 06/19/2002 4:05:10 PM PDT by RJCogburn
CNN’s Lou Dobbs has come in for criticism for saying something sensible and insightful. It is too vague and too politically correct to call America’s post-September 11th conflict a “war against terrorism.” He observes that “The enemies in this war are radical Islamists who argue all non-believers in their faith must be killed. They are called Islamists.” He emphasizes that “This is not a war against Muslims or Islam. It is a war against Islamists and all who support them.”
“Islam” is the name of the religion founded by Mohammad, and believers are called “Muslims,” but “Islamism” is the name for the political-religious ideology of Osama Bin Laden and others like him in many countries.
What are the goals of the Islamist jihad? Some commentators maintain that the conflict is between Islam and the West as civilizations, each of them united by a shared history, religion, and way of life.
Fourteen centuries ago, armies inspired by Muhammad created an Islamic empire stretching from Spain to Afghanistan. Christendom was its only enduring enemy and rival. For nearly a millennium Islam was the stronger civilization: wealthier, more powerful, more advanced culturally.
By the seventeenth century, however, the tide turned. The scientific and industrial revolutions vastly increased the wealth and the military power of the West. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the Middle East was taken over by European nations and broken up into colonies and protectorates. Today, despite decolonization, the countries of this region remain poor and backward by comparison not only with the West but also with the booming economies of East Asia. The result, say many observers, is a feeling of humiliation at the rise of what many Muslims see as an inferior culture.
This certainly represents part of the truth, but not the fundamental truth. The current war is not against the United States or even the West per se but against the culture of modernity. Modernity was born in the Renaissance and Enlightenment in the West but it is not inherently tied to any one society. Modernity is based on the theses that reason, not revelation, is the instrument of knowledge and arbiter of truth; that science, not religion, gives us the truth about nature; that the pursuit of happiness in this life, not suffering in preparation for the next, is the cardinal value; that reason can and should be used to increase human well-being through economic and technological progress; that the individual person is an end in himself with the capacity to direct his own life, and thus deserves rights to freedom of thought, speech, and action; that religious belief should be a private affair, tolerance a social virtue, and church and state kept separate.
Islamists are clear that they hate this worldview. Sayyid Qutb, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, insisted that “a jihad … should be waged against modernity… The ultimate objective is to re-establish the Kingdom of Allah upon earth.” Bin Laden himself says, "the love of this world is wrong. You should love the other world...die in the right cause and go to the other world." Islamist Mawlana Abu'l-A`la Mawdudi wrote, “no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private. Considered from this aspect the Islamic state bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states."
Anti-modernism is not unique to the Islamic world. In the eighteenth century Jean-Jacques Rousseau held that feeling, not reason, is the essential human capacity, that civilization the chief cause of human woe, and that people should be forced to submerge their individuality in collective life. In the nineteenth century the Romantic movement elevated feeling over reason and “unspoiled” nature over the new industrial economy. Socialists wanted to restore a communal society, as did many conservatives. On the other hand, many leaders in Islamic lands have sought to bring the benefits of modernity to their own countries—most notably Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder modern Turkey.
At the deepest level, the war on terrorism is the latest phase of a continuing struggle to achieve the promise of modern civilization. The threat posed by the Islamists comes not from their Islamic background but from their anti-modernist creed. This is a profoundly anti-human outlook, and there can be no compromise with it. As we take aim at the terrorists who have attacked us, we must also take intellectual aim at the ideas that inspire them-wherever those ideas are put forward.
Copyright, The Objectivist Center. For more information, please visit www.ObjectivistCenter.org.
The problem is that these ignorant Islamists don't understand this concept. They hate Americans and all that we are, have, and fight for.
Saudi Arabia is a modern country: People drive cars, have telephones, vcrs, etc...
They also cut off peoples heads, subjugate women, and censor everything.
The writer of this post asserts that there is a difference between a Muslim who practices Islam and an "Islamist".
To top it all off, we are given a "man is the measure of all things" tribute to humanist philosophy [in his historical account, the writer conviently forgot to include the blood bath of the French Revolution--that was based on, amongst other things---an "enlightement" rejection of divine revelation].
A note the writer: Evil is not only real, it cannot exist outside of an objective reality that includes an objective good. In banning divine revelation for the sake of humanist rationality, one in effect, blinds oneself and is unable to truly recognize either good or evil.
Rationalism is fundamentally irrational.
Brian.
Here is what the same author says in another essay:
Modernity was born in the West in a radical transformation of its past. The world of the Middle Ages, built around Christian Scholasticism world-view, was a society of religious philosophy, feudal law, and an agricultural economy. Out of this soil, the Renaissance and Enlightenment produced a substantially new society of science, individualism, and industrial capitalism. When we examine the wider context of Islamic terrorism, it is clear that a hatred of modernity is its driving force.
The cultural foundation of this society, if we state it as a set of explicit theses, was the view that reason, not revelation, is the instrument of knowledge and arbiter of truth; that science, not religion, gives us the truth about nature; that the pursuit of happiness in this life, not suffering in preparation for the next, is the cardinal value; that reason can and should be used to increase human well-being through economic and technological progress; that the individual person is an end in himself with the capacity to direct his own life, not a slave or a child to be ruled by others; that individuals have equal rights to freedom of thought, speech, and action; that religious belief should be a private affair, tolerance a social virtue, and church and state kept separate; and that we should replace command economies with markets, warfare with trade, and rule by king or commissar with democracy.
A little note to my fellow Christians on FR. As Christians, we shed no tears for Islam as a religion, and it is evil insofar as it keeps people away from a saving knowledge of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Nonetheless, these 'neocon' attacks against Islam invariably employ language that can ultimately be arrayed against evangelical Christianity as well.
Note the above snippet. Living in a society under the First Amendment, most born-again Christians can agree with the tenets of tolerance as a social virtue and church and state being kept separate. But then there's that first part, the statement that 'religious belief [is] a private affair.'
In other words, don't share your faith. Don't proclaim your faith, don't make any expression of your faith. You shouldn't even have a WWJD? bumper sticker on your car, you intolerant zealot!
Christians are indeed at war with Islam. For as Paul the Apostle said, we fight against the higher powers -- a fight that should be waged with good deeds and holy words, not with guns and bombs. As for the State, it should focus its resources on the battle against the perpetrators of the awful September 11 attacks -- bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organization, and those who directly support them.
If the State goes to war against Islam in the name of Modernism, however, we may find someday that the same rhetoric used to attack Muslims today is used to attack Christians tomorrow.
My take on the above article is that it represents a subtle attempt to pit modernist philosophy against theism, while at the same time lumping any theistic thinking [or worldveiw--like Christianity] in with Islam. I noticed another evangelical [whose screen name escapes me] picked up on it as well.
I also thought it somewhat ironic that the same poster who posted an article that critised the Harvard elitists for engaging in the semantic word games that surrounded the term "Jihad", would post an article that contained a word game on Islamic---Islamist.
Brian
One hundred percent of the successful terrorist attacks on commercial airlines for 20 years have been committed by Arabs. When there is a 100 percent chance, it ceases to be a profile. It's called a 'description of the suspect.'
That's why I like--nay make that love--Ann Coulter
Slightly off here. 100% were committed by Muslims who were not all Arabs. 'bout 92% were Arabs.
In other words, don't share your faith. Don't proclaim your faith, don't make any expression of your faith.
Such a view as yours is unfounded if you understand the basics of individualist objectivism (which is the philosophy of the author.)
When he says it is a "private affair" he means it is up to the individual -- who may or may not make it public at his whim. There is no objectivist anywhere on this earth that would argue for a prohibition of any sort of advertisement or promotion -- of anything!
Kelly is interested only in protecting an individual's right to chose his own religion or no religion at all without fearing retaliation from self-proclaimed armies of god.
And yes, a fundamentalist Christian attempt to legislate their doctrine would find the same biting pen. And rightfully so.
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