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Secular Humanism Hasn’t a Chance in Hell Against Radical Islamism. A Warning from Eurabia.
Last week, three Irish citizens, several Germans, one Portuguese, one Russian, a Belgian and nearly thirty Brits were murdered on the beaches of Tunisia. In France, an Islamic nutcase murdered and beheaded his former boss. In Kuwait, Islamic extremists bombed and killed more than two dozen people and injured many hundreds more. In the Syrian border town of Kobane, ISIS massacred at least 146 civilians. Since 9/11, hundreds of thousands of people (the majority of them Muslims) have died at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Every week, across the globe, exponents of Islamic supremacy murder and maim hundreds. From Boko Haram in Nigeria to Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Yemen; from Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank to ISIS in Northern Syria and Iraq – Islamic extremism is on the march.
The West is in theory fundamentally opposed to this deadly human virus, but in practice frighteningly paralyzed in the face of the greatest threat it’s faced since the end of the Cold War. As religion in the West declined in the latter half of the 20th century, it became impossible for secularized opinion-formers to take religion seriously. Religious belief and its power had little impact on their own hearts and minds, they seemed to think, so why should it matter to others? Their apostasy left them unable to deal with reality: For many people around the world (a growing number, too), religion is not merely for ceremony or funerals, but everything in life — and for some worth taking lives, too.
To their credit, some Western secularists have woken up to this deadly threat, with some calling for a unique response. They have called on Europeans and Americans to create a new Enlightenment, one that espouses secular values alone, to destroy Islamic and religious fundamentalism. The highest-circulation daily paper in Ireland recently featured a letter arguing that the key to defeating ISIS was not bombs but Europeans who espoused the secular values of the Enlightenment: freedom, tolerance, equality, and secularism. That’s my summary in my own words, but note: no religion allowed. It almost made me laugh, it was so naive.
The most famous female apostate from Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, fled Somalia for tolerant Holland. She lost her faith and became infatuated with Enlightenment philosophers and values. In her book Infidel, she wrote, “Society worked without reference to God, and it seemed to function perfectly.” But her views soon got her into trouble in enlightened, secular Holland. For you see, the Dutch elite portray themselves as freedom-lovers, but Ali discovered that when she used her to freedom to criticize Islam, the liberal elite in the Netherlands didn’t want to know. She found out to her cost that they would not protect her, either. This is not a problem of course unique to the Netherlands.
She wasn’t the first in Europe, and sadly she will not be the last. Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Geert Wilders, Oriana Fallaci, Kurt Westergaard also discovered that “enlightened” post-Christian Europe wasn’t nearly as friendly to freedom of speech or expression as advertised. Hate-speech laws and the threat of violence now pose an ever-present danger to those who challenge the status quo. Why?
William Kilpatricks, author of the great book, Christianity, Islam and Atheism, suggests a plausible answer:
Enlightenment values are inextricably tied to Christian values. This view has been put forward most forcefully on the Continent in recent years by Marcello Pera (former President of the Italian Senate, and an agnostic) and by Benedict XVI (not an agnostic). They have argued that the Enlightenment grew out of Christianity organically, as a tree grows from its roots. Cut off from its roots the tree dies.
This history teacher cannot but agree. The belief that every person has a value and dignity of his/her own, separate from his membership in a tribe or a society or his or her sex, originates in the Judeo-Christian biblical declaration that man is made in the image of God. As many historians familiar with this cultural fact know – this belief does not come from the thinkers of the Enlightenment, which stole this idea and stripped from it its religious foundation. These values too, which entered the world through Christians and Jews, are objectively true no matter how poorly Christians and Jews have failed to live up to them.
William Kilpatrick goes on to say:
“Secular societies can only assume human dignity and human rights. Now some secular thinkers today realise this, but some more believe this doesn’t matter. They hold that Enlightenment humanism emerged ex nihilo, or perhaps from spontaneous advances in science, reason, and ethics. Thus, they say, Enlightenment values have no need of God. Yet when confronted, these people can never explain why these values have fallen on hard times precisely in those countries that are most thoroughly post-Christian.”
Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion are defended much more vigorously in still-Christian America (even if it is weakening, perhaps, by the day) than they are in post-Christian France or Holland or Britain or Germany or Italy or Denmark or Austria or Ireland. Ask Geert Wilders, who is regularly arrested and threatened with jail for speaking his mind and criticizing Islam. He praises the United States for its First Amendment, which Holland and the EU do not have. His countrywoman Hirsi Ali likewise fled to America in fear of her life. Fallaci was driven out of Italy and to the US by Italy’s hate speech laws. The irony of fleeing to a country that many enlightened Europeans regard as backward is not lost on them.
Ironically, Europeans will find more freedom of speech in the Bible-belt of America — loathed by sophisticated, wife-swapping secular Europeans as a land of imbeciles — than in your average European university or public sphere. With their speech codes, hate-speech rules, and habit of banning “controversial” speakers or groups (pro-life, anti-Islam, pro-Israel, conservative, Catholic), European and American universities are among the least free institutions in Western society. In fact rather than being simply post Christian in some cases, they can appear and are anti-Christian.
In the same article, Kilpatricks states, profoundly:
What happened in the universities is essentially what happened in Europe. Both suffered a loss of faith … and in the process of losing their religion both became increasingly uninterested in cultivating or protecting genuine freedoms. Moreover, like post-Christian Europe, the post-Christian university has shown little ability to resist Islamization. Thanks to Saudi money and well-organized Muslim student associations, many universities are beginning to act like apologists for the Wahabbi faith.
So what does that mean for Europe? For its secular values? For its very survival as a centre of freedom and democracy?
It’s becoming increasingly clear to serious believers, as well as to agnostics and atheists capable of serious thought, that it is unlikely a secular Europe – even one that ascribes to a humanistic and enlightened form of secularism — can defeat radical Islam. It’s precisely this secular ideology that produced the spiritual, hedonistic, nihilistic and population vacuum in Europe. In many respects secularism is the cause of its own undoing. By focusing on solely this life and neglecting any possibility of the next, pleasure ultimately becomes the dominant life narrative and avoidance of that which causes he/she to reduce it. Atheists and agnostics have fewer children as they are expensive and time consuming. Europe as a result has to import people to sustain its entitlement-funded economies and do the jobs it will not. The population vacuum is now being filled slowly by Islam and its members across European countries who in no way share these “enlightenment values” but rather their own values.
In a wonderful piece for the Spectator last year (http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8932301/atheism-has-failed-only-religion-can-fight-the-barbarians) the ex Chief Rabbi of the UK – Dr. Jonathon Sacks argued sharply that Post Christian Britain and Europe is facing a tremendous crisis in the making which atheism has little answers too. He pointed out something which this article has tried to say – no society lasts long term without a cohesive religious viewpoint, that without it in the long term societies will wither, decline and waste away. He also whacked at the idea that secularism by itself could defeat the barbarian values of fundamentalism. He then issued this warning line that should people not rediscover their religious values and self confidence that history has shown the other side will not have same qua mes. – “The barbarians win. They always do.”
Having lost their religion, many Europeans are discovering that the very values they once thought precious are being undermined and that there is an unwillingness to fight and die for the protection of post-Christian values. But one religion at present and its followers are more than willing to fight and die for theirs. Europe is heading for a new Dark Ages. Christianity, much-maligned and mocked, will not be there to help us this time. But I hope and pray that we will see sense long before this nightmare scenario takes place.
Published in General
The Stalin and Hitler regimes were politics of the will — or the attempt to make the political based exclusively on will. I would argue that the politics of the will is not the same, nearly the same, as irreligious.
(Just as an interesting footnote to that: Stalin’s will against Hitler’s will – in a precise sense, they’re not fighting over anything. This is a manifestation of the confusion in their minds of making will political. Because strictly speaking, they’re not really in conflict. Even though that was the titanic battle of WWII.)
I think “secular humanism” is a problem here, and Claire’s request for a definition is something I endorse.
To me, President Obama is a Universalist. Universalism is enervating.
Our President is leading a movement that sees all religions as equally valid, and so we have no claim to superior moral authority. Also, as an Islamophile, he hearkens to a chorus of Islamic apologists who brush off the jihadiis as irrelevant.
Our President is very much a man of the Left, who seek the end of America as a superpower, and a new egalitarianism among nations in which America is no longer first among equals but just another impoverished third world irrelevancy. They hate the idea of America, and they will not fight for America, but rather work earnestly to undermine everything that is good about America.
Without the United States, the West is lost.
I’ve heard Christian ministers talk about the Christian mythology being a metaphor. Seems to be one of the latest ways to try to keep their every better-educated flock.
Then, of course, there’s the “Not John Cleese” take on Threat Alerts here.
From wikipedia:
Commentators will make up reasons why the winners won. The important thing to do now is to let the United States Marine Corps, the French Foreign Legion, and their other Western equivalents off their chains now, rather than later. My hope is that this is already happening, just without much attention from the American media, e.g., Operation Serval in Mali.
My own feelings on the long-term decline of the West is that it has more to do with economics than religion. Sclerotic regulation and failed progressive central planning morphing into naked clientism have slowed growth to a crawl or worse and made most people, myself included, pessimistic about our long-term economic future. Bringing children into such a world has less appeal, and having children has been optional for 50 years now. My bible is on my IPhone. Don’t confuse a decline in faith in church with a decline in faith in the Good News, which can now be accessed at all times, anywhere, by anyone.
There is a formula for turning all this around, just waiting to be rediscovered in the halls of Harvard and Yale. Free enterprise, trade, expression, religion, association can be reimplemented in the modern world and are here and there (parts of Eastern Europe), now and again. Remember 1984 in the U.S., when everything was growing- the economy at something like 7%, and hair even faster? My hope is that the West will begin to turn around once the current crop of stuck-in-the-1960s Students for Democratic Socialism alums and Anti-War Protesters are out of power. Viva la Reagan Revolution!
For an excellent description of what happened to European Christianity with the onset of the Enlightenment, check out Hans Frei’s The Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative. Frei is, ironically, a post liberal (the early stages of postmodernism) scholar out of Yale, so according to daily parlance for conservative evangelicals he would still be called a liberal (terminology takes awhile to keep up with fads of intellectualism on the Left). However, his insights into how the Enlightenment brought new underlying epistemological assumptions that created an inevitable separation from the Christian faith over several centuries are fascinating. What really struck me was what an agonizing and long process this was as different scholars chipped away at what had been a profoundly powerful and robust worldview of every aspect of Creation and that brought substantial moral power to the culture. The void that had to be filled when Christian scripture was ultimately rejected was vast…but since Enlightenment intellectuals hailed from cultures where a comprehensive understanding of how all of the world came into being an how everything in life fits together (unlike eastern religions, which simply don’t answer those questions on a substantial level), they filled the void with Marx, Freud, Darwin, etc., believing the answers would eventually arise through rationalism and scientific empiricism. Another interesting aspect is that early on in the Enlightenment, it was broadly understood that morality was profoundly important for the health of a society and that religious belief was profoundly important for morality.
Neither good values, nor the will to defend them, are the exclusive province of Christians. If there are to be religious or political differences among those who value Western Civilization (and, of course, there will be such differences), I would like to see those differences set aside and civilization unite against the common enemy, rather than squabbling among ourselves.
The most corrosive aspect of secular humanism is the lack of hope. The hope both of the future and the hope of a final judgment. Western values require a certain level of hope to operate. When the time for sacrifice comes in the defense of our values those that lack hope lack the conviction to fight. If I am called upon to show courage in fighting for Western civilization I have to have a strong belief that my sacrifice will truly help my children live in freedom and liberty or I have to believe that living a worth while life is so important that God will take notice of my sacrifice and honor and their is an eternal reward. Another form of this kind of belief is the belief that ones society and culture is so important it is worth preserving even at the cost of my own life. Essentially believing that my sacrifice will help other people’s children live free.
Secular humanism as practiced now have completely different motivations. Radical individualism has eroded the concept of society and children so people go increasingly without marriage and children. If your children are not going to follow you then you really need only concern yourself with the here and now and fight for your current situation. So sacrificing your life becomes counter productive to all your goals. You might still be willing to fight for a time but you anxiously want to to come to a accommodation that protects your comfort and wealth long enough for you to enjoy it.
God is not in the equation so you can expect no long term cosmic reward for holding to your principles so that is not a motivation to do what it right but to do just enough to make the rest of your life tolerable.
Society is not important. In fact society is full of evil, racism, genocide, colonialism, conquests, greed and exploitation. Why die to make sure that society goes on? Would not the world be better off if Western civilization just died? Who cares if that legacy lives on?
So the secular humanist, if they are a liberal, really only has to fight for his comfort or at least comfort for a few decades of life. Why fight for free speech if curtailing speech buys you some time? Why not compromise religious freedom again if it can just buy you a few more years? Why defend the Jews in Israel if throwing them to the wolves can buy you an extra decade or so. The older you get the more and more tempting it is to try and run out the clock.
I think that is the real threat. Secular humanists inherited a wonderful civilization built for them by others that knew what they were fighting for. Secular humanists entire time horizon is their own life span. Why fight if you can just buy a little more time?
I’ve heard some attempts at rigor, but it generally boils down to “being a nice liberal who doesn’t believe in God and who uses the word ‘reason’ to mean ‘unproven suppositions.'” Short version: I’m generally underwhelmed by anyone who uses the label and didn’t mean to imply otherwise.
More seriously, I think the key thing here is that much of Europe has developed a sort of malaise, the effect of which is that it’s difficult to identify what people are genuinely willing to fight, kill, and die for something outside of themselves. I think that is deeply connected with the decline in religion, but I’m not sure which way the casualty goes. And as Claire points out, the French provide an interesting example of a Western country that’s largely post-Christian, but has retained a sense of self and a willingness to fight.
They aren’t even the exclusive province of the West. This is not Middle Earth. Boundaries, in real life, are complicated.
I am not following you? A faith in God does not imply inaction, nor a failure to be proactive.
There are many non-religious reasons to fight due with the importance you place in your society and culture surviving. Many agnostic or atheist people could find such value in Western society and feel such a strong desire that civilization survives for others to enjoy that they would fight and die. However would you accept that much, not all, secular liberalism as practiced in America and large parts of Europe are attacking the very foundations of our civilization and there by making it less worthy of defense? When our college ages students are trained that the highest value worth fighting for it to protect their own sensibilities from unpleasant thoughts it seems to me we are training them to not stand up for principle but to buy time to keep themselves safe.
If we teach the young that American society is not that great and the legacy of Europe is oppression and evil we risk the fact that they young may believe us. Why would then they fight for such a flawed civilization. They would rather look at what makes them comfortable and then do just enough to try and retain that for their life times. In the long term the a determined enemy would beat them. I think this is partly why we don’t finish wars well and destroy our enemies despite our tactical brilliance and technological edge.
Wouldn’t they fight to correct those flaws? To be honest that seems to be what motivates the various culture wars in which Western society is currently engaged. Not disinterest, but the urge to make better.
Wrt ignoring the flaws of the West when teaching the young instead of honestly acknowledging them – consider the film ‘Reefer Madness‘ – which claimed that smoking marijuana resulted in rape, manslaughter, suicide and a “descent into madness”. If teaching includes stuff that isn’t true, and does so deliberately, the whole of what was taught loses credibility when kids discover the false bits.
In what ways have the French showed a willingness to fight? Sending peace-keeping troops to some of their former colonies in Africa doesn’t count. As far as I can tell, they’re not fighting in the most crucial sense- they are allowing their society to be slowly, perhaps now not so slowly, Islamized.
I get the sense their prevailing ethos, at least on this matter, was captured by Jacques Chirac in 2003 when he was giving us the shaft: that “war *always* means failure.”
I think you go to the greatness of Rome here. Romans did not primarily fight for religious reasons but for that fact that Rome was truly a wonder and something worth fighting and dying for. The Glory of Rome was incredibly important to her people. France still believes that French culture is awesome. At least some of the French are willing to fight and die for the French and the greatness of France. Is it enough to really mobilize the country to make sacrifices to keep France alive like in World War I or would there be a lack of will and confidence that helped the French army to collapse in World War II? I am not sure. But there is no doubt there is fight left in the French.
However in other parts of Europe and in America secular liberal humanism attacks the very foundation of our country and civilization as not be a very worth while enterprise. They are not impressed but what we have accomplished but how often we have failed. Radical individualism says that the highest value you have is your own sensibility and the time horizon you have is not future generations but making it to the end of you life comfortable. This idea I think does not prevent us from defending yourselves but instead limits our defense to making short terms accommodations to buy us time. The harder the enemy fights to keep us from victory the less likely we will want to pay the price for victory. I think that is the real danger.
Yes, courageous opponents of theocracies find insufficient free speech protections in Europe. It’s been that way for a long time. During the Inquisition, for instance.
If Christianity can evolve over a few centuries from violently enforced fundamentalism to a less-literal, more tolerant faith community, how about Islam? That religion’s battle with its own fundamentalists is the topic of Friday’s Wall Street Journal op-ed by Mr. Allam, the Grand Mufti of Egypt.
Yes, Europeans, Christian or secular, will have their hands full. What they need most is stronger economies, less burdened by parasitic socialism and debt. The immigrants are less likely to land with the fundamentalists as members of the middle class.
And speaking of the European middle class …
Paddy, like many a fine young Irish writer you’ve slipped a sparkling little treasure into your essay, which impels the reader to request more details.
You speak of “sophisticated, wife-swapping, secular Europeans” Really? Care to tell us more? Please don’t just admit to an overly broad stereotype, a base-less generalization. Substantiate, please. Enquiring minds want to know.
Of course they would fight to make things “better”. That is why we grow more socialist, less traditional and less rooted in the great values that brought us to where we are today. If the story of America is told as a story of failure instead of one of striving for greater success then you start to think the Constitution is not important, why not re-write from the bench it failed as a document anyway. If you can buy off the enemy even for a time by curtailing free speech why not do it? Free speech has been a failure anyway why not try something else? Religious freedom sure we founded the country to establish religious freedom but that only led to misery and failure lets try society with less religious freedom and see how that works. Fight to the end and defeat our enemies to preserve our nation, why? What good has America ever done anyway? Let someone else lead as long as I don’t feel personally threatened why make sure American survives in its current form? I am of far more value than Western civilization who cares if it falls as long as I am comfortable and right the society that produced me is rotten anyway it took us to 2015 to legalize Gay marriage for God’s sake! Who cares if our country goes on into the future as long as my own exit is a comfortable one.
If I could edit some of the above piece again id be far more specific about why humanism cannot win. Its too choppy as a post without this context. though overall theme can be seen.
Yes but they need a culture that will accept less parasitic socialism and debt. When the individual is more important than the principles of the culture where that individual resides then parasitic socialism looks really, really good. It was interesting how much the people of the American Revolution deprived themselves willingly of goods and services they desired. How wearing homespun became a matter of pride and wearing finer clothes suspect because they were willing to suffer for the “glorious cause” of liberty. Their belief in bigger ideals of political liberty and the hand of providence guiding them allowed them suffer and fight to win the war. The problem with liberalism, as practiced today, is that it can’t even inspire people to suffer enough to raise children. Atheist have less than one child per woman, just generic liberals have 1.6 children per woman. If their beliefs can’t even generate the desire for children than I doubt those beliefs can call up a great fighting spirit or even the fortitude required to have a freer market and creative destruction in the economy. When comfort because the highest goal we are seeking we lose the ability to sacrifice. I think that is our problem.
On the contrary, it’s a brilliant summation of some of the key themes of our time. Perhaps a separate post on “why humanism cannot win”? (With perhaps a definition of secular humanism — from this thread I can see I’m not the only one to struggle to define it.)
I was thinking more along the lines of why secular humanism cannot defeat radical Islam too Odysseus. Still I feel some of the original post (which was edited before it was put up on Main Feed) was and is too choppy and without necessary context. It could also be linked better together/ remove few sentences too. It needs still to be expanded to be better.
Thank you very much though O for your previous and above commentary. I appreciate it very much.
I suspect the key here is how that’s defined. I’m not in much doubt that once you pass a certain atrocity level (I’m not sure what that level is, but I suspect it’s probably fairly consistent across developed countries), the public becomes enraged and demands its government respond by force — to something. But France will fight for France, Britain for Britain, and Norway for Norway. Getting any of these countries to consider fighting for Ukraine is quite another matter. It’s a faraway country of which they know nothing.
Parliament rejected Cameron’s proposal to act against Assad in August 2013. Now Labour’s “indicating it may reconsider its position.” Why? Obviously not because the situation has grown worse for Syrians or because it’s only now dawned on people who watch these things closely that the Syrian war is a huge security crisis for European countries in the aggregate. Nor would Labour be dropping hints that it would vote differently on this matter had 30 Italians been killed.
People in Europe will of course still fight and die for their own countries. ISIS has been able to get as far as it has precisely because it’s been strategic enough and smart enough not to target Westerners. Now they’ve got a problem with undisciplined people who are “ISIS-inspired,” so sooner or later, we’ll have an “ISIS-inspired” attack in the US.
Then, I assume, a lot of pacifists will discover that they’re not pacifists anymore.
Brian Wolf is making some interesting points (especially about hope and transcendent meaning), but I would like to emphasize the importance to the leftist (secular humanist) of self-justified virtue. When the individual will is the measure of all that is good, the imperative to act on one’s good intentions for the world predominates.
This is why I emphasize “conceit” when discussing the Left. I don’t think Obama (and other left wingers) sees himself as the Great Destroyer of western civilization. I think he truly believes in his own vision for a more egalitarian world. To the zero-sum lefty mind, “fairness” for the weak and downtrodden must necessarily mean that successful, dominant western culture must subside. Obama wrought a transformed America and called it “good.”
David Horowitz calls this inclination “moral vanity.” I can’t think of a more apt term.
Some pacifists. Not a lot. Their identity as our moral superiors is directly tied up in their pacifism. They will not turn up at the recruiting offices, I’d put money on it.
Trink and I have associated with people who claim they wouldn’t pick up a gun to defend their own families against home invasion. That’s the conceit to which I refer. It’s so deep, it’s literally suicidal. These are the same kind of people “leading” our country toward the demise of the West.
I don’t see it. They’ve banned veiling. You’ll get kicked out of a French school just for wearing a long skirt. It’s Ramadan, but believe me you’d never guess here — no one is fasting. Polls show that only 20 percent of the people who identify as Muslim go to Friday prayers. There are no Muslim political parties. Newspapers here have no hesitation to print cartoons of Muhammed. This article is in French, but what it says is (basically) that 74 percent of French citizens find Islamic values incompatible with French values. France hit peak Islamization in 2005, I think. Any sympathy or political correctness remaining evaporated after the attacks in January.
I remember the strong anti-Iraq-War protests in 2003, when I was verbally assaulted in Au Pied de Cochon for being English. Whilst some of those sympathies remain, I’m not sure that protests on such a scale would happen today.
The far-right and far-left would protest in large numbers. But basically, France has been scared straight, so to speak. Quite a few people who thought American hyper-puissance was terrifying discovered that American hyper-impuissance is even worse.