April 25, 2003

Are Muslims Capable of Surviving Freedom?

I stumbled across this article in WORLD magazine (require registration) in which the author basically says that Islam and freedom are incompatible.

I kept re-reading the article trying to figure out what didn't sit quite right with me, and then I found it. It is this:

This is why, historically, Christianity is associated with political freedom. Those who can govern themselves morally do not need a strong central governmental power to maintain social order. Conversely, Islam, for all its high moral teachings, enforces them with coercive external power. For that, it needs a strong authoritarian government. Whether this government is religious, as in the theocracy of Iran, or secular, as in the Arabic fascism of the Baath Party, the habits of mind and the political repression are the same.

Is Christianity really historically associated with political freedom? In recent history, yes. In the grand history of the world, no. Medieval Christian Europe was not free. America was settled by people trying to escape persecution in Christian countries - and they were Christian themselves. Christianity doesn't have any great claim to political freedom. It's only relatively recently that we can even begin to make that claim.

But does Islam automatically lead to theocracies and dictatorships? Islam's heavy reliance on external morality control certainly increases the probability of a less free form of government, but they don't necessarily have to go hand in hand.

Just because someone is Muslim doesn't mean that they don't have an internal moral compass. 99.9% of the people in the world have one and our basic beliefs are all that different. I'm sure that every Muslim out there knows that murder and theft are wrong even without having the executioner standing over them (suicide bombings and terrorism aren't viewed as murder in large parts of the Muslim world, unfortunate and wrong, but it is reality). Muslims know right and wrong. Those are human traits, not religious ones.

Maybe I'm naive, but I think that the people of Iraq, given an opportunity to transition into independent thought, will be able to handle freedom just fine. The looting and vandalism I believe was an aberration, a testing of limits if you will. We arrested a couple of people for violating the law. The Iraqi people saw that there were consequences for their action, so they modified their behavior. And after they see fair trials and just, not cruel, punishments being sentenced they will buy into a system of freedom even more.

Nowhere are we trying to impose a system tailored for the Muslim world. We are trying to instill a fair and just system. The Iraqis haven't been running to welcome the system, not because they don't want it but because it is completely foreign to them.

But it will appeal to their human nature, their desire for freedom, and their innate sense of right and wrong.

Freedom can survive and, I believe, can even thrive in a Muslim land. It appeals to the basic urges in all of us. It's just going to take a while for the Iraqi's to believe that it is real. Give them time. We can't declare them incapable of freedom after such a short time. It wouldn't be right.

Posted by Chris at April 25, 2003 11:17 PM | TrackBack | Linked by:
Dean's World linked with Islam's Issues
Comments

It bears mentioning, too, that the Iraqis may not all be rushing to embrace the system simply because they are still skeptical of us.

And why not? They don't know us except by the nasty things they hear about us. Plus, we're foreigners. We just are. We automatically believe in our inherent goodness and reason and decency?

We have to prove some things to them. And even then, the results will never be perfect. Hell, there are people in Russia who still think Stalin was the greatest leader in world history.

The vast bulk of people, though, I think are simply going to be leery and hold a "wait and see" attitude.

That we haven't killed anyone for protesting against us is going to speak volumes to them. In another context, they might consider it a sign of weakness, but it's going to be impossible for them to see us as weak at the moment. So some are still going to be thinking and wondering.

We need to not let them down.

Posted by: Dean Esmay at April 26, 2003 03:29 AM

Chris, one mustn't miss the doughnut by going through the hole.

Was medieval Christendom politically free? No, with the exceptions of pre-British Invasion Ireland and four centuries of Iceland. Was there any non-Christian social order in the world that had a better claim to being politically free? No. The ideas of freedom were still in a zygotic stage. No one appreciated the requirements of freedom -- particularly, its requirements for freedom of expression and strong private property rights -- until about the 18th century.

Is modern Christendom politically free? Most of it. Is the modern House of Islam politically free? None of it.

Christianity may not be a sufficient condition for engendering and maintaining political freedom, but there has yet to be a case of a Christian terrorist or suicide bomber. At this time (and for more than two centuries) there are no Christian theocracies. The closest anyone has come to associating oppression or violence with Christian belief in recent times is a handful of abortionist murders -- acts that nearly all Christians condemn and utterly distance themselves from, and that Christian sacred texts and religious leaders unanimously condemn.

Islam may be a sufficient condition for precluding or destroying freedom. Inasmuch as Islam is the only major religion which condones and encourages conversion by the sword, demands the unification of church and state, imposes special burdens on non-members, permits the taking of slaves, demands the chattelization of women, and demands the execution of "blasphemers," I think the case that Islam is incompatible with freedom is very strong.

The practical evidence from the world around us supports this thesis: no Muslim-majority democracies; no Muslim-majority nations that protect individual rights; no Muslim-majority nations where religious freedom is honored and protected.

Yes, yes, I know we have "Muslims" in America who don't believe in or practice the horrors catalogued here. But:

1. They're acting in defiance of Islam's sacred texts and the words of its most revered religious authorities;
2. They're under constant threat from those Muslims who do believe in and practice those things.

Time will tell whether the violence and oppression practiced in the Islamic world can be expunged from it, and freedom can sprout and flourish there. My bet is that it won't, barring a radical remaking of Islam itself -- a reinterpretation of its scriptures explicitly forbidden by those scriptures themselves.

Islam needs a Martin Luther.

Posted by: Francis W. Porretto at April 26, 2003 07:27 AM

As for there not being any Christian terrorists, I can think of a few. Some of them in recent history were out bombing abortion clinics. They were doing this "because" of their "faith". I think they qualify quite well as Christian Terrorists.

Posted by: Ron Traweek at April 26, 2003 09:14 AM

I agree with Francis Porretto, while offering a couple of distinguishing points.

The notion that there have been no Christian theocracies is common but in error. Roman Catholic France was the sworn enemy of all forms of non-Roman Christianity. The agonized history of the Balkans becomes easy to understand when the religious beliefs of the various locals are considered.

I think the original article in WORLD neglected to spell out the differences between pre- and post-Reformation Christian practice. Freedom is more common where liberal, usually Protestant, free agency is recognized. Enforced belief, whether state Catholicism in France or state atheism in mostly Roman Catholic Spain under Franco, generally has led to resentment and repression. On the other hand, I have only read the synopsis; the author may have made these points.

The point Francis makes that bears repeating: Islam needs a Luther. About 1400 years after the deaths of the founders, Christianity was transformed from a religion into a relationship. Islam is due.

Posted by: drlivipr at April 29, 2003 10:17 PM


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