Page 2 of
2 It must be the end of
secularism By Spengler
social order during the 18th
century, before those awful fanatics came back. He
reminds one of the scientists on the flying island
of Laputa in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's
Travels, who wander with their noses in the
air and must be hit on the nose with inflated
pig's bladders to prevent them falling over the
edge.
And so we come to the first decade
of the 21st century, Lilla argues, over which a
terrible shadow lies: man's desire for
redemption:
The idea of redemption is among the
most powerful forces shaping human existence in
all those societies touched by the biblical
tradition. It has inspired people to endure
suffering, overcome suffering and inflict
suffering on others. It has offered hope and
inspiration in times of darkness; it has also
added to the darkness by arousing unrealistic
expectations and justifying those who spill
blood to satisfy them. All the biblical
religions cultivate the idea of redemption, and
all fear its power to inflame minds and deafen
them to the voice of reason ... It was as if
nothing had changed since the 17th century, when
Thomas Hobbes first sat down to write his
Leviathan.
Does Professor Lilla
seriously believe that nothing has changed
since the 17th century, when religious wars killed
off half the population of central Europe?
Christian America confronted the atheistic Soviet
Union during the 1980s, and without a shot fired
in anger, the Soviet Union collapsed. Where was
the fanaticism, the rancor, the bloodlust on the
part of the West? The greatest danger to central
Europe today, which over the next century will
suffer population declines comparable to those of
the 17th century, is the absence of a notion of
redemption. Secular Europe has lost its will to
live and its desire to reproduce, a malady most
prominent in the former communist countries where
religious faith was most suppressed.
For
that matter, where has Lilla uncovered a streak of
religious fanaticism in the West? The previous
pope did penance for the murder of the
15th-century Protestant rebel Jan Hus, and
worshipped at the synagogue in Rome as well as the
Western Wall in Jerusalem. Except for Northern
Ireland, the Europeans long have ceased to quarrel
about religious issues; in the US, the biblical
religious always got along, more or less, and get
along today better than they ever have. Toward
what end does this messianic urge for redemption
manifest itself, and what danger does it pose to
the West? Again, there is not a line of
argumentation, let alone a shred of evidence, to
support the charge that man's desire for
redemption has taken us to the brink of religious
wars.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. The adept
readers of Professor Lilla's essay, the diehards
of liberal secularism, know that Christianity is
the enemy, no matter how docile, peaceful,
quiescent and non-threatening it might appear.
Christianity is guilty until proven innocent; the
peaceful intentions of all Christian denominations
toward one another and to non-Christian religions
merely disguise an irrepressible urge toward
violence, in the perverse view of the
Lilla-Putans.
Don't bother to try to
liberalize Islam, Lilla intones: "A number of
Muslim thinkers around the world have taken to
promoting a 'liberal' Islam. What they mean is an
Islam more adapted to the demands of modern life,
kinder in its treatment of women and children,
more tolerant of other faiths, more open to
dissent. These are brave people who have often
suffered for their efforts, in prison or exile, as
did their predecessors in the 19th century, of
which there were many. But now as then, their
efforts have been swept away by deeper theological
currents they cannot master and perhaps do not
even understand."
The only hope lies in
"renovators" rather than "liberalizers" on the
Islamic side, Lilla concludes, such as Swiss
Islamist Tariq Ramadan. Given the admitted
bankruptcy of his position, it is to these
Islamists that Lilla proposes to surrender the
broken sword of secularism.
Regarding
Ramadan's terrorist connections and totalitarian
ideology, I summarized the principal issues in a
June 12 essay (The faith that dare not speak its
name). Lilla is not stupid; he knows
that Ramadan and his co-thinkers offer a radically
conservative version of Islam steeped in the
doctrine of religious conquest.
Today, a few voices are calling for
just this kind of renewal of Islamic political
theology ... like the Swiss-born cleric and
professor Tariq Ramadan ... whose writings show
Western Muslims that their political theology,
properly interpreted, offers guidance for living
with confidence in their faith and gaining
acceptance in what he calls an alien "abode". To
read their works is to be reminded what a risky
venture renewal is. It can invite believers to
participate more fully and wisely in the
political present, as the Protestant Reformation
eventually did; it can also foster dreams of
returning to a more primitive faith, through
violence if necessary, as happened in the Wars
of Religion.
In the full light of day
and in recognition of this danger, Lilla
nonetheless proposes that the grandson of the
founder of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood is the
last best hope for religious peace in the world:
Perhaps for this reason, Ramadan
[has] become [an object] of intense and
sometimes harsh scrutiny by Western
intellectuals. We prefer speaking with the
Islamic liberalizers because they share our
language: they accept the intellectual
presuppositions of the Great Separation and
simply want maximum room given for religious and
cultural expression. They do not practice
political theology. But the prospects of
enduring political change through renewal are
probably much greater than through
liberalization. By speaking from within the
community of the faithful, renovators give
believers compelling theological reasons for
accepting new ways as authentic
reinterpretations of the faith. Figures like ...
Ramadan speak a strange tongue, even when
promoting changes we find worthy; their reasons
are not our reasons. But if we cannot expect
mass conversion to the principles of the Great
Separation - and we cannot - we had better learn
to welcome transformations in Muslim political
theology that ease co-existence. The best should
not be the enemy of the good.
It is as
if the High Priest of Reason had ascended its
Temple to offer himself as a sacrifice to the Goat
God. Professor Ramadan personifies everything that
Lilla hates, and Lilla knows it. But Ramadan has
one redeeming virtue. He is not a Christian. Lilla
does not love Reason; he simply hates Christianity
with all his heart, and will make alliance with
whichever of her enemies might be available.
Lilla's essay summarizes a book to be
released this month. Don't bother.
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