The Watcher’s Council forum question for this week will be “Is Islam compatible with a free society?” I strongly suspect that my answer will be somewhat different than those of my fellow Watchers.
Of course it is. To the same extent as Christianity or Judaism is.
Islam is inclusive of more diversity of beliefs than Christianity and enormously more than Judaism. Within it is contained variants that are completely compatible with a free society, whatever radical conservatives within Islam and foes of Islam of other confessions might think.
The question is somewhat beside the point. For me the much more important question is whether Wahhabist/Salafist Islam is compatible with a free society and to that question the answer is “No” and, honestly, I think that those who profess the Wahhabist/Salafist versions of Islam would agree with me.
The additional challenge is that the Wahhabist/Salafist variants of Islam are on the rise, largely propelled by the money of Gulf Arabs, not just among the Gulf states but everywhere including the West. Something like three-quarters of all imams in the United States are foreign born, most of those are Saudis, and a distressingly large proportion of those hold to very conservative Wahhabist/Salafist beliefs.
Then the question is what is to be done? I’ve already expressed my opinions on that subject.
I would welcome the contributions of my readers on this subject so that I may better inform my own views. Please weigh in in the comments.
Kind of bored with whole subject, let’s elect someone who will quickly clean out the whole hornets nest.
I think you have it largely correct. I might refine it down to the Salafi-Takfiris, but only because they embrace violence so readily. The Salafist contingent might not all embrace violence, but they would have a hard time feeling comfortable in our society. Would make for a breeding ground for those willing to become violent so while they might be able to function sort of like the Amish by remaining largely self-segregated, their kids might be another story. SO I guess I end up agreeing with you after all.
Steve
For me, I think the issue is more that Islam is less compatible with a free society than Christianity and other major religions. Relatively. The five pillars of Islam seem quite compatible.
Ancient religions have a tendency to pull people back to their original source, inspiring a desire to drink from the original fountain. For Christians this takes most back to the Gospels which lack much political inspiration. For Hindus, assuming Hindu is a religion, the ancient texts assume a variety of “princes” and forms of government. Mohammad was a political and military leader of great significance, and the manner in which he governed received the specific imprimatur of the Koran. Beyond the five pillars there is jihad, and the Prophet’s example in war, both regular and irregular.
There is also the Prophet’s command “Let there be one community of you, calling to good, and commanding right and forbidding wrong; those are the prosperers.” (Koran 3:104) This is not a principle conducive to a free society, it imposes a duty, where practicable (as interpreted by the subsequent scholars), to compel people to do the right thing. In non-Muslim majority countries, practicality largely eliminates the obligation, but this anti-individual liberty principle remains a continuing challenge in Muslim-majority countries.
I would put forth the idea that fundamentalists preaching violence whether Salafist or Idaho separatists are incompatible with democracy since they refuse to accept any law they don’t make.
“Of course it is. To the same extent as Christianity or Judaism is.”
Well, according to Eric Voegelin you would be wrong to assume those faiths are equally disposed towards freedom because they are all faiths. In his monumental work Order In History he traced different worldviews that held sway in different points in human history. He outlines the way in which, at certain points in history a change away from what one might call “closed societies” to “open societies” (to borrow terminology from Henri Bergson.) Basically, Voegelin finds two such moments (with many pre-cursors) in the rise of philosophy in ancient Greece and the rise of Christianity in the ancient Near East. I have to admit, for myself, the last 20 years or so have done nothing to indicate to me that Voegelin was wrong.
(I would also suggest folks who are philosophically inclined to read Bergson’s Two Sources of Religion and Morality…. there is much there that speaks to this age.)
And according to Ernest Gellner and Bernard Lewis I’m right. See this post for an extensive quote from Gellner’s The Plough, the Book, and the Sword that is very much to the point.
Any present-day Christians who hold to the beliefs of Christians of five hundred years ago hold beliefs that are incompatible with a free society as well and some Muslims hold beliefs that are quite compatible with a free society. Consequently, saying that Christianity is compatible with a free society while Islam is not is painting with too broad a brush.
As I see things the problem is quite different: Islam is moving in the wrong direction, largely due to the infusion of money from Saudis and other Gulf Arabs who hold very rigid, very intolerant, and, frankly, nationalist views of Islam.
Well, I’m pretty sure Voegelin was more interested in Christianity in the 2000 years ago vein rather than the late medieval European political structures, i.e. taken as something that expresses a worldview as opposed to any parochial manifestation. In that sense Islam lacks universality and looks back towards the ancient cosmological systems in many regards, which isn’t really a surprise as it is a syncretic construction that incorporates many older systems of faith into it….. be it animism or Zoroastrianism. Indeed, you can see in the concern about the question of “origin” that animates the entire Sunni/Shia split an emphasis on insularity and even tribal qualities. You can also see it in the lack of religious freedom throughout the Islamic world, be it Africa, Middle East or across Asia. I think the “immaturity hypothesis” has a lot of evidence working against it. After all even in places where there is low social friction between religions in the Islamic world (places like Oman and Qatar) there is still formal governmental repression. It is hard to believe the uniformity of repression isn’t somehow related to Islam itself. If it isn’t then we are looking at one of the strangest of coincidences the world has ever witnessed.
I don’t support the “immaturity hypothesis”. In the parts of Africa and Asia where Sufism has traditionally dominated there has been more religious freedom than in MENA.
That’s the uniformity of repression in the Arab world. Are Malaysia and Indonesia equally repressive and undemocratic? Bosnia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan? Turkey and Iran were less repressive for decades until they fell under the influence of Islamism. Isn’t what you’re describing directly correlated with the influence of Arabs?