Islamism – Page 5 – Maverick Philosopher

On Opposing a Dangerous Ideology that is also a Religion

This article by William Kilpatrick bears on my ongoing conversation with a Canadian philosopher about Islam, religious tests, and constitutional interpretation. Last exchange here. I'll pull a few quotations from Professor Kilpatrick and add some comments.

The idea of opposing dangerous ideologies is not foreign to Americans, but the idea of opposing an ideology that is also a religion is more problematic. It has become increasingly problematic now that we live in an era in which merely disagreeing with another’s opinions is tantamount to a hate crime.

But obviously, to dissent from a proposition is not to hate a person. Nor is dissent on the part of the dissenter a sign of mental malfunction. Liberals who would smear Kilpatrick by calling him an 'Islamophobe' are either ignorant or vicious. Ignorant, if they do not understand that a phobia is an irrational fear. Vicious, if they mean to silence such a truth-teller by questioning his sanity.

The U.S. Constitution in the first and second clauses of its First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion. But does Islam fall under this protection? Ought there be freedom of religion for a religion that seeks to eliminate every other religion? Obviously not. The Constitition is not a suicide pact. I argue this out in painful detail in my last exchange with the Canadian.

I don't deny that Islam is a religion. It may even be a way to God for some who know of no better Way. (The allusion is to via, veritas, vita.)But Islam is just as much, if not more, a political ideology that seeks to subvert the principles and values of the American founding. Let us note en passant that this explains what would otherwise be very hard to explain, namely, why the Left is in cahoots with Islam. For the Left too is out to subvert said principles and values. Islamists must view leftists as useful idiots who will be sent packing to the realm of the black-eyed virgins should the former gain the (knife-wielding) upper hand. Leftists are in for a surprise if they think that they can use Islamists for leftist purposes.

I feel a rant coming on, so back to the sober Irishman:

Under Pope Benedict XVI there were signs—such as his Regensburg Address—that the Church was developing a more realistic view of Islam. But whatever ground was gained by Benedict was given up by Francis. Indeed, it seems fair to say that under Francis, the Church’s understanding of Islam regressed. Perhaps the most glaring example of this regression can be found in the Pope’s assertion that “authentic Islam and a proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.” It’s hard to imagine any of his predecessors or any of their advisors making a similar claim.

Holy moly! Could Bergoglio the Boneheaded be that benighted? Yes, take a gander at this:

By contrast, Church leaders and Pope Francis in particular, have become, in effect, enablers of Islam. Pope Francis has denied that Islam sanctions violence, has drawn a moral equivalence between Islam and Catholicism (“If I speak of Islamic violence, I must speak of Catholic violence”), and has campaigned for the admittance of millions of Muslim migrants into Europe. Moreover, he has criticized those who oppose his open borders policy as hard-hearted xenophobes. In return for his efforts, he has been publicly thanked by several Muslim leaders for his “defense of Islam.”

One might be tempted to use the word “collaborator” instead of “enabler.” But collaborator is too strong a word. In its World War II context, it implies a knowing consent to and cooperation with an evil enterprise. It seems clear to me that the pope and others in the hierarchy are enabling the spread of an evil ideology; however, it’s not at all clear that they understand what they’re doing. Francis, for instance, seems to sincerely believe that all religions are roughly equal in goodness. Thus for him, the spread of any religion must seem like a good thing. It’s an exceedingly naïve view, but one that seems honestly held.

More on “No Religious Test”

A Canadian reader comments and I reply:

I've been thinking about the problem of interpreting "no religious test" in light of your post. It's actually a very difficult problem! I'm almost convinced the correct response is that, unfortunately, if the Constitution is interpreted correctly then fundamentalist Muslims do indeed have the right to hold public office–given the most natural and reasonable interpretation of word meanings and even taking into account the likely intentions of the founding fathers, the history of legal interpretation, etc. It's very hard to get around this. Maybe rather than saying that the Constitution is not a suicide pact on any sane interpretation, we have to say that a sane person would reject both suicide pacts and some parts of the US Constitution.

I grant that it is a very difficult problem, and I am aware that few will be convinced by what I wrote earlier. Ask anybody what Islam is and he will tell you that it is a religion. And then, given that

. . . no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.(Article VI)

it seems to follow via some uncontroversial auxiliary premises that no Muslim shall be barred from running for office simply because he is a Muslim.

But of course among those Muslims are those who have no intention of assimilating and accepting our values but instead seek to impose Sharia on us thereby rejecting our values and principles and subverting our system of government.

So the question I would put to my fellow citizens is: Are you comfortable with an interpretation of the Constitution that allows for its elimination and the values and principles it enshrines?

I am not.

There are those who will say: let anyone immigrate from anywhere and then let the people who have immigrated decide what they want. They call that democracy, and they are all for it. The people are the residents within certain geographical borders, and residency constitutes citizenship. If the residents want blasphemy laws, then we shall have blasphemy laws.

You point out that Islam is not just a religion but also a political ideology. But does that really help? It still is a religion, and if the Constitution forbids any "religious test", without ever saying anything about the scope of "religion", the most natural interpretation is that even religions that double as political ideologies–most religions, really–are subject to the "no religious test" rule. You say that we could declare Islam an inadmissible religion, but then wouldn't effectively mean that the Constitution is self-contradictory? On the one hand, there is to be freedom of religion and no religious test–the subject here being surely just religion in general. On the other hand, only some religions are protected by the "no religious test" rule, and for other religions there can be a religious test after all. That seems incoherent, no?

Islam is a religion, but not a religion in the sense in which Hinduism, Buddhism Judaism, and Christianity are religions. Will you grant me that? Or must I argue it out?

There is no contradiction or incoherence such as you imagine. I take it you find no incoherence in what the logic books call exceptive propositions. For example, "All citizens of the United States are guaranteed freedom of religion except those whose religions are incompatible with the values and principles of the American founding." The following propositions are logically consistent. (1) The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and disallows religious tests. (2) The Constitution guarantees these things subject to the proviso that the religion in question is compatible with the principles of the American founding.

Now the Constitution does not contain these formulations. But we will agree that the document is subject to interpretation. My claim is that it is most reasonable interpreted along the lines I have suggested.

As for incoherence, I should think that your account is more justly charged with it. A constitution that allows for its own subversion is incoherent if not strictly self-contradictory in the logical sense. The provisions of such a constitution do not cohere with its own continued existence.

Actually I don't know that the idea of a church/state or religion/politics distinction will make sense if we allow that some religions are also political ideologies. If the two can be separated, wouldn't that mean that the religions that are also political must be either banned or else somehow reformulated so that they're only religious? Otherwise, the effect would be to prevent the normal or traditional practice of those religions–since normally or by their nature they'd function as political entities. But then wouldn't that be incompatible with the ideal of freedom of religion? I don't know. Just some rambling thoughts. The issue seems very confusing. The US Constitution was never meant to apply to this bizarre multicultural situation that's been induced.

But why on earth would you want the normal or traditional practice of (radical) Islam in the U. S. , Canada, France, the West generally? I know you don't want that.

The Founders figured something out. They figured out that a modicum of civil peace can be had if government is kept limited in scope and kept separate from religion.

Freedom of religion, like freedom of speech, and like toleration, has limits. As you know, Islam does not recognize freedom of religion. You either convert, accept dhimmitude, or are put to the sword. It is therefore entirely reasonable to place restrictions on freedom of religion and ban politically subversive religions.

A commitment to freedom of religion becomes incoherent and suicidal when it is taken to imply freedom for all religions including those that reject freedom of religion. Similarly for freedom of speech and toleration. A sane toleration must be intolerant of the intolerant.

Islam on Urination, Defecation, and Jihad

Dr. Claude Boisson writes,

One mile from where I live in the French city of Lyon, there is an Islamicized neighborhood where I recently bought this (elegantly printed and bound) book in French.

Four pages (46-49) are devoted to how you should urinate and defecate if you are an observant Muslim. And a very elaborate affair it is. Hold your penis with your left hand. Remember that it is forbidden to wipe your bottom with fewer than three stones or with a bone. The description of these 7th century customs from Arabia are piously reprinted in the textbook supposedly read by serious 20th century French-speaking Muslims.

Are we instructed as to the proper disposal of the three soiled stones? Why wouldn't the bone of an infidel be an appropriate instrument of anal cleansing?

But since I am not a Muslim, I was more interested in the final chapters. Chapter XVI is devoted to jihad (the real thing, not “internal spiritual struggle”) and chapter XVII to the freeing of slaves. For five dollars infidel readers can thus become more knowledgeable about what may await them.

You learn all there is to know about the war booty, the dhimma and such matters. Also please note the Prophet said that if you want to free a slave, it is advisable to do this during a solar eclipse.

You might imagine that this is an edition of an old treatise penned in the fifteenth century.

No. Time has stood still.

It is a compendium of fiqh written by an Egyptian scholar born in 1954 (not in 1054 or 1454), a former student of al-Azhar. The French translation was published in 2011 by The International Islamic Publishing House, Riyadh.

Yes, Islam is a religion. It is also, intrinsically, “political Islam”. Since when? Since the Hegira.

The main thing is that Islam is a violent, oppressive, totalitarian system inimical to the values and traditions of the West, one which has the support of destructive leftists. It may be too late for Europe and the U. K., but we here in the USA still have a fighting chance of beating back the barbarians.

Leftists evince a pronounced libertine 'wobble' en rapport as they are with sexual perversions and 'alternative lifestyles' and are therefore in danger of 'losing their heads' should the Sharia boys come to power. So their collusion with the latter is a curious thing to behold.

What explains it? My detailed answer in Why the Left Will not Admit the Threat of Radical Islam.

I am coming to the view that the qualifier 'radical' in 'radical Islam' is redundant: True Islam is radical by its very nature. Could there be such a person as a moderate Nazi? I think not. Is 'moderate Muslim' in the same logical boat, a phrase that perhaps applies only to Zuhdi Jasser and a few others?

“No Religious Test”

In Article VI of the U. S. Constitution we read:

. . . no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Does it follow that the U. S. Constitution should be so interpreted as to allow a Muslim citizen who supports sharia (Islamic law) to run for public office? No! For the same Constitution, in its First Amendment, enjoins a salutary separation of church/synagogue/mosque and state, though not in those words. Sharia and the values and principles enshrined in the founding documents are incompatible. On no sane interpretation is our great Constitution a suicide pact.

It is important to realize that Islam is as much an anti-Enlightenment political ideology as it is a religion. Our Enlightenment founders must be rolling around in their graves at the very suggestion that sharia-subscribing Muslims are eligible for the presidency and other public offices.

Many assume that no restriction may be placed on admissible religions for the purposes of the implementation of Article VI. I deny it. A religion that requires the subverting of the U. S. Constitution is not an admissible religion when it comes to applying the "no religious Test" provision. One could argue that on a sane interpretation of the Constitution, Islam, though a religion, is not an admissible religion where an admissible religion is one that does not contain core doctrines which, if implemented, would subvert the Constitution.

Or one might argue that Islam is not a religion at all. Damn near anything can and will be called a religion by somebody. Some say with a straight face that leftism is a religion, others that Communism is a religion. Neither is a religion on any adequate definition of 'religion.' I have heard it said that atheism is a religion. Surely it isn't. Is a heresy of a genuine religion itself a religion? Arguably not. Hillaire Belloc and others have maintained that Islam is a Christian heresy. Or one could argue that Islam, or perhaps radical Islam, is not a religion but a totalitarian political ideology masquerading as a religion. If an X masquerades as a Y, then the X is not a Y. How to define religion is a hotly contested issue in the philosophy of religion.

The point here is that "religious" in ". . . no religious Test shall ever be required" is subject to interpretation. We are under no obligation to give it a latitudinarian reading that allows in a destructive ideology incompatible with our values and principles.

Is Fear Born of Ignorance? Only Sometimes

William Kilpatrick is the best writer at Crisis Magazine. Because he invariably talks sense, I have linked to his work on numerous occasions. It is important that he remain a writer there given that squishy liberal shallow-pates are 'over-represented' among Catholics and have been for a good 60 years, with the current pope, Bergoglio the Benighted, leading the bunch. The beauty of blog is that I can be appropriately disrespectful of the leftist knucklehead where Kilpatrick cannot.

Here he makes an important point:

One of the misleading assumptions of our times is that fear is born of ignorance. Its corollary is the belief that increased education or increased familiarity with the “other” will banish fear. For example, after the Italian election results, Cardinal Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, said that the Church would have to continue its “work of education.”

But, in fact, Italians along with Germans, French, Brits, Dutch, and so on have been drenched for decades in the kind of education that Cardinal Parolin favors. A large part of the curriculum in European schools is devoted to teaching youngsters to respect different races and cultures. Indeed, many European students are given the distinct impression that other cultures are morally superior to their own.

[. . .]

Nice sentiments. But it doesn’t always work that way. For example, the more that Jews in Germany became familiar with the Nazis and their ideology, the more they properly feared them. Likewise, Poles, Hungarians, and Czechs were right to fear the communist takeover of Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, many Europeans and Americans were not fearful enough about the twin threats posed by Nazism and communism. Their naiveté and lack of prudent fear was a major factor in enabling first the Nazis and then the communists to enslave half of Europe.

The same might be said of the pope’s almost complete lack of rational, prudential fear. By encouraging people not to be fearful of a real danger, the pope only adds to the danger. For example, attacks on European Jews have risen sharply in recent years. Jews in Europe are fearful once again—not because of some irrational prejudice on their part, but because of the rise of an ideology every bit as anti-Semitic as that fostered by the Nazis.

Now read the whole thing.

I'll say it again. Xenophobia is an irrational fear of foreigners and things foreign. But not all fear is irrational. If you refuse to make these simple distinctions, then you are being willfully stupid and deserve moral condemnation. It is morally wrong to refuse to use your intellect, especially if you consider it to be God-given.

Leftist Cultural Demolition and Islamist Subversion

The first aids and abets the second. Another great article by William Kilpatrick.

Islamists can’t do the job of subversion all by themselves. They need help. Other people have to prepare the ground for them. Luckily for the Islamists, liberals, leftists, and secularists have been busy preparing the ground for years—in schools, in academia, in the media, in government, in the corporate world, and elsewhere.

[. . .]

The chief aim of cultural jihad is the imposition of sharia law. And one of the key features of sharia is its blasphemy laws. Where sharia rules, criticism of Islam or its prophet is a crime. It may be hard to imagine blasphemy laws being introduced to the U.S., but criticism of Islam is already a crime in much of Europe. If blasphemy laws did come to the U.S.—if it became a crime to criticize Islam—where would the Simmons librarians stand? Whose side would they take? Would they suddenly think, “This has gone too far. I never realized where all this would lead”? Not likely. If you think “Merry Christmas” is a micro-aggression against Muslims, you’ve already got one foot planted in the sharia camp.

Of course, the librarians of Simmons College are a small group. But it’s easy to imagine that much larger groups in our society would go along with a law limiting the right to question Islam. Take registered Democrats, for instance. That’s a pretty big group. A 2017 Rasmussen poll showed that “Democrats are more likely to think that Muslims are mistreated in America than to think that Christians are persecuted in the Islamic world.” Considering that 90,000 Christians died for their faith in 2016 compared to a reported 127 Muslim victims of assault in the U.S., that’s quite a disconnect from reality. But of course, it’s not reality that rules in much of modern America, it’s the narrative. For many Democrats, anti-blasphemy laws would be seen as simply another form of affirmative action—just compensation for years of hatred against Muslims.

And you are still a Democrat? Have you been paying attention?

As for narratives, the beauty of a narrative is that it doesn't have to be true to be a narrative. It suffices that it serves the agenda of those whose narrative it is.

Why Won’t We Admit the Truth About Islam?

Andrew C. McCarthy

Pakistani Humanist Denied UK Asylum . . .

. . . after failing to identify Plato! Holy Guacamole! (HT: Karl White)

A Pakistani man who renounced his Muslim faith and became a humanist has had his application for asylum in the UK rejected after failing to correctly answer questions about ancient Greek philosophers.

The Home Office said Hamza bin Walayat’s failure to identify Plato and Aristotle as humanist philosophers indicated his knowledge of humanism was “rudimentary at best”.

This is very strange in several ways. For one thing, how could anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the divine Plato call him a humanist? Later in the piece we get a definition that is on the right track:

In a letter in support of Walayat’s asylum application, Bob Churchill, of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, said: “For many, the broad descriptive ‘humanist’ is just a softer way of saying atheist, especially if you come from a place where identifying as atheist may be regarded as a deeply offensive statement.”

My astute readers don't need it explained to them why Plato is not a humanist by this definition.

Perhaps the Pakistani man should be given asylum. But there is a far more important, an 'existential,' issue:

If the Brits had any sense they would curtail the influx of Muslims into their homeland, at least for the time being, until the Muslim world reforms itself. (This assumes that Brits still care about their wonderful culture which is parent to our American culture.) Far too many Muslims, not having gone through the Enlightenment, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, retain their backward fanaticism, a fanaticism and 'true belief' that makes them extremely dangerous to civilized and skeptical and sometimes decadent Brits who are prone to doubt and therefore not inclined to defend their superior culture. As we read:

Apostates are subject to discrimination, persecution and violence in Pakistan. In March last year, a student who had stated he was a humanist on his Facebook page was murdered at his university.

Blasphemy is punishable by death under Pakistani law. In August, 24 British politicians wrote to the Pakistani government urging it to repeal its draconian blasphemy law, which has been used against religious minorities and humanists.

Immigrants bring their culture with them. If those with antithetical values are allowed to immigrate in huge numbers they will not assimilate, even if a few of them are willing and able to assimilate. And then the Brits will have in their midst subversive elements who believe the evil nonsense described in the quotation immediately preceding. Eventually, the invaders will take over the host country.

Now how stupid is that? No comity without commonality. Do the U. K. and Europe have a death wish?

Think about it. You have a superior culture that allows itself to be destroyed by an inferior culture that exploits features of the superior culture that make it superior. I am thinking of such classically liberal Western values as tolerance, religious liberty (which includes the liberty to be irreligious), and free speech.

We must not allow our virtues to vitiate us. For then our virtues become vices. The values mentioned have limits. For example, does religious toleration extend to a religion which is also, and indissolubly, a destructive political ideology antithetical to Western values?

This is a crucial question, but have you ever heard anyone raise it? Now you have.

The Lapse of Laïcité: Cause and Effect

Alain Finkielkraut:

Laicity is the solution that modern Europe found in order to escape its religious civil wars. But contemporary Europe doesn’t take religion seriously enough to know how to stick to this solution. She has exiled faith to the fantastic world of human irreality that the Marxists called “superstructure”… thus, precisely through their failure to believe in religion, the representatives of secularism empty laicity of its substance, and swallow, for humanitarian reasons, the demands of its enemies.

I haven't read anything by Finkielkraut except the above and a few other excerpts translated and edited by Ann Sterzinger. But that won't stop me from explaining what I take to be the brilliant insight embedded in the above quotation.

Laicity is French secularity, the absence of religious influence and involvement in government affairs. It has had the salutary effect of preventing civil strife over religion. But to appreciate why laicity is important and salutary one must understand that the roots of religion lie deep in human nature. Religion is even less likely to "wither away" (V. I. Lenin) than the State. Leftists, however, are constitutionally incapable of understanding that man by nature is homo religiosus and that the roots of religion in human nature are ineradicable.

The Radicals don't understand the radicality (deep-going rootedness) of religion. (Radix is Latin for 'root.') In their superficial way, leftists think that religion is merely "the sigh of the oppressed creature" (Marx) and will vanish when the oppression of man by man is eliminated, which of course will never happen by human effort alone, though they fancy that they can bring it about if only they throw enough people into enough gulags. Leftists cannot take religion seriously and they don't think anyone else really takes it seriously either, not even Muslims. They don't believe that most Muslims really do believe in Allah and the divine origin of the Koran and the 72 black-eyed virgins and the obligation to make jihad. They project their failure to understand religion and its grip into others. See my Does Anyone Really Believe in the Muslim Paradise in which I report on the Sam Harris vs. Scott Atran debate.

The issue at present is not whether religion is true but whether it answers to deep human needs that cannot be met in any other way. My point is not that leftists think that religion is false or delusional, although they do think it to be such; my point that they don't appreciate the depth of the religious need even if it is a need that, in the nature of things, cannot be met.

Not understanding religion, leftists fail to understand how important laicity is to prevent civil strife over religion. And so they don't properly uphold it. They cave in to the Muslims who reject it. Why don't they understand the dire existential threat that radical Islam poses to European culture? I suspect that it is because they think that Muslims don't really believe in all their official claptrap and what Muslims really want are mundane things such as jobs and material security and panem et circenses. They cherish the foolish leftist belief that 'deep down' we are all the same and that Muslims want the same things that decadent Europeans want.

In nuce: leftists, who are resolutely secular, fail to uphold the secularity that they must uphold if they are to preserve their loose and libertine way of life, and they fail to uphold it by failing to understand the dangers of religion, dangers they do not understand because they fail to take religion seriously and to appreciate the deep roots it has in human nature. Here is an even pithier formulation:

Leftists, whose shallow heads cannot grasp religion, are in danger of losing their heads to radical jihadi. This is cause and effect of the lapse of laicity.

Two quibbles with Finkielkraut.

First, it is not that leftists "do not believe in religion," but that they do not believe that religion is a powerful and ineradicable force in human affairs. You don't have to believe in religion to believe facts about it.

Second, if I remember my Marx, the superstructure (Ueberbau), though a repository of fantastic ideas devoid of truth such as religious ideas and the ideas of bourgeois law and morality, also contains all ideology and therefore the 'liberating' Marxist ideology as well. It too is a reflection of the Unterbau, the social base and the means of production. So not everything in the superstructure is "fantastic," as Finkelkraut implies above. This Marxian notion that all is ideology leads to relativism, but that's not my problem.

The Religion of Archeological Preservation

If Islam is the religion of peace, then it is also the religion of archeological preservation. Modus tollens or modus ponens?

Images here.

What is the Quran?

A 'racist' screed by James V. Schall. Do not click on this link!

Islam in the Public Square

William Kilpatrick:

. . . Islam is now well on its way to controlling the public square in parts of Europe. And, were it not for the election of Donald Trump and the defeat of the Muslim Brotherhood-friendly Clinton machine, the U.S. would now be playing catch-up.

As has often been observed, Islam is a political religion. Some, like Dutch MP Geert Wilders, contend that it is almost totally political with only a thin and deceptive veneer of religiosity. Whatever the exact proportion of politics to religion, it’s hard to deny that the political dimension looms large in Islam. Muhammad, after all, was a warlord. He conquered all of Arabia, and within a relatively short time after his death, his followers conquered an area larger than the Roman Empire. Sayyid Abul A’la Maududi, one of the most important twentieth-century Islamic theorists, wrote that “Islam requires the earth—not just a portion, but the whole planet.”

In 1949, sociologist Jules Monnerot described Communism as 20th century Islam. To which I add: Islam is the Communism of the 21st century. Like Communism, it is totalitarian, with tentacles reaching into every aspect of life. And like Communism, it is internationalist in its aspiration and projected reach.

Some say that Islam is a political ideology masquerading as a religion. That appears to be the view of Geert Wilders mentioned above. I don't go that far. Nor can it be dismissed as a Christian heresy. I view Islam as a hybrid ideology in which religion and political ideology are combined. As such, it ought not be tolerated in the West, and not just because of its vicious hostility to Christianity and other genuine religions of peace, but because it includes no provision for mosque-state separation.

Is a reformed Islam possible, one that is respectful of American values and principles? The moderate Muslim Zuhdi Jasser thinks so, but he is in a tiny minority. Maybe someday Islam will join the civilized world. Until then a moratorium on Muslim immigration is a wise course.

The Leftist-Islamist Axis of Evil and Divine Sovereignty

James S. writes,

Your point about the twin threats coming from the Left and from Islam reminded me of an email I received from Fr. Schall some months ago when I shared a draft of the Syllabus with him. He made the same point, as both the Left and Islam are voluntarist systems where will is exalted over reason. He called the parallel between them the main issue of our time. Many of the points in the Syllabus were paraphrases of an earlier Schall essay on voluntarism.

Fr. Schall is right. But the issue may be a bit more complicated than the good father appreciates. As I say in Pope Benedict's Regensburg Speech and Muslim Insensitivity:

Benedict is not denigrating Islam or its prophet but setting forth a theological problem, one that arises within Christianity itself, namely the problem of the tension between the intellectualism of Augustine and Aquinas and the voluntarism of Duns Scotus. "Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?" Roughly, does the transcendence of God — which both Christianity and Islam affirm though in different ways — imply that God is beyond our categories, including that of rationality?

Perhaps a better way to put the question would be in terms of divine sovereignty. Is God absolutely sovereign and thus unlimited in knowledge and power? Or are there logical and non-logical limits on his knowledge and power? For example, is a law of logic such as Non-Contradiction within God's power? In his 2012 Creation and the Sovereignty of God, Hugh McCann argues that God is not only sovereign over the natural order, but also over the moral order, the conceptual/abstract order, and the divine nature itself. That seems to give the palm to voluntarism, does it not?

I consider McCann's view to be highly problematic as I argue in my long discussion article, "Hugh McCann on the Implications of Divine Sovereignty," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 88, no. 1 (Winter 2014), pp. 149-161.

Time is Not on Europe’s Side

Another warning from William Kilpatrick. Excerpt:

The Importance of Will

Just as conversions can accelerate after a tipping point has been reached, so can emigration. But there’s also a third factor that seems to have been left out of the Pew Center’s calculations. It’s difficult to measure, but it may be the prime factor in determining which culture predominates in Europe. The crucial factor is will. If they want their culture to survive, people must be willing to defend it, and they must be willing to bring children into the world who will carry on the culture.

You can call it “will,” or “cultural confidence,” or “fighting spirit,” but whatever you call it, Europeans seem to be losing it. The problem begins in school. As Melanie Phillips noted eleven years ago in Londonistan:

The British education system simply ceased transmitting either the values or the story of the nation to successive generations, delivering instead the message that truth was an illusion and that the nation and its values were whatever anyone wanted them to be.

It's probably too late for Europe and the UK. But we still have a little time, and with Trump in the saddle, a fighting chance. Hillary, you will recall, refused even to name the threat.

If Islam is a Religion of Peace . . .

. . . why is it a provocation to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel? Here is how another penetrating article by William Kilpatrick ends:

So on the one hand, Muslim believers are ready to commit mayhem over an academic talk or the moving of an embassy, and on the other hand, Christians remain peaceful even though their brethren are being slaughtered and burned alive. How much longer, one wonders, will Church leaders collaborate in the false assertion that Islam and Christianity are equally peaceful faiths?

Religious and secular leaders are caught in a flagrant contradiction. They tell us that Islam is a religion of peace and justice, yet they warn us not to provoke its followers in any way. Don’t recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Don’t draw cartoons that might offend Muslims. Don’t wear religious symbols that might provoke them. Cover your women and your statutes. Don’t ring church bells in the vicinity of Muslims. Don’t criticize them for persecuting Christians because, as Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University told Pope Francis, such criticism is a “red line” that must not be crossed.

“Just stay quiet and you’ll be okay.” That’s what Mohamed Atta told the passengers on American Airlines flight 11 shortly before it flew into the World Trade Center. It wasn’t good advice then. And it’s not good advice now. As Islam expands its global reach, it’s becoming increasingly evident that the “don’t-do-anything-to-provoke-them” policy isn’t working, and never will.