Posted: 25 Aug 2006, 10:37
Well, this is the refrain of all totalitarians since the day of the creation.Terence wrote: I reject your politics and everything they stand for. Liberalism is weak, it produces nations of slobs and wastrels. An alcoholic cannot be pussy-footed around, he needs to be forcibly cured of his addiction by strict measures then made to understand that those days are gone for him.
You will not expect from me or other liberals though that we will accept to be "forcibly cured". We have resisted "forcible curing" by totalitarian ideologies for the past 200 years, and rather succesfully -- which ought to induce some reflection on your part about the claim that liberalism was "weak".
To me, the evidence seems pretty overwhelming that the opposite is true. All over history, it have always been societies that were more liberal than its competitors where scientific, cultural, economic progress has occurred. And for a good reason: only liberal socities can allow talented indiviuals to strive unhampered for their scientific, cultural and economic ambitions -- rather than being forced by totalitarians into their concept of the "truly reliazable XXX state" (fill in whatever totalitarian idelogy you fancy).
This holds for ancient Greece and Rome. It holds for Chinese Tang and Song dynasties. It holds for the Italian renaissance states. And it holds especially for the modern liberal age that began at the end of the 18th century, which has brought about scientific and economic progress unrivaled in the history of mankind.
It even holds for the history of Islam: also there, scientific and economic progress has been greatest in the periods of greatest tolerance and least disrimination. Muslim Spain, for example, reached its climax in the late, "decadent" period of the caliphate of Cordoba, which at the time was far superior to the intolerant medivial fiefdomes of northern Europe. Thereafter fundamentalist sects from Northern Africa (the Almohads, then the Almoravids) -- that took issue with the worldy decadence and allegedly followed the scriptures more closely -- took over, and drove the intellectuals - such as Moses Maimonides - to the more tolerant parts of the world (in this specific case to the Sultanat of Saladdin in Cairo).
Here is my view on contemporary political Islam: sure, it has the ability to energize people. Many totalitarian idelologies have and have had this ability, there is nothing new with this.
But it has not used these energies for constructive purposes -- because it cannot. In the form of Islamic terrorism, political Islam is outright destructive. In the form of real-world attempts to erect states following Islamic prescriptions, like Iran or Saudi-Arabia of Taliban Afghanistan, it has created static societies that rapidly develop backwards (and Iran and Suadi-Arabia are only kept alive by the West's thirst for oil). In the form of politically inspired ideologists, it produces 20.000-word-theses and plentiful secetrian arguments from which exactly: nothing constructive can and ever will follow.
Political Islam is by no means singular in this regard; we have just seen a similar story play out with "truly realisable Socialism", based on the "objectively true" scriptures of Karl Marx etc.. The fate of political Islam won't be much different. The radical, totalitarian parts may be able to take power here and there; they will (necessarily) create a mess and then vanish, leaving behind lots of broken illusions. The more moderate facets will integrate into liberal society -- just as "Social Democracy" did.
Cheers, P