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Absolute Certainty
Think Islamic fanaticism arises from material want? Think again.by Bruce Thornton Coming hard upon the heels of the cartoon riots and the election of the Hamas terrorists, the destruction of the Shiite mosque of the Golden Dome in Samarra by Sunni jihadists, and the subsequent Shiite bloody retaliation, should put to rest Western delusions about the true nature of Islam. But dont hold your breath. Such displays of Islams violent intolerance have been coming thick and fast the last few decades, and can be found on every page of history going back to the 7th century, when Islam began its expansion with the blood of several hundred decapitated Jews. Yet still some Westerners, enthralled to their own materialist assumptions and multicultural we are the world sentimentalism, wave away this evidence and reduce this destructive behavior to any and every cause except the one that counts: spiritual belief. So we hear that the violence is caused by a lack of jobs, or a lack of liberal-democratic institutions, or frustration and insecurity about the dismal backwardness of most Muslim states, or wounded pride in the face of Western success, or resentment of Western imperialist and colonialist sins, or oppressive autocrats, or . . . take your pick. The same therapeutic mentality that thinks destructive behavior in teens results from a lack of self-esteem reduces the religious values of Muslims to mere epiphenomena, as the Marxists see it, symptoms of some underlying condition rooted in material deprivation, political impotence, or psychological trauma. The problem with Islam, however, is not a lack of self-esteem but too damned much. This is a faith fanatically certain of its truth and righteousness, the culminating vision of Gods relations with humanity, the ultimate meaning of human existence on every level, including the social and political. ... Meanwhile, all our attempts to bolster Muslim self-esteem, our desperate protestations of respect for their wonderful religion, our groveling apologies for exercising our own rights and values, our donning of the hair-shirt of racist, colonialist, or imperialist guilt, do nothing more than convince the jihadist that his spiritual superiority is justified. He looks at our appeasement, our fear, our rationalizations, our self-doubt, our unwillingness to defend the values we preach to the world, and sees the craven inferiority of the dhimmi, the conquered infidel who must acknowledge by his public actions the superiority of Islam, and who must pay the jizya, the poll tax that purchases his trembling security. Only we call the poll tax foreign aid or welfare payments, and the gestures of submission respect for diversity. We think our submission buys us affection and gratitude and respect for our interests, but in fact it purchases nothing except more contempt for our spiritual bankruptcy, more scorn for our belief that money and material comfort trump spiritual truth. The true measure of our failure adequately to respect spiritual motives can be taken from the Bush administrations steadfast refusal to put the crisis with Islam in these terms. The materialist left, of course, has been taught by Freud and Marx that religion is an illusion, so obviously we cant expect them to grasp how powerfully spiritual imperatives can move people. But when a self-proclaimed born-again Christian either cant or wont see the clash of spiritual goods underlying the conflict, then we know how thoroughly the materialists have done their work of marginalizing religion in the West. Go and read the whole article. Posted by: ed 2006-02-27 |
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