"Defending religious freedom, and supporting Muslim reformers who seek an Islamic case for tolerance and pluralism, reminds us that American civil society is built on truths about the dignity of human life." -- George Weigel, Newsweek
New-age conservatives, as I label them, always, no matter how sincere their intentions, get it wrong about Islam: they obfuscate the fact that Islam does not teach tolerance, it teaches intolerance—as a virtue. Hence George Weigel's suggestion that Muslims "who seek an Islamic case for tolerance and pluralism" are deserving of our accomodation of their abstract, nonexistent brand of Islam (as opposed to the violent, veridical Islam he writes about otherwise) within a Western Judeo-Christian society is, essentially, and to his discredit, a sophisticated imprudence.
Proof of this imprudence can be found in the bloody imbroglios now facing Western armies in Iraq and Afghanistan: religious Muslims, from the most simple to the most intelligent, from the Shiite to the Sunni, want nothing to do with Western style "freedom" and pluralism, nor with the democracy that was conceived in order to perpetuate its beneficence from one generation to the next.
Of course, there are those "moderates" who, as Michael Shearer points out, "are unrepresentative of the great mass of Muslims across the Islamic world." But for the most part, the vast majority of Muslims around the world, at the dictation of the tenets of their inhospitable faith, are discomposed at the thought of Western style freedoms taking root within their Islam-dominated nations. Islam, and the egregious cultures consequent of its imperious ideologies, has created within the heart of both simple and educated Muslims an infarct, as it were, incapable of relating to non-Muslim humanity—and especially to the humanity of Israeli Jews—as equal to theirs. This is the monumental problem new-age conservatives like George Weigal have neglected to address.
To fully appreciate the threat the religion of Islam poses to the Western world we must never, as Bat Ye'or explains, allow ourselves to be imposed upon by the litigious silence now constricting Europe: "And this past—the long agonizing process of Christian annihilation by the laws of jihad and dhimmitude—is a taboo history, not only in Islamic lands, but above all in the West. It has been buried beneath a myth, fabricated by Western politicians, religious leaders and scholars, in order to promote their own national, strategic, economic and personal interests." So soon as we forget Islam's past, we open a breach to Islam's future, the primary aim of which is to extirpate from existence all other cultures, religious and otherwise. New Age Conservatives fail to recognize that the only reform the religion of Islam allows its followers is an ever closer adherence to the primitive tenets and brutal cultural norms enforced by the terrorists of Hamas and the Taliban.
Samuel P. Huntington compares what he calls Islamic Resurgence to the Protestant Reformation. In his analogy he opines that both movements "are reactions to the stagnation and corruption of existing institutions; advocate a return to a purer and more demanding form of their religion." He writes that "The Resurgence is mainstream not extremist, pervasive not isolated." Poor noetic fool: in spite of the problems of violence and societal discord the fundamentals of Islam have created throughout the Western world and the Middle East, in spite of the fact that these same fundamentals are blamed by many Western intellectuals (excepting, of course, the Left and the Christian and Jewish pluralists) as the causes of this violence and societal discord, he insouciantly recounts in the context of John L. Esposito's praise of "the potential strength of Islam," that "another distinguished scholar of Islam, Ali E. Hillal Desouki, sees the [Islamic] Resurgence as involving efforts to reinstate Islamic law in place of Western law, the increased use of religious language and symbolism, expansion of Islamic education (manifested I the multiplication of Islamic schools and Islamization of curricula in regular state schools), increased adherence to Islamic codes of social behaviour…" While reading his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, I began to suspect that Mr. Huntington does not hold the religion of Islam and its barbaric, 7th century tenets as culpable for creating terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Taliban, and the Islamic Brotherhood—Muslim madmen who have also chosen to exercise "the potential strength of Islam," only most often against defenceless civilians.
As I read his book, I also began to wonder how much of Sharia Law Mr. Huntington is familiar with, especially when he boasts that "Islamists also often developed a substantial appeal to women…" Really. I'm sure dissidents from Islam such as Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali would deem statements such as his as being shamelessly sciolistic. Does this "scholar" know, for instance, as Irshad Manji (sadly, another believer is Islamic reform) points out, that "In most Muslim countries, marital rape, if recognized at all, isn't considered a crime." How do such androcratic manifestations, especially violently anti-feminist sentiment as has been defended by Islam's apologists for centuries, become "a substantial appeal to women." Moreover, how did such androcratic manifestations and violently anti-feminist sentiment escape the attention of an acclaimed philosopher as Samuel P. Huntington?
New Age Conservatives, in summation, are those who rightly condemn Islamic terrorism but who foolhardedly promise an Islamic reform. They get it right about the former but get it wrong about the latter. I'm not a Hebrew prophet, but I can say here with much conficence that there will never be an Islamic reform; and there will always be anti-Jewish hatred, bloodshed and sectarian violence wherever Islam becomes a preponderant religious entity. This is a fact of history. New Age Conservatives fail to acknowledge this fact, a fact that remains discombobulative for Islam's apologists.
