| |
| Join Our Newsletter |
 Please Select sub-criteria |  |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
Dear Editor,
The articles in the first issue of "New Civilisation" seem to me to reveal two underlying issues for Islam and the West: the perceived moral degeneracy of the West, and Western secularism. The perception of moral degeneracy is at the root of the current war on Islam.
As cogently argued in the BBC series "The Power of Nightmares", the American neo-conservative Right resolved to counter their own perception of American moral degeneracy by uniting the country behind the deliberately contrived myth of America as the sole defender of humanity against Evil, saddling and bridling Christian fundamentalism to carry the populace behind it against whatever foe could, for the time being, be credibly represented to the populace as the personification of Evil: the Soviet Union in the first instance and then, when that collapsed, Islam, which had conveniently drawn attention to itself by vociferously and at time violently rejecting western values and cultures perceived as being morally degenerate. It is incorrect to identify this with militant secularism, since it is founded upon religious belief and pseudo-religious myth-making. Western secularism, indeed, has expressed its rejection of this war-mongering in the plummeting support for and confidence in America found across Europe. It does seem, however, that this situation can only be resolved if western secularism takes on, undermines and neutralises the mythologising neocons.
The problem of moral degeneracy arises, in my opinion, because the state left the Christian church with the monopoly on codes of moral conduct, both in America, where the church is excluded from government and state education, and Britain, where the church has withered away. Neither state seems ready to rectify this omission in the near future, preferring instead to erect increasingly draconian prohibitions on individual forms of behaviour as and when, without endorsing a coherent code of morally acceptable behaviour. The problem with codes of behaviour, of course, is how to enforce them without recourse to force or the credible threat of force (hellfire or incarceration). And the problem with the Islamic solution is that western secularism will not submit to the re-imposition of religious certainty in these matters.
Dr Robin, in his "Letter to Dr Carey", writes: "thoughts require only one of two judgements. Either they are true or false." Secularists deny the truth of this statement but, and this is the essence of secularism, they do NOT maintain that it is false. If it were false then that would automatically falsify all other statements which relied upon it not being false. The statement is simply not provable. It is in the non-provability of some statements that secularists find their freedom. Dr Robin writes "Uncertainty and doubt are the post-modern virtues of Western culture and there is no moral compass other than that" and makes it clear that this "virtue" is intended ironically by describing it as "the point of despair, such that the espousal of any particular belief is considered a crudity."
This misrepresents the situation. The POWER of doubt and the FREEDOM to doubt are the triumph and bedrock of secularity, not merely for-the-time-being "virtues". Uncertainty is a realm to be explored and mapped and opened up to human concourse. But these do not preclude the espousal of belief. By deposing firstly the clergy's monopoly on communion with God (through Martin Luther and the Reformation), and secondly the authority of the Church in interpreting and explaining God's works (through Galileo and the Enlightenment), western secular tradition has liberated the individual to quest and probe, choose and decide, and believe without fear or compulsion, from whatever perspective gives the best and most adaptable view. Islam will be adopted where the Christian church was rejected only if it clearly gives the best and most adaptable of all views available, and only if the individual is still free to wonder whether a better or more adaptable view might not be obtained by wandering off to explore elsewhere.
From Akmal Asghar's article, "Dear Gandhi", I learn that Islam can itself move, through the process of Ijtihad, to enlarge its perspective by embracing new circumstances. But since he goes on to say: "This does not represent changing Islam's principles to suit a situation, but rather applying these principles to provide a view on such situations" the apprehension in the secular West is that this process simply assembles the arguments for the application of pre-existing social constraints and prohibitions to new situations.
In summary, I believe Islam can offer the secular West a code of moral conduct and a perspective on God's work to augment current perspectives and possibly rectify current deficiencies, and to assist the secular West in countering neocon mythologising and Christian fundamentalist bellicosity, but the secular West will remain wary of Islamic social constraints.
Graham Hodgson
Kent
United Kingdom
| |
| |
| |
| |
1 2 >
Page 1 of 2 pages
| |
|
|
