re: On Two Wings; and, is religion topical to foreign affairs?
1.This thread is about foreign affairs.
2.The primary issue today in foreign affairs is the WarOnTerrorism.
3.Our opponents in that War uses religion, constantly and exclusively, as their ideological justification.
4. Therefore, no matter how "emotional" the reaction may be, religion is part of this discussion. To exclude religion here, would be like trying to discuss the Cold War, while avoiding any mention of Marxism or the history of Communism.
5. The fact that people have strong reactions to the topic, simply means that it's an important topic.
6. some posts are best for moderated threads
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Almost all Americans react with disgust, when they learn the details about societies based on Sharia. The things that elicit horror, the things that convince us these Other people are deeply Alien, are:
1. Official Religions: the rigid, authoritarian power of religious leaders; Mullahs decide what is Right, for everyone else, and then they enforce it violently.
2. the treatment of women as chattel; forcing women to hide their bodies, imprisoning women in their homes, not allowing them to be literate or drive cars, teaching that women's bodies and sexuality are shameful things that must be hidden and suppressed.
3. the deliberate martyr as hero
4. the absence of personal freedom, or any freedom of expression.
5. the low priority placed on education and science; memorizing the Koran in a madrassah doesn't equate to anything a modern Westerner thinks of as "an education".
Yet, the above would describe any Christian society, until the American Revolution. All the old Universities of the West, from Oxford to Harvard, were set up as Divinity schools. Only in the 1800s did the Secular Humanists take over, making them into Temples of Science and Rationality. Official religions were the norm, with every detail of doctrine enforced by the power of the State. Bin Laden is not all that different, in temperment or methods, from England's Calvinist Cromwell, or New England's Puritan witch-burners. Individual freedoms and pluralism are dis-respected in today's Saudi Arabia, as much as they were in 16th Century Spain. The religious police in Iran today, had their counterparts in many Christian nations, from the 4th Century, when Emperor Constantine raised a cross in front of his army (he'd been told in a dream, to conquer under that symbol), till the 18th Century Secularists began wresting State Power from the Christians. When Jefferson wrote, "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal", he was challenging the Christian Monarchs and hereditary aristocracies that ruled (by Divine Right, they and their government-paid clerics claimed) in every other nation in Christendom.
So, the things we dislike about Islamic Fundamentalism today, are a part of our own cultural heritage. For the first 18 centuries of Christianity's existence, its societies looked a lot like today's Iran or Saudi Arabia. It was only when religion was tamed, put in a box, banned from exercising any Earthly power, that the Individual began to have any freedom.
The 20th Century was largely a struggle of the US-championed meme of MarketDemocracy against competing memes of Fascism and Communism. As soon as they were defeated, a new meme arose. It looks like the 21st Century, so far, is going to be dominated by the battle between the globally dominant Western post-Christian Secularism (again, championed by the U.S.), and an Islamic Fundamentalism which feels itself to be under siege in it's own homeland. This battle, this struggle between basically incompatible Ideas, will take place politically, culturally, militarily, ideologically, all at the same time. So far, we seem to be winning militarily, but losing the HeartsAndMinds contest for the world's billion Muslims. |
