Category: Islamism

Why the Collapse of Philosophical Studies in the Islamic World?

Leo Strauss sketches an answer in his "How to Begin to Study Medieval Philosophy" in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, ed. T. L. Pangle, University of Chicago Press, 1989, pp. 221-222, bolding added:

For the Jew and the Moslem, religion is primarily not, as it is for the Christian, a faith formulated in dogmas, but a law, a code of divine origin. Accordingly, the religious science, the sacra doctrina, is not dogmatic theology, theologia revelata, but the science of the law, halaka or fiqh. The science of the law, thus understood has much less in common with philosophy than has dogmatic theology. Hence the status of philosophy is, as a matter of principle, much more precarious in the Islamic-Jewish world than it is in the Christian world. No one could become a competent Christian theologian without having studied at least a substantial part of philosophy; philosophy was an integral part of the officially authorized and even required training. On the other hand, one could become an absolutely competent halakist or faqih without having the slightest knowledge of  philosophy. This fundamental difference doubtless explains the possibility of the later complete collapse of philosophical studies in the Islamic world, a collapse which has no parallel in the West in spite of Luther.

I like the "in spite of Luther."

On Joy at Osama’s Demise: Dennis Prager Responds to Me on the Air

It's been an interesting morning.  At 10:30 AM I noticed that my traffic was way up for the day.  And then at 11:12 AM I heard Dennis Prager reading on the air the first paragraph of a post of mine from yesterday in which I express my disappointment at Prager for rejoicing over Osama bin Laden's death when the appropriate response, as it seems to me, is to be glad that the al-Qaeda head is out of commission, but without gleeful expressions of pleasure.  That's Schadenfreude and to my mind morally dubious.

(Even more strange is that before Prager read from my blog, I had a precognitive sense that he was going to do so.)

In his response, Prager pointed out that the Jews rejoiced when the Red Sea closed around the Egyptians, and that this rejoicing was  pleasing to God.  (See Exodus 15)  Apparently that settled the matter for Prager.

And then it dawned on me.  Prager was brought up a Jew, I was brought up a Christian.  I had a similar problem with my Jewish friend Peter Lupu.  In a carefully crafted post, Can Mere Thoughts be Morally Wrong?, I argued for a thesis that  I consider well-nigh self-evident and not in need of argument, namely, that some mere thoughts are morally objectionable.  The exact sense of this thesis is explained and qualified in the post.  But to my amazement, I couldn't get Peter to accept it despite my four arguments.  And he still doesn't accept it.

Later on, it was Prager who got me to see what was going on in my discussion with Peter.  He said something about how, in Judaism, it is the action that counts, not the thought or intention.  Aha!  But now a certain skepticism rears its head:  is Peter trapped in his childhood training, and me in mine?  Are our arguments nothing but ex post facto rationalizations of what we believe, not for good reasons, but on the basis of inculcation?  (The etymology of 'inculcation' is telling: the beliefs that were inculcated in us were stamped into us as if by a heel, L. calx, when we were impressionable youths.)

The text that so impressed me as a boy and impresses me even more now is Matt. 5: 27-28:  "You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. [Ex. 20:14, Deut. 5:18]  But I say to you that anyone who so much as looks with lust at a woman has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

Not that I think that Prager or Peter are right.  No, I think I'm right.  I think  Christianity is morally superior to Judaism: it supersedes Judaism, preserving what is good in it while correcting what is bad.  Christianity goes to the heart of the matter.  Our hearts are foul, which is why our words and deeds are foul.  Of course I have a right to my opinion and I can back it with arguments.  And you would have to be a  liberal of the worst sort to think that there is anything 'hateful' in what I just wrote about Christianity being morally superior to Judaism.

But still there is the specter of skepticism which is not easy to lay.  I think we just have to admit that reason is weak and that the moral and other intuitions from which we reason are frail reeds indeed.  This should make us tolerant of differences.

But toleration has limits.  We cannot tolerate the fanatically intolerant.  So, while not rejoicing over any man's death or presuming to know — what chutzpah! –  where any man stands in the judgment of God, I am glad that Osama has been removed from our midst.

Is Osama bin Laden in Hell?

Jeremy Lott, Osama bin Laden in Hell:

To keep Osama's purported martyrdom from inspiring others, the point needs to be made, loudly and repeatedly, that killing innocent people is not the path to heaven. This will put the US government, and Barack Obama in particular, in an an awkward spot. It is undoubtedly a theological statement and an uncomfortable one at that.

It is uncomfortable because to assert that Osama did not go to heaven is to suggest that he went to hell. That could be a problem, given the current state of America's religious ferment. As the controversy over Rev. Rob Bell's new book has shown us, a great number of religious Americans do not want to believe in eternal damnation.

1.  The notion that there is heaven but no hell smacks of the sort of namby-pamby feel-good liberalism that I feel it my duty to combat.  Of course there may  be none of the following: God, afterlife, post-mortem reward, post-mortem punishment.  But if you accept the first three, then you ought to accept them all. 

2. One reason to believe in some form of punishment after death is that without it, there is no final justice.  There is some justice here below, but not much.  One who "thirsts after justice and righteousness" cannot be satisfied with this world.  Whatever utopia the future may bring, this world's past suffices to condemn it as a vale of injustice.  (This is why leftist activism is no solution at all to the ultimate problems.)  Nothing that happens in the future can redeem the billions who have been raped and crucified and wronged in a thousand ways.  Of course, it may be that this world is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."  Life may just be absurd.  But if you do not accept that, if you hold that life has meaning and that moral distinctions have reality, then you may look to God and beyond this life.  Suppose you do.  Then how can you fail to see that justice demands that the evil be punished?  Consider this line of thought:

a. If there is no making-good of the injustices of this life, it is absurd.
b. There is no making-good of the injustices of this life in this life.
c.  Only if there is God and afterlife is there a making-good of the injustices of this life
d.  This life is not absurd.
Therefore
e.  There is a making-good of the injustices of this life in the afterlife, and this requires the punishment/purification of those who committed evil in this life and did not pay for their crimes in this life.

This is not a compelling argument by any means.  But if you are a theist and accept (a)-(d), then you ought to accept the conclusion.

3.  A second reason to believe in some sort of hellish state after death for some is because of free will.  God created man in his image and likeness, and part of what that means is that he created him an autonomous being possessing free will and sensitive to moral distinctions.  In so doing, God limits his own power: he cannot violate the autonomy of man.  So if Sartre or some other rebellious nature freely decides that he would rather exist in separation from God, then God must allow it.  But this separation is what hell is.  So God must allow hell.

4. Is hell eternal separation from God?  Well, if Sartre, say, or any other idolater of his own ego wants to be eternally separated from God, then God must allow it, right?  Like I said, man is free and autonomous, and God can't do anything about that.  But if Stalin, say, repents, how could a good God punish him eternally?   The punishment must fit the crime, and no crime that any human is capable of, even the murdering of millions, deserves eternal punishment.  How do I know that?  By consulting my moral sense, the same moral sense that tells me a god that commands me to murder my innocent son cannot be God.  See Kant on Abraham and Isaac.

There is a response to this of course, and what I just asserted is by no means obvious; but this is a topic for a separate post.

I suppose I am a bit of a theological liberal. Theology must be rationally constrained and constrained by our God-given moral sense. Irrationalism is out.  Fideism is out. No fundamentalism.  No Bibliolatry.  No  inerrantism.  None of the excesses of Protestantism, if excesses they are.  No sola scriptura  or sola fide or, for that matter, extra ecclesiam salus non est.  The latter  is also a Roman Catholic principle.

5.  As I see it, then, justice does not demand an eternal or everlasting hell. (In this popular post I blur the distinction between eternity and everlastingness.)  But free will may.  Again, if Russell or Sartre or Hitchens refuse to submit any authority superior to their own egos, then their own free decision condemns them everlastingly.  Justice does demand, however, some sort of post-mortem purification/punishment.

6.  Will I go directly to heaven when I die?  Of course not (and the same goes for almost all of us.)  Almost all of us need more or less purgation, to even be in a state where we would unequivocally  want to be with God.  If your life has been mainly devoted to piling up pleasure and loot, how can you expect that death will reverse your priorities?   In fact, if you have solely devoted yourself to the pursuit and acquisition of the trinkets and baubles of this world, then punishment for you may well consist in getting them in spades, to your disgust.  If the female ass and the whiskey glass is your summum bonum here below, you may get your heart's desire on the far side.  I develop this idea in A Vision of Hell.

7.  Is Osama bin Laden in hell?  Anyone who claims to know the answer to this is a 'damned' fool.  But not even he (Osama or the fool) deserves eternal separation from God — unless he wants it.  But it is good that the al-Qaeda head  is dead.

The Wages of Appeasement

The_wages_of_appeasement

I am right now listening to Michael Medved interview Bruce S. Thornton, a colleague of Victor Davis Hanson, and author of The Wages of Appeasement.   Here is a Front Page interview with Thornton.  Excerpt:

MT: Could you talk a bit about one of the recurring themes among the three historical examples you write about in the book: a crippling failure of imagination “to see beyond the pretexts and professed aims of the adversary and recognize his true goals, no matter how bizarre or alien to our own way of thinking”?

BT: We in the West assume our ideals and goods are universal. They are, but only potentially: there are many alternatives to our way of living and governing ourselves, most obviously Islam and its totalizing social-political-economic order, sharia law. Suffering from this myopia, we fail to see those alternatives or take them seriously, usually dismissing them as compensations for material or political goods such as prosperity or democracy.

Worse yet, our enemies are aware of this weakness, and are adept at telling us what we want to hear, and using our own ideals as masks for their own agendas. Just look at the misinterpretations of the protestors in Egypt and the Muslim Brothers, not just from liberals but from many conservatives, who have been duped by the use of vague terms like “freedom” or “democracy.”

An important factor in this bad habit is our own inability to take religion seriously. Since religion is mainly a private affair, a lifestyle choice and source of private therapeutic solace, we can’t imagine that there are people so passionate about spiritual aims that they will murder and die in the pursuit of those aims.

I would add to these excellent points the observation that  the failure to take religion seriously is one of the worst mistakes of the New Atheists.  Being both atheists and leftists, they cannot take religion seriously.  (By contrast, most conservative atheists, though atheists, appreciate the value and importance of religion in human life.)  The New Atheists do not appreciate how deep reach the roots of religion into the human psyche.  And so, like the benighted John Lennon, they "imagine no religion" as if their imagining picks out a real possibility.  They fancy that a change in material conditions will cause religion to evaporate.  Pure Marxist folly, I say.  Man does not live by bread alone.  He wants more, whether or not there is anything more.  He wants meaning and purpose, whether there is meaning and purpose.  He is a metaphysical animal whether he likes it or not, a fact to which every mosque, temple, church and shrine testifies.

The Politically Incorrect Incendiarism of Ann Barnhardt

I confine my politically incorrect incendiarism to the occasional lighting up of a fine cigar. In some circles that is 'incendiary' enough.   I don't believe in burning books.  If you want to understand National Socialism, you must read, not burn, Mein Kampf.  If you want to understand Islamism, you must read, not burn, the Koran.  

Ann Barnhardt, Koran-burner, does both.  She reads, then burns those pages that she has marked with strips of bacon.  A pretty lass with balls of brass.  Gypsy Scholar provides commentary and links.  Check it out!  Move over Terry Jones.

Companion post:  Legality and Propriety: What One Has a Right to Do is not Always Right to Do.

General Petraeus, the Koran, and Political Correctness in the Military

Here is General Petraeus' condemnation of the burning by a Florida pastor of the Koran.  And here is some excellent commentary by Andrew C. McCarthy.  Excerpt (emphasis added):

Down at Gitmo, the Defense Department gives the Koran to each of the terrorists even though DoD knows they interpret it (not without reason) to command them to kill the people who gave it to them. To underscore our precious sensitivity to Muslims, standard procedure calls for the the book to be handled only by Muslim military personnel. Sometimes, though, that is not possible for various reasons. If, as a last resort, one of our non-Muslim troops must handle or transport the book, he must wear white gloves, and he is further instructed primarily to use the right hand (indulging Muslim culture’s taboo about the sinister left hand). The book is to be conveyed to the prisoners in a “reverent manner” inside a “clean dry towel.” This is a nod to Islamic teaching that infidels are so low a form of life that they should not be touched (as Ayatollah Ali Sistani teaches, non-Muslims are “considered in the same category as urine, feces, semen, dead bodies, blood, dogs, pigs, alcoholic liquors,” and “the sweat of an animal who persistently eats [unclean things].”

This is every bit as indecent as torching the Koran, implicitly endorsing as it does the very dehumanization of non-Muslims that leads to terrorism. Furthermore, there is hypocrisy to consider: the Defense Department now piously condemning Koran burning is the same Defense Department that itself did not give a second thought to confiscating and burning bibles in Afghanistan.

Quite consciously, U.S. commanders ordered this purge in deference to sharia proscriptions against the proselytism of faiths other than Islam. And as General Petraeus well knows, his chain of command is not the only one destroying bibles. Non-Muslim religious artifacts, including bibles, are torched or otherwise destroyed in Islamic countries every single day as a matter of standard operating procedure. (See, e.g., my 2007 post on Saudi government guidelines that prohibit Jews and Christians from bringing bibles, crucifixes, Stars of David, etc., into the country — and, of course, not just non-Muslim accessories but non-Muslim people are barred from entering Mecca and most of Medina, based on the classical interpretation of an injunction found in what Petraeus is fond of calling the Holy Qur’an (sura 9:28: “Truly the pagans are unclean . . . so let them not . . . approach the sacred mosque”).

I don’t like book burning either, but I think there are different kinds of book burnings. One is done for purposes of censorship — the attempt to purge the world of every copy of a book to make it as if the sentiments expressed never existed. A good modern example is Cambridge University Press’s shameful pulping of all known copies of Alms for Jihad (see Stanley’s 2007 post on that). The other kind of burning is done as symbolic condemnation. That’s what I think Terry Jones was doing. He knows he doesn’t have the ability to purge the Koran from the world, and he wasn’t trying to. He was trying to condemn some of the ideas that are in it — or maybe he really thinks the whole thing is condemnable.

This is a particularly aggressive and vivid way to express disdain, but I don’t know that it is much different in principle from orally condemning some of the Koran’s suras and verses. Sura 9 of the Koran, for example, states the supremacist doctrine that commands Muslims to kill and conquer non-Muslims (e.g., 9:5: “But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war) . . .”; 9:29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day, nor hold forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth, from among the people of the Book [i.e., the Jews and Christians], until they pay the jizya [i.e., the tax paid for the privilege of living as dhimmis under the protection of the sharia state] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued”). I must say, I’ve got a much bigger problem with the people trying to comply with those commands than with the guy who burns them.

Muslim Groups Fomenting Hysteria over Rep. Pete King Hearings

Brace yourself for the crapload of liberal-left blather sure to inundate us  over the 'McCarthyism' of the Pete King investigation.  Hats off to Pete King, a true profile in courage, who stands up to militant Islam and its liberal-left enablers.  Here is Steven Emerson, an expert commentator on these matters (emphasis added):

The line of attack is now familiar: If King (R-L.I.) were truly interested in violent extremism, his hearings would focus on a wide range of groups that wreak havoc on America, including neo-Nazis and others; by focusing solely on Muslim extremism, the argument goes, he is betraying his bias.

This is utterly ridiculous. Our organization, the Investigative Project on Terrorism, recently did an analysis of all terrorism convictions based on statistics released by the Justice Department. These stats show that more than 80% of all convictions tied to international terrorist groups and homegrown terrorism since 9/11 involve defendants driven by a radical Islamist agenda. Though Muslims represent less than 1% of the American population, they constitute defendants in 186 of the 228 cases the Justice Department lists.

The figures confirm that there is a disproportionate problem of Islamic militancy and terrorism among the American Muslim population.

Read it all!  And political correctness be damned. 

The ‘Religion of Peace’ Strikes Again

A London man was viciously attacked (face slashed, skull fractured) "for teaching other religions to Muslim girls." 

I guess the Brits haven't learned that toleration has limits and that allowing mass immigration of uncivilized and uncivilizable elements can't lead to anything good.  (Or do they perhaps have a death wish?)  One hopes that the Brits wise up in time.  England is the mother country.  Every true American feels a certain fondness for her, regardless of ethnic origin.

And here  Alan West shows how to respond to an apologist for Islamism. 

The Shame of Britain’s Muslim Schools

Here.

Why are Western societies allowing themselves to be infiltrated?  Does liberalism have a death wish?  Imagine a toleration so tolerant that it tolerates its own destruction.  Do you think that toleration just might have limits?  Does asking these questions make one an 'Islamophobe'? 

UPDATE.  An English correspondent comments:  It's true, what's going on in Britain's Muslim schools is shameful.  What's even more contemptible is the fact that while the authorities  wink at Muslim hatred and violence, they can prosecute any "Islamophobic" citizen who draws attention to it.