The Decline of Islam?
Spengler at Asia Times writes about the cartoons, humor, doubt, literacy and demographics in the Muslim world, and dim prospects for an Islamic "Reformation."
Here's his conclusion:
Christianity and Judaism have adapted to doubt, the bacillus of modern thought, by inviting doubt to serve as the handmaiden of faith. No better formulation of this can be found than in Benedict XVI's classic Introduction to Christianity. The object of revelation, the believer, becomes a participant in revelation, in dialogue with the Revealer. This great innovation has not prevented the death of traditional, autonomic Christian belief, but it has left an enduring core of Christian faith in the West well inoculated against skepticism. As the pope explained, the eternal, unchanging character of the Koran that the Archangel Gabriel dictated verbatim to Mohammed admits of no doubt. Muslim belief is not dialogue, but submission. It is as defenseless before the bacillus of skepticism as the American aboriginals were before the smallpox virus.
That is why Muslims cannot respond to Western jibes at the person of their Prophet except as they did to the Jyllens-Posten cartoons. I do not sympathize with scoffers but, like Benedict, I see doubt as an adversary to be won over, rather than as an enemy to be extirpated. I would not have drawn nor published these cartoons, but when the lines are drawn, I stand with Western freedom against traditional authority. I write these lines over a Carlsberg and shall drink no other lager until the boycott of Danish product ends.
In a Spring 2004 City Journal essay, Theodore Dalrymple sounds similar themes:
My historicist optimism [about the prospects for Islamic reform] has waned. After all, I soon enough learned that the Shah’s revolution from above was reversible—at least in the short term, that is to say the term in which we all live, and certainly long enough to ruin the only lives that contemporary Iranians have. Moreover, even if there were no relevant differences between Christianity and Islam as doctrines and civilizations in their ability to accommodate modernity, a vital difference in the historical situations of the two religions also tempers my historicist optimism. Devout Muslims can see (as Luther, Calvin, and others could not) the long-term consequences of the Reformation and its consequent secularism: a marginalization of the Word of God, except as an increasingly distant cultural echo—as the “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of the once full “Sea of faith,” in Matthew Arnold’s precisely diagnostic words.
And there is enough truth in the devout Muslim’s criticism of the less attractive aspects of Western secular culture to lend plausibility to his call for a return to purity as the answer to the Muslim world’s woes. He sees in the West’s freedom nothing but promiscuity and license, which is certainly there; but he does not see in freedom, especially freedom of inquiry, a spiritual virtue as well as an ultimate source of strength. This narrow, beleaguered consciousness no doubt accounts for the strand of reactionary revolt in contemporary Islam. The devout Muslim fears, and not without good reason, that to give an inch is sooner or later to concede the whole territory.
Here's his conclusion:
Christianity and Judaism have adapted to doubt, the bacillus of modern thought, by inviting doubt to serve as the handmaiden of faith. No better formulation of this can be found than in Benedict XVI's classic Introduction to Christianity. The object of revelation, the believer, becomes a participant in revelation, in dialogue with the Revealer. This great innovation has not prevented the death of traditional, autonomic Christian belief, but it has left an enduring core of Christian faith in the West well inoculated against skepticism. As the pope explained, the eternal, unchanging character of the Koran that the Archangel Gabriel dictated verbatim to Mohammed admits of no doubt. Muslim belief is not dialogue, but submission. It is as defenseless before the bacillus of skepticism as the American aboriginals were before the smallpox virus.
That is why Muslims cannot respond to Western jibes at the person of their Prophet except as they did to the Jyllens-Posten cartoons. I do not sympathize with scoffers but, like Benedict, I see doubt as an adversary to be won over, rather than as an enemy to be extirpated. I would not have drawn nor published these cartoons, but when the lines are drawn, I stand with Western freedom against traditional authority. I write these lines over a Carlsberg and shall drink no other lager until the boycott of Danish product ends.
In a Spring 2004 City Journal essay, Theodore Dalrymple sounds similar themes:
My historicist optimism [about the prospects for Islamic reform] has waned. After all, I soon enough learned that the Shah’s revolution from above was reversible—at least in the short term, that is to say the term in which we all live, and certainly long enough to ruin the only lives that contemporary Iranians have. Moreover, even if there were no relevant differences between Christianity and Islam as doctrines and civilizations in their ability to accommodate modernity, a vital difference in the historical situations of the two religions also tempers my historicist optimism. Devout Muslims can see (as Luther, Calvin, and others could not) the long-term consequences of the Reformation and its consequent secularism: a marginalization of the Word of God, except as an increasingly distant cultural echo—as the “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of the once full “Sea of faith,” in Matthew Arnold’s precisely diagnostic words.
And there is enough truth in the devout Muslim’s criticism of the less attractive aspects of Western secular culture to lend plausibility to his call for a return to purity as the answer to the Muslim world’s woes. He sees in the West’s freedom nothing but promiscuity and license, which is certainly there; but he does not see in freedom, especially freedom of inquiry, a spiritual virtue as well as an ultimate source of strength. This narrow, beleaguered consciousness no doubt accounts for the strand of reactionary revolt in contemporary Islam. The devout Muslim fears, and not without good reason, that to give an inch is sooner or later to concede the whole territory.
posted by Kate Marie | 11:39 PM | Permalink
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4 comments
4 Comments:
I sometimes wonder if we aren't already seeing some sort of implicit Islamic "reformation" here in the States, where the radical base is relatively small and most Muslims are assimilating much more successfully than they are in the Old World. I doubt most American Muslims would admit it to themselves or to others, but in our prosperous society, religion does have to vie for time with work, school, community involvement, and other demands, including non-Islamic cultures and subcultures. My hunch--and that's all it is currently--is that American Islam is losing at least some of its rough and dangerous edges. I suppose time will tell.
I'm not naive about the irreconcilable differences between Western liberalism and Islam, but I am confident that the Muslims I've known--whether the nice clerk at my neighborhood CVS or my grad-school friend who's now a lawyer--don't want to kill me or destroy our society. Like the rest of us, they have too much invested in it--which may bode well, perhaps, for all of us.
Europe, though, scares the heck out of me.
I know what you mean, Jeff. Almost all of the Muslims I know here in the States seem, as you say, to be assimilating quite successfully. And the experience of living in Southern California sort of gives the lie to the idea of Muslims as some monolithic entity (which I think Dalrymple indulges in, to some extent). We have a very large Persian community here, and a large Arab and non-Arab (in addition to Persian) Muslim community, too. When I taught high school, one of my fellow teachers was a lovely old Persian man (he preferred "Persian" to "Iranian") with a Ph.D. in Math. He had Sadeeq and me over to his house for dinner once, and he showed us his beloved copy of the Shonomeh --it was quite touching.
Anyway, I think your hunch about American Islam may be correct. Maybe America will end up "protestantizing" Islam the way it has "protestantized" the American Catholic Church. I seem to recall having read that Muslim immigrants to the U.S. tend to be more educated and more affluent than Muslim immigrants in Europe (and thus perhaps more "Westernized" *before* they emigrate). I have no idea whether that's the case, but it sort of fits with what a good Italian friend of mine has told me about the way immigration works in Italy. That's completely anecdotal, of course.
What I thought was most interesting about Dalrymple's essay was his insight that the difference between the Christian Reformation and any potential Muslim reformation is that Muslims can see the long-term term consequences of reformation.
I do think American Muslims probably have much more invested in American society than European Muslims do in their society. And that's why, like you, I'm pretty frightened by the situation in Europe.
KM, I emailed the Rumpus a related article. Can't link to it because it's only available to paid subscribers.
Thanks, CIV! I'm glad you told me, because usually we leave it to the techie to check Rumpus e-mail, and she's had her hands full lately. I'll check it out.
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