Posted on 01/26/2003 3:18:14 PM PST by quidnunc
We are engaged in a struggle to defeat terrorism. I have no advice on how to win that struggle, but I have some thoughts as to why it exists. It is not, I think, because Islam is at war with the West or because Palestinians are trying to displace Israelis. The struggle exists, I think, because the West has mastered the problem of reconciling religion and freedom, while several Middle Eastern nations have not.
Reconciling religion and freedom has been the most difficult political task most nations have faced. It is not hard to see why. People who believe that there is one set of moral rules superior to all others, laid down by God and sometimes enforced by the fear of eternal punishment, will understandably expect their nation to observe and impose these rules; to do otherwise would be to repudiate deeply held convictions, offend a divine being and corrupt society. This is the view of many Muslims; it was also the view of Pope Leo XIII — who said in 1888 that men find freedom in obedience to the authority of God.
In furtherance of these views, Queen Mary executed 300 Protestants, England and France expelled Jews, Ferdinand and Isabella expelled from Spain both Moors and Jews, the Spanish Inquisition tortured and executed a few thousand alleged heretics, and books were destroyed and scholars threatened for advancing theologically incorrect theories.
During this time, Islam was a vast empire stretching from western Africa into India — an empire that valued learning, prized scholars, maintained great libraries, and preserved the works of many ancient writers. But within three centuries, this greatest civilization on the face of the earth was in retreat, and the West was rising to produce a civilization renowned for its commitment to personal liberty, scientific expertise, political democracy and free markets.
Freedom of conscience has made the difference. The central question is not why freedom of conscience failed to come to much of Islam but why it came at all to the West. What made religious toleration and later freedom of conscience possible in England was political necessity. It was necessary, first in England and later in America and much of Europe, because rulers trying to govern nations could not do so without granting freedom to people of different faiths.
Here lay the chief difference between Islam and the West: Islam was a land of one religion and few states, while the West was a land of many states that were acquiring many religions. In the 16th century, people in England thought of themselves chiefly as Englishmen before they thought of themselves as Protestants, and those in France saw themselves as Frenchmen before they saw themselves as Catholics. In most of Islam — in Arabia and northern Africa, certainly — people saw themselves as Muslims before they thought of themselves as members of any state; indeed, states hardly existed in this world until European colonial powers created them.
-snip-
In the Middle East, nations are either of recent origin or uncertain boundaries. Iraq, once the center of great ancient civilizations, was conquered by the Mongols and the Ottoman Turks, then occupied by the British during the First World War, became a League of Nations protectorate, was convulsed by internal wars with the Kurds, torn apart by military coups, and immersed in a long war with Iran. Syria, a land with often-changing borders, was occupied by an endless series of other powers — the Hittites, Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Mongols, Ottoman Turks and the French. After Syria became a self-governing nation in 1944, it was, like Iraq, preoccupied with a series of military coups, repeated wars with Israel, and then, in 1991, with Iraq. Meanwhile, Lebanon, once part of Syria, became an independent nation, though it later fell again under Syrian domination.
These countries today are about where England was in the 11th century, lacking much in the way of a clear national history or stable government. To manage religion and freedom, they have yet to acquire regimes in which one set of leaders could be replaced in an orderly fashion with a new set, an accomplishment that in the West required almost a millennium.
Moreover, the Muslim religion is quite different from Christianity. The Quran and the hadith contain a vast collection of sacred laws, which Muslims call shari'a, that regulates many details of the public as well as private lives of believers. It sets down rules governing charity, marriage, orphans, fasting, gambling, vanity, pilgrimages, infidelity, polygamy, incest, divorce, modesty, inheritances, prostitution, alcohol consumption, collecting interest, and female dress.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
So9
Won't happen. How do you repeal the word of Allah?
This, I submit, is a lesson that they will only learn by force. I predict that future generations in this country will understand this too late. Future generations will be stunned at how quickly so called mainstream Muslims will come on board with radical Muslims once the Muslims have achieved a majority in this country.
If a preemptive movement is possible, it must start today.
In the case of James Q. Wilson, your skepticism is misplaced.
I think it will start once they achieve a majority in a single STATE! They will ram through their Sharia laws, and blow off the U.S. constitution, and then scream fatwah at any judges who gainsay them...and openly threaten the lives of national politicians who demand federal action to preserve 'republican government'. These monsters need to be deported. Preferrably to Antartica.
True, but so are liberals and democracy.
Maybe we should put liberals in charge of Iraq's new government. After a 4 year term they would return to this country as conservatives.
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