Sharia and Secularism
One of my few readers with a real human name, Sean Brooks, asks this riddle:
Problem: how do we suppress jihadism in the US without also doing violence to Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms? And attempts to do so will at once meet accusations the Muslims are being persecuted for their “religion.”
My answer is that there is no answer
The Jihadist threat is perfectly, perhaps diabolically, suited to attack the West at the very spot where the West is weakest: our lack of an established religion. Due to the violence of the Reformation and Counter-reformation, the Enlightenment political theory called for a truce in the religious wars, and a cure for the corruptions of the national and established churches, by removing government power from church matters. Each community henceforth was to worship in its own way.
Unexpectedly, the atomistic individualism of the Modern Age ruled that communal worship was kaput: religion henceforth would be a matter of private belief and practice, like your taste in music. Neither your neighbors nor your family had any legitimate concern in your form of worship.
Unfortunately, the Communists and Nazis taught the Islamics during and after WWII the basic principles of cell warfare and political agitation and revolution. But he Jihadi have one advantage the atheist Nazis and Commies never had: their political party is treated, due to a legal fiction, as a church rather than as a political party.
The Enlightenment theory has no way to categorize Sharia-law theocrats. We cannot simply say ‘Islam is a political party, like communism, bent on world conquest and the destruction of Western civilization, and therefore should be fought using Cold War style counterespionage techniques’ for they are obviously a religion, worshiping Allah by means of killing women. Nor can we say, ‘Islam is a religion, like Mormonism, and is peaceful and perfectly compatible with Enlightenment notions of separation of Church and State’ for Islam obviously reject separation of church and state.
The plan of hoping Islam will change and suddenly stop being a theocratic faith and adopt for no reason the Christian belief that separates Caesar from Pope is worse than delusional — it is literally insane, like a man who believes spaceships hidden in a comet will carry his soul to paradise after suicide. Islam has always been theocratic and Christianity, with the sole exception of Cromwell the Protector, has never been.
There is no solution within the framework of modern assumptions about the role of law and faith. This is a cultural war and a religious war, to be fought entirely on a spiritual and psychological plane. The physical soldiering is either neutral or counterproductive: behold the expulsion of Christians from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The First Amendment, if it is interpreted to cover members of a Sharia-law political party bent on using violent means to overthrow the Constitution, directly hinders the prosecution of the War against the Terror Masters.
Only Christianity can defeat Islam. The main enemy of Christianity these days is Secularism. Islam is weak, and would have no power at all, were not the Secularists aiding, abetting, feeding, encouraging and protecting them, and giving or selling to them the means, both psychological and technological, to reach us, live and move among us, and take advantage of our laws and customs to destroy us.
The First Amendment was meant for Christians and Jews, men of different denominations but one tradition. We can live together in peace, tolerating our difference of opinion regarding matters of faith and morals. The Secularists and Mohammedans cannot live among us in peace. Our laws and traditions forbid us to make that discrimination or judgment between the two. We are required by our laws to nourish and encourage our enemies who have vowed our destruction to destroy us.
If the First Amendment is weakened in any way, the Secularists will use the excuse to persecute in pursuit of exterminating the Catholic Church primarily, and the other communions as convenient. Behold the effort to abolish Catholic adoption agencies because Catholics will not assist sodomites to become foster parents for orphans. The Sodomy Marriage movement is not directed at allowing sexually deviant people to live together with survivor’s benefits. It is primarily directed against the cultural norms, and eventually to give a legal excuse to force the Church into the same position in the public mind as the KKK: a despised organization of racists. These things are being done while the protection of the First Amendment is in place: can you imagine what would be done if it were suspended? The Pope would be placed on a terrorist watch list.
I can imagine no way to avoid the danger from the alliance of Secularists and Mohammedans. Protecting the First Amendment aids the Sharia-law faction to destroy the Church; abridging the First Amendment aids the Secularists to destroy the Church. Our hope cannot be in things of this world.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
