Wishful Thinking, Logs, Islam, and the West

Effete Arrogance

The West does not "get" Islam.  There are good reasons.  We will explore some of the causes of this inability to understand the heart and mind of an Islamic believer.  For the moment, however, we need to set forth some descriptive categories of variations of Islamic belief and believers. 

The first variant is classical Islam, by which we mean Islam as it was believed and practised in the early centuries of its existence (650 through to 1,000 AD).  This was the period when all of its authoritative writings were completed (the Koran, the traditions [hadith] and law [sharia]).  The second is modernist Islam, which refers to Islamic belief and practice reshaped by Western philosophical and religious constructs.  Patrick Sookhdeo puts a face to this kind of Islam:

Earlier this year I had a cup of tea with a Muslim Arab diplomat who was holidaying in London.  He shared with me his feelings about Islam.  He told me that he completely rejected the classical Islam embraced by modern Islamic extremists, particularly its violent aspects.  He longed to see his faith transformed by reason, liberalised and endorsing a separation of religion and state.  He wanted all Muslims to be able to function comfortably within a secular, plural society, indeed to embrace such a society. [Patrick Sookdheo, Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam. (McLean, VA: Isaac Publishing, 2007), p.8.]

The third variant is Islamist Islam--what we in the West have termed Islamic extremism, Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic terrorism, etc.  The face of this kind of Islam has been (and remains) Osama Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network. 

What's the score between these three contestants?  Firstly, classical Islam has not just dominated the past, it is by far and above the dominant intellectual, theological, social, and cultural manifestation of Islam in the world today.  If an Islamic believer takes his religion seriously in any way, he will be nine-tenths a believer in classical Islam.  Secondly, Islamism is a modernist expression of classical Islam, in the sense that it seeks to take classical Islam and apply it to the circumstances (political, social, and religious) of the modern world.  Thirdly, modernist Islam is intrinsically foreign to the religion.  Sookdheo again:

While there are small minorities of liberal and secular Muslims, the majority of the world's Muslims today continue to champion the traditional classical version of Islam as the only true God-given and unchangeable religion which must not be criticised, disparaged or tampered with.  The Islamist version of Islam which has recently become dominant in most Muslim societies further strengthens and radicalises such traditional views.  Islamism (revivalist Islam, political Islam, Islamic fundamentalism) is an integral part of Islam and its influence is growing rapidly across the Muslim world. [Ibid., p. 46].

How does the West's established religion--secularism--respond or cope?  Like a ship passing in the night.  It persistently misunderstands, misreads, misinterprets, and misspeaks when it comes to Islam and Islamism.  In what ways do the miscues and misinterpretations show up?

Firstly, the West is persistently condescending when it comes to Islam and Islamic peoples.  Condescending because Islam is a religion--and a backward and inferior one at that--whereas the West's secularism represents the escape of the educated and intelligent from the myths, errors, and superstitions of all religions.  Muslims are Islamic only because they are uneducated, ignorant simpletons.  When they become educated, learning to read, write, figure, and reason they will mature, putting away childish things such as their religious superstitions.  At this point, the West's chattering classes put Christians and Muslims in the same pigeon hole. 

Christopher Hitchens, for example, became a militant atheist--largely because of the barbarism exhibited in Islam.  Hitchens, however, placed Christianity and Christians in the same category as Islamic believers, lumping all religions together.  He spoke scathingly about the bloody nature of the Christian religion, requiring sacrificial death to escape from sin.  Christians and Islamic believers were ignoramuses and primitives alike in his view, hence his jeremiad against all religions in his advocacy of militant, secular atheism.

These condescending attitudes explain why intellectuals in the West are patient and tolerant towards Islamic peoples and nations.  They are tolerant in the same way that parents are tolerant and indulgent towards children who believe in fairies or Santa Claus.   The mindset is to humour them until they eventually grow up, and become, well, like us. 

Secondly, the West is triumphalistic with respect to Islam.  It believes it will win out in the end.  In other words, it is axiomatic to the secular mind that Islamic nations and peoples will inevitably become westernised, rather than the West become islamised.  The Western secularist believes in the arc of evolutionary development.  Islam (like Christianity) is ancient, and the world--as part of inevitable evolutionary development and progress--will eventually throw off more primitive and ancient thought forms.  They will inevitably be replaced by rational scientific materialism.  This represents the arc of human progress which is fixed and certain.  Either Islam and Islamic nations will become Westernised, or they will die out. 

Thirdly, the West believes that it represents a superior civilisation.  It believes that Western secularism is both rational and reasonable and grounded in the truth.  All men will eventually agree.  Not that there is anything wrong with religion in principle, of course.  It's just that it needs to be kept out of the public square, within in the privacy of the four walls of the mind.  All reasonable men will eventually come to embrace this. 

In summary, the West believes that the whole world will eventually travel the arc of history which the West has already traversed.  Once the West was in the thrall of Christendom, but as knowledge expanded and people became educated and able to think for themselves, they threw off childish superstitions.  What was once seen as an act of God, eventually and inevitably came to be understood as caused by a confluence of atoms.  Fundamentalism in Christianity came to be transformed into a personal moral code and private comfort food.  This is the arc which Islamic peoples and nations will inevitably travel.  We just have to be patient in the meantime.  In the end, they will look, think, and act just like us.  Herein lies the root of Western eschatological dogma. 

Patrick Sookdheo himself reflects this condescension, albeit not so triumphalistically:

We live in depressing times, as leaders, both political and military, whether in the Islamic or non-Islamic world, grapple with issues that seem to be insoluble.  The apparent intractability of modern conflicts, in particular Iraq, can easily lead to despair.  However, we can find hope not only in the Iraqi diplomat but also in countless other Muslims like him who seek the way of peace and reason. 

For this to be done, the Muslim world--its clerics, theologians, political leaders and umma--must rise up and engage in a radical transformation of Islam. [Just as we have done in the West with respect to Christianity, Ed.] This reformation will re-interpret the Qur'an so as to reject religious violence, will advocate a total separation of religion from the state, and will argue for full equality of all citizens under a law based on international norms not on shari'a.  This will include the reinterpretation of the Medinan Qur'anic passages on violence, the rejection of the hadith and summa as authoritative sources, and the adaptation of shari'a from a public legal code to a personal code of conduct and morality. [Op cit., p. 9f]

In other words, Islam is going to have to become like the secular West, which for its part rejected Christianity and Christendom in favour of a secular materialism, grounded upon an impersonal rationalism.   Islam is going to have to follow the same trajectory of development, if there is to be any progress. 

Yup, Islam and Muslim societies are going to have to become more like Sodom and Gomorrah.  They are going to have to learn how to tear babies in the womb apart, practise unbridled licentiousness, adultery, fornication, envy, covetousness, and theft in order to become secularised like us in the West. 

Maybe, just maybe a parable along the lines of specks of dust and logs in eyes might be the order of the day.