Ray Monk on Russell Volume II

In the May 17, 2001 issue of the NYROB is a review of Ray Monk's Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness 1921-1970.  Years ago I read Monk's biography on Wittgenstein and enjoyed it; so I was tempted by Monk's book on Russell -- until I got into the review:  Monk's first volume on Russell ends in 1921.  "Monk describes how Wittgenstein totally and finally destroyed Russell's confidence in his philosophical program, and in effect expelled him from his own Garden of Eden, which was mathematics and the philosophy of mathematics.  Wittgenstein had argued that there could be no complete foundation for human knowledge, whether in mathematics or in other domains."

I bought a used copy of Volume one, partly because I like Monk, but decided to pass on Volume II (even though a used "acceptable" copy is available for 96 cents from Amazon  The reviewer, Stuart Hampshire, writes "Monk's disillusionment and disgust pervade the last three hundred pages of the book, and many readers will feel that the long account of all the legal squabbles within the family is wearisome and excessive.  Russell knew that he had totally failed as a parent when John became estranged and finally went mad, and when his second son . . . was forbidden by his mother to speak to him after a divorce.  In Monk's family history the final horror came when Russell's granddaughter, Lucy, who was first loved and then neglected by him, burned herself alive after recording in detail the stages of her despair."

"D. H. Lawrence had told Russell that he was consumed by hatred and contempt and only passed as a man of peace.  Lawrence wrote early in the war: 'You are really the super war spirit.  What you want is to jab and strike, like the soldier with the bayonet, only you are sublimated into words. . . .  You are simply full of repressed desires, which have become savage and anti-social. . . .  As a woman said to me, who had been to one of your meetings, "It seemed so strange, with is face looking so evil, to be talking about peace and love.  He can't have meant what he said."'"

"Lawrence again: 'It is not the hatred of falsity which inspires you.  It is the hatred of people, of flesh and blood. . . .  Why don't you own it?"

In preparation for moving to Idaho (which will probably be delayed, but even so) I've been rather ruthless in getting rid of books.  There are certain subjects and writers I expect never to return to -- for different reasons, but I haven't gotten serious about the book case that contains my library of philosophy.  I don't think there is anything in there from Russell; so this volume by Monk will be the only one but Monk will be writing about Wittgenstein in it which I shall be more interested in, probably, than anything he has to say about Russell.  I'll keep the volumes I have by and about Wittgenstein.  After spending time with him I ended up with a view of his (or of my own developed after reading him) I am comfortable with: there is the truth of the Tractatus, but there is also a realm that one must pull a ladder up to -- if one chooses to do so.  In my case I choose it.  I'm not sure I could ever again associate myself with a branch of organized Christianity, but neither could I follow any particular philosopher.   The philosophers  I like best weren't looking for followers.  I make take with me to Idaho, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche (because of the poetry), Plato, and several that have written about philosophers like Hayden White, Joel Weinsheimer, and Ray Monk.

My Irish Terrier, Jessica, chewed up a volume by Spinoza: good girl!

I've gotten rid of everything on the American Civil War and the "War on Terror."  As to the latter which I was quite worked up about for a time, I'm reminded of the Cold War while I was working for McDonnell Douglas: there were critics writing that the Military and the industries supporting them were building up the formidability of the USSR unrealistically in order to get congress to approve weapons purchases.  Yeah the USSR was out there and they were doing mischief but historians have looked back at them and now know that they weren't as tough as they and we (in the military-industrial complex) argued.  At the present time our military-industrial complex does not seem to be so much after the sorts of weapons they were looking for when I worked for MDC and Boeing.  Now it is technological sophistication, better and more sophisticated spying equipment and drones.  But will Iran or a paramilitary group like ISIS every invade the US?  No.  If I were still working for Boeing I might be working on RFPs (Requests for Proposals) asking us to bid on electronic devices used for spying on terrorist organizations, and drones for bombing them.  I'd probably enjoy working on the proposals, but I'm not interested in that sort of thing now, in retirement, as I am in training my new pup (now 6 months old) and thinking about Idaho.

Idaho though isn't thinking of me quite yet.  My son will be undergoing an operation which will delay the move -- give me a bit more time to work on maturing Jessica, weed out books, kitchen utensils, silk plants (Susan liked them, I didn't), etc.

Hannah Arendt's Reflections on Violence

In the July 11, 2013 issue of the NYROB is an excerpt from Hannah Arendt's "Reflections on Violence," published in its entirety in in the February 27, 1969 issue of the NYROB and can be found here:  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/02/27/a-special-supplement-reflections-on-violence/

I'm sure I'm not alone in mistrusting bureaucracies.  My most recent hatred was directed against the medical profession during Susan's decline and death of a year ago.  Hannah Arendt in the July 11, 2013 excerpt does found her dislike on theory.  I imagine you can find the following in the 1969 article if you search it.  These are the passages I found most interesting:

"Finally, the greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence.  In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one could argue, to whom one could present grievances, on whom the pressures of power could be exerted.  Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant."

and,

"For progress, as we have come to understand it, means growth, the relentless process of more and more, of bigger and bigger.  The bigger a country becomes in population, in objects, and in possessions, the greater will be the need for administration and with it, the anonymous power of the administrators."


and,


"For the disintegration processes, which have become so manifest in recent years -- the decay of many public services, or schools and police, or mail delivery and transportation, the death rate on the highways and the traffic problems in the cities -- concern everything designed to serve mass society.  Bigness is afflicted with vulnerability, and while no one can say with assurance where and when the breaking point has been reached, we can observe, almost to the point of measuring it, how strength and resiliency are insidiously destroyed, leaking, as it were, drop by drop from out institutions.  And the same, I think, is true for the various party systems -- the one-party dictatorships in the East as well as the two-party systems in England and the United States, or the multiple party systems in Europe -- all  of which were supposed to serve the political needs of modern mass societies, to make representative government possible where direct democracy would not do because 'the room will not hold all' (John Selden)."

and finally,

"Again, we do not know where these developments will lead us, but we can see how cracks in the power structure of all but the small countries are opening and widening.  And we know, or should know, that every decrease of power is an open invitation to violence -- if only because those who hold power and feel it slipping from their hands have always found it difficult to resist the temptation of substituting violence for it."

Comment:  I have mistrusted the EU but without having a very good reason, perhaps nothing more than having lived long enough to see what seems to be the accomplishment of one of Germany's long-standing (military) goals by peaceful means.  But the cracks Arendt referred to have been appearing.  Administrative decisions have not all been well received by the individual nations.  I thought Britain moving in a wise direction with Brexit.  I have been inclined to credit the EU's immigration policies for the violence in Europe, but I can see Arendt's explanation for it as well; although I don't see the Islamist's' goal as being more political representation.  Her explanation is more suited to the resistance of individual EU nations to the EU's administrative policies on various matters.

Warfare then and now

On pages 358-9 of his chapter "The Fall of the Hunnic Empire," Peter Heather writes, ". . . the only coherent narrative is to be found in the Getica, which of course presents it as a triumph for the Amal-led Goths.  As Jordanes tells it, these quickly came to blows with the Suevi, over whom they won a great victory.  The Suevi then stirred up the other regional powers against the Goths, particularly the Sciri, who managed to kill Valamer in the first bout of fighting.  The Goths, however, took a ferocious revenge, destroying the Sciti as an independent power.  This led most of the rest -- the Suevi, the remaining Sciri, Rugi, Gepids, Sarmations 'and others' -- to unite against the Goths.  The result was a second great battle, on a second unidentified river in Pannonia, the Bolia, where as Jordanes tells us:

"the party of the Goths was found to be so much stronger that the plain was drenched in the blood of their fallen foes and looked like a crimson sea.  Weapons and corpses, piled up like hills, covered the plain for more than ten miles.  When the Goths saw this, they rejoiced with joy unspeakable, because of this great slaughter of their foes they had avenged the blood of Valamer their king."

Could a modern Western European rejoice "with joy unspeakable" over the sight of "corpses piled up like hills" and if not why not?  Up until recently we might have leaned toward thinking it a matter of culture and education.  Hitler and his Nazis might and probably did rejoice in that way, but we explain Hitler as a charismatic aberration and not at all like the more modern Germans who survived his excesses.  Smaller excesses such as those at Abu Grahib or the activities of Blackwater Mercenaries cause the modern Westerner outrage -- no "joy unspeakable" at the humiliation of a foe.

But we saw another culture, a culture that wants to behave in accordance with dictates established in the seventh century rejoice with joy unspeakable after the Twin Towers were destroyed.  Not all cultures in the world have moved from attitudes like the Goths.  I was among those who believed (and perhaps most still believe) that fifth century Gothic and 20th and 21st century Islamist excesses must be overcome by means of education and changes in culture.  However Nicholas Wade writes in location 1702 (I'm reading it in Kindle) of A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History ". . . some 10,000 years ago . . . Independently on all three continents, people's social behaviors started to adapt to the requirements of living in settled societies that were larger and more complex than those of the hunter-gatherer band.  The signature of such social changes may be written in the genome, perhaps in some of the brain genes already known to be under selection.  The MAO-A gene, which influences aggression and antisocial behavior, is one behavioral gene that . . . is known to vary between races and ethnic groups . . . ."

We can imagine how Natural Selection might not favor the MAO-A gene.  People who killed their neighbors, killed people on the highway in road-rage, blew enemies up with bombs strapped to their bodies, and those who join mercenary groups to fight around the world won't be having as many children as those without this gene.  In the meantime our laws prohibit aggression and antisocial behavior so if you have the MAO-A gene, too bad for you. 

Pregnant Sudanese woman sentenced to death for apostasy

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/05/15/pregnant-sudanese-woman-sentenced-to-death-for-apostasy/

This is a bit of a coincidence.  I’m reading about the Reconquest in Spain which leads up to the Inquisition and here we see part of the Islamic world about where the Spanish Inquisitors were in the 14^th and 15^th centuries.

Just as there is no law against stupidity, neither is there any world law against new “Inquisitions.”  After all it doesn’t seem as though the Sudanese are going out looking for violators.  There is no Torquemada amongst them as far as I know.  Of course this woman has four days to accept Islam.  Many of the Jews converted to Christianity during the Spanish inquisition as well and were called “Conversos.” 

If this woman converts and becomes a Conversa then interest will probably die, but if she refuses and is sentenced to death, world interest will continue.   If she is actually executed, I’m sure other mostly non-Islamic nations will want to take some sort of action against Sudan – probably not military.

We have long known that Islamic Fundamentalism wants to revert the modern Islamic world to what existed in the 8^th century.  For them to believe that isn’t very threatening.  Lots of people believe all sorts of things.  But for any of them to act upon those beliefs is, or can be with enough attention, very threatening. 

Edmondson on The Death of Sigmund Freud

Early last month I referred to an article by Mark Edmundson, “The Ideal English Major” http://chronicle.com/article/The-Ideal-English-Major/140553/   And a couple of days later decided I disagreed with a lot what he said and was puzzled by much of the rest.  I sent for two of his books. The first was The Fine Wisdom and Perfect Teachings of the Kings of Rock and Roll, a Memoir.  It was a “coming of age” sort of thing so I set it aside.  The second was The Death of Sigmund Freud, Fascism, Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Fundamentalism. 

I have a few quibbles with Edmundson’s text but as a final assessment decided he wrote a very entertaining and provocative book.  His “parallel lives,” Freud and Hitler, approach is very clever and perceptive.  Not only was Freud confronted by Hitler, by way of the Nazis in Austria in a physical way, but Freud advanced Psychoanalytical theories about the nature of “the Patriarch” which Hitler exemplified perhaps better than anyone in modern times. 

Freud spent his last years in England; which he loved above other countries.  He had the fame that he had never received in Austria.  Despite that he continued working on his Moses and Monotheism, a book he knew would antagonize Jews and Christians alike.  And here it seems that Edmundson is indicating that he finds in this book something beyond what has been described -- an even more subtle Freud and a kind of Freudianism worthy of being embraced by future followers (including it seems Edmundson himself).  Moses monotheism wasn’t simply “one God,” it was “one invisible God.”  God in Judaism had to be internalized and since he was this made the Jew more capable of dealing in abstract ideas than the non-Jew.  Jews make up a proportionally higher number of mathematicians, physicists and scientists in general as well as anything else requiring the ability to work well with abstractions.

While Edmondson doesn’t mention Fukuyama what he ends up describing is very like Fukuyama’s ending in The End of History and the Last Man.  Perhaps Liberal Democracy seems to be defeating all its competitors, but there is the Superman who may start history up again because “the Last Man” that lumpenproletariat Nietzsche describes is boring and worthless and incapable of being joined by the Ubermensch.  Freud said he never read Nietzsche because he was afraid he would find all his ideas in his writings, and his “Patriarch” sounds very like Nietzsche’s Ubermensch.  And the common people, both Nietzsche and Freud say, love him.

[From Edmundson page 241]  “Freud also warns against thinking that the fascist and fundamentalist are radically other.  Book after book, essay after essay, has come into the world trying to show what set the German Nazis apart from everyone else.  It was their political past, their culture, their military tradition; it was the debased Treaty of Versailles; it was the Depression of 1929.  The same scholarly ritual is visited on Japan . . .  We seem desperate to know how different these peoples are from ourselves.  Freud indicates that such thinking is delusory; we are all fascists, we are all fundamentalists, at least potentially.  Through authoritarianism we attain assurance and happiness – though of a certain sort.  It is only constant critical labor that keeps the worst political and religious possibilities from becoming fact. 

“Freud also suggests that fascism and fundamentalism, because of their amazing powers of attraction, will always constitute an emergency.  When a powerful or rich nation turns to either, something must be done, and the more quickly, the better.  One of the reasons that France and England may have been slow to act prior to the Second World War was that their statesmen did not understand the joy – no less a word should attach to it – that fascism offers people.  Inner strife dissolves and the people become powerful and strong.  They have never felt so good before and they will not readily give that feeling up.  Others see their joy and are drawn to it.  Such people make determined and potent foes.”

Edmundson, invoking Freud, is implying it seems to me that Fukuyama’s “end of history” should not have been emphasized in his book.  The “Last Man” cannot possibly be the ultimate last man because the Superman, the Patriarch, will always arise and give the people the joy of war.   There will always be clashes of civilizations because the people love war.

In referring to Islamic and Christian “patriarchal religions” that love nothing so much as a good war, Edmondson doesn’t deviate from history, but when he writes “The most powerful and most technologically advanced nation in the twenty-first century has a sizable constituency who wish for little so much as religious rule by the state, theocracy” he is misinformed.   That was advanced as a slur against Christianity a few years back but there was never anything to it.  The “constituency” referred to is called “Theonomy” by most, but there are other names.  It comprises a theological position maintained by a few theologians and their followers in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the Presbyterian Church in America and a few others, but it was never a predominate or even very influential view in those denominations.  Also, it has never grown.  If Theonomy is what Edmondson is referring to it does not in my opinion comprise a “sizable constituency.” 

If on the other hand Edmondson is referring to those Christians who call themselves “Fundamentalists” then he is wrong if believes they seek “religious rule by the state, theocracy.”  They believe in the near-term return of Christ and have no interest in religious rule by the state which would involve Christians remaining on earth longer than their near-term eschatology provides. 

Edmundson weakened his book by bringing in Fundamentalism in near the end.  He wants to have Fundamentalism stand for something all men are tempted by but he doesn’t make that case.  A much better case exists for the Superman, e.g. Hitler.   But if Hitler is the ideal modern Patriarch/Ubermensch, what does that make Hitler’s ideal followers?  Certainly not Fundamentalists.

Britain not going to bomb Syria "for now"

Ian Morris’s title is Why the West Rules – For Now and not why the British or U.S. rules.  Nevertheless the Parliamentary debate over whether to bomb Assad’s Syria for using Chemical Weapons, at least the part I watched, seemed to pertain to unilateral action on the part of Britain.  Britain had the power to bomb Syria; it had the fourth largest military force in the world according to Cameron and could punish Syria for using WMDs if it chose to.  In the end, Parliament didn’t support that bombing and Cameron said that he would abide by Parliament’s decision.

Also interesting were the comments of Lord Ashdown who called himself an “old warhorse,” but only in the sense of wanting to back the U.S. as it chastised Syria. 

In this morning’s (Riverside) Press Enterprise Victor Davis Hanson opposed Western intervention in Syria for reasons of Western interest: “In terms of realpolitik, anti-Israeli Authoritarians are fighting to the death against anti-Israeli insurgents and terrorists.  Each is doing more damage to the other than Israel ever could – and in an unprecedented, grotesque fashion.  Who now is gassing Arab innocents?  Shooting Arab civilians in the streets?  Rounding up and executing Arab civilians?  Blowing up Arab houses? Answer: Either Arab dictators or radical Islamists.” 

In my opinion, Hanson is right.  It is in the best interest of Israel, the U.S. and Britain to let things play themselves out in Syria without Western interference.  Maybe Assad crossed Obama’s “red line” in regard to Chemical Weapons, but so what?  If we oppose him too strongly that could favor the Islamists and we know what they stand for.  Of course no one in Parliament or the Obama administration is thinking in those terms: a Liberal Administration by definition wouldn’t.  Such an administration prefers to act on “Humanitarian principle.”   Jimmy Carter acted on “Humanitarian principle” when he opposed the Shah.  And when the US withdrew its support of the Shah, or at least caused the Shah to no longer think he had US support, Khomeini was able to take over and institute the Islamist regime which became the greatest threat to the West in modern times.  Do we really want to do that same thing in Syria?

Of course I am getting off track here by discussing what ought to be done by the West rather than the fact that these decisions are even in the hands of the West, whether Britain or the US.  Britain “rules” some of the time, as the nation who has the fourth largest military force in the world might well do (in Morris & Ferguson terms), but it “rules” as an ally of its former colony who now has the largest military force in the world.  Both these “rules” might seem somewhat shaky at the present time: they were expensively exercised in Iraq and Afghanistan, and soldiers and tax payers are weary – “for now.” 

This doesn’t in any way represent a decline in Western power in my opinion.  If in regard to some future problem Western interests are more clearly at stake, then these two military powers, the US & Britain, will still be capable of acting decisively.  But such acts will more closely fit Huntington’s paradigm than they will Morris’s & Ferguson’s.  Ruling the waves is much more expensive and difficult than it used to be.

The New Islamists

 

From Olivier Roy’s article:

The longstanding debate over whether Islam and democracy can coexist has
reached a stunning turning point. Since the Arab uprisings began in late
2010, political Islam and democracy have become increasingly
interdependent. The debate over whether they are compatible is now
virtually obsolete. Neither can now survive without the other.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/16/the_new_islamists?page=full

 

From: Lawrence

Olivier Roy’s ideas have been much discussed here. I read his Globalized Islam, the Search for a new Ummah, back in 2006. His name comes up often because he is among the most optimistic of the experts on Islam. He is probably the most famous of the optimistic commentators.

Also, Francis Fukuyama in his America at the Crossroads invoked Roy as representing his personal view about the condition of Islam, Islamism, etc. This isn’t surprising, although most people would place Fukuyama on the Right because Fukuyama argued in his The End of History that Liberal Democracy had defeated its rivals Communism and Fascism and there was nothing else out there but dibs and drabs that would be swept up by Liberal Democracy in the course of time. His The End of History was written in 1992 and at the time he saw no reason to take the Islamist threat seriously.

Of course if Fukuyama did take the Islamist threat seriously he would have to revise his “end of history” thesis and move a bit closer to the theory (Clash of Civilizations) of his mentor Samuel P. Huntington.

The “Islamism is a threat” versus the “Islamism is not a threat” debate does not break down cleanly into Left and Right camps. Olivier Roy and Francis Fukuyama argue that Islamism is not a (strategic) threat, but notice that they are both concluding that Islamism is not a threat to Liberal Democracy.

If we were to construct a spectrum of the views regarding Islamism, we would put “threat” at one end, quantified let us say as 10 and “not a threat” at the other, quantified let us say as “0.” Many earlier commentators (close to the “0” wing) wanted to see Islamists as just another “wretched of the earth” group, i.e., to view it in Marxist’s terms. Others thought that while it isn’t a serious threat, Liberal Democracy deserves some abuse for all the evil it did to its opponents over the years.

On the other end of the spectrum are people who believe we are in a life and death struggle. There is an international conspiracy involving dedicated groups bent upon the destruction of the West. Oriana Fallaci and Bat Ye’or are examples of that extreme.

In my own case I have fluctuated between, perhaps, 5 and 7, arguing that Roy and Fukuyama may be right but it is too soon to tell. Also, it is never prudent to assume that a declared enemy is in reality either benign or inept. Prudence demands that a nation’s leaders take declared threats seriously.

In Roy’s article we see “liberal” indications in the Islamic world, e.g., the advancement of women’s rights, but notice that he also says that the Xenophobia against the West has not abated. Throughout the Islamic world, hatred against the West, especially the U.S. and Israel has not diminished. So there is no reason to believe quite yet that a cornerstone of the Liberal part of Liberal Democracy, “tolerance,” is under construction. After all, the Soviets marshaled their women as did the Fascists. Granting equal rights for women does not necessarily make a nation more liberal.

Attacking Iran -- moral implications

My first note presented some controversies but didn’t take sides in order to imagine a time when all has been resolved, much as Fukuyama says that one day it will be.

Perhaps it would be helpful to consider both why we ought to attack Iran and why we should not. Matthew Kroenig argues (all the while considering the alternatives) that we should. Kroenig’s article, “Time to Attack Iran, Why a Strike is the least bad option” appears in the January/February 2012 issue of Foreign Affairs. Matthew Kroenig is “Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Exporting the Bomb: Technology Transfer and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons. From July 2010 to July 2011, he was Special Adviser in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, responsible for defense strategy and policy on Iran.”

While you can’t read Kroenig’s article online, you can read opposing responses to it on the Foreign Affairs web site, e.g., http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137036/alexandre-debs-and-nuno-p-monteiro/the-flawed-logic-of-striking-iran

The controversy bears a resemblance to war vs. antiwar arguments prior to World War Two. Certain French Generals can in retrospect be seen to have gotten it right. France should have poured more money into defense. French leaders were arguing that France couldn’t afford to, just as there are those today arguing that we can’t afford to do anything about Iran. But in retrospect, if we go a short way up the mountain, we can look back at the cost to France and say without fear of disagreement, that the cost would have been far less to France if they had beefed up their military and dealt with Hitler in the early days of his violations of Germany’s post-WWI agreements. But France dithered as Hitler became stronger and stronger.

We in the U.S. are going to do one thing or the other. We are going to attack Iran or we are not, and we cannot know in advance which option will be the least expensive. Yes, we can say with the pre-WWII French leaders, the cost of arms is expensive, but will we after our opponent (in this case Iran) does whatever it is going to do, decide that we have made the right decision, and are taking all possible expenses into consideration? In France’s case it is clear that they did not make the right decision. If we do nothing will we have to say the same thing later on? Or will a new, mini-cold war, seem preferable and indeed have its benefits?

If we do nothing, as Kroenig argues, and Iran develops nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia is sure to want them as well. We are going to have to step up and either dole them out to Saudi Arabia and our other Middle-Eastern allies, or promise we will guard such states with permanently deployed ship-board and airborne nuclear weapons. It might in the long run cost far more to keep a fleet permanently in the region than it would be to knock out all or most of Iran’s nuclear capability in a single strike.

Do we have moral arguments for a preemptive strike against Iran? Iranian leaders have threatened Israel and Britain. Are these and similar threats sufficient to warrant a preemptive strike from a moral standpoint? A case can certainly be made. Iran engages in human-rights violations. Such violations are intrinsic to Islamic Fundamentalism. Iran is guilty of intolerance against non-Islamic religions and has vowed to destroy both Christianity and Judaism, especially the latter. Hitler voiced similar threats in his Mein Kampf, but they were discounted as meaningless bluster until he actually carried them out. Are we justified (or more importantly is Israel justified) in discounting the words of Ahmadinejad?

There will be many in the military who realize that more money will be pumped into weaponry and maintenance if we do not strike Iran preemptively and Iran is allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. A preemptive strike would use a minimum amount of weaponry during a limited time. But if we do not strike Iran preemptively and have instead to guard the region indefinitely with our war ships and planes, the Navy and Air Force will be assured of ongoing congressional support for new weaponry and military forces indefinitely.

In our Liberal Democracy there are many agendas besides the moral one that we might consider. And one can by no means assume that the current democratic president will be less likely to conduct a preemptive strike against Iran the Republican he defeated. One can imagine Obama’s advisors weighing the options and telling him that the voting public isn’t going to want to unseat him if he is in the midst of a military action – a strike against Iran at the right time might be the surest path to reelection.

Hermann Hesse, Iran, and the future

On page 50 of Consciousness and Society, The Reorientation of European Social Thought, 1890-1930, H. Stuart Hughes writes, “. . . despite the seriousness of their scholarship and the dignity of their personal situation, the German professors were the prisoners of their own exalted station. The public treated them with a respect and followed their abstract debates with a passionate interest that may strike us as a little short of miraculous, but, like most of the state government that employed them, it expected of its professors a thoroughly conformist attitude toward the national community. And the professors were not too loath to conform: some of them might criticize with violence the internal character of the regime, but in the realm of foreign policy virtually all remained within the nationalist frame. . . .”

In earlier times there were ample examples of Barons opposing Kings, but those working on a Baron’s land could not hope to oppose the Baron with equal impunity. It isn’t until we move forward into the era of Democracy that such an act becomes practical, that is, that a person can oppose their nation’s foreign policy and expect not to end up in jail or worse. Germany in the time-period Hughes is interested in wasn’t there yet. Hermann Hesse was “there” as an individual. He supported the war effort at the beginning of World War One, but nevertheless in 1914 wrote an essay entitled "O Friends, Not These Tones" ("O Freunde, nicht diese Töne") urging a recognition of Europe’s common heritage. Hughes describes Hesse as moving to Switzerland because he was disgusted by the growing militarism.”

We can assume along with Hughes that the militarism of Germany in the two World Wars was unjustifiable, but we cannot build a principle from that and apply it to all nations. France as we know was not nearly as militaristic during this period. We can read about France in Roger Shattuck’s The Banquet Years. It was deeply influenced by anarchistic and pacifistic arguments. While it was right for Hesse to oppose Germany’s militarism, the pacifists and anarchists who opposed French militarism were (and I suspect few would disagree with me here) wrong. Had the French been supporting their military at the time the German’s were building theirs, World War II could, many historians argue, have been nipped in the bud, that is, reduced to a minor altercation.

At this point I propose a simplistic principle: It is good to support just wars but not good to support unjust wars. I assume here the rejection of the pacifistic argument. Few who lived through the conclusions of that argument during the Vichy period in France would wish to live it again.

A more serious objection to this principle has to do with its definition: How do we go about distinguishing just wars from unjust wars? If we are heirs of the Enlightenment we can argue that wars for humanistic and “enlightened” reasons are more likely to be just than those which are not. But some consider themselves “heirs” and take a Marxist viewpoint. Others reject the Enlightenment and think all points of view equal. Therefore these latter argue, the tyrannies of Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong Il must not be opposed militarily because all regimes, all governments, all people are equal.

In this, as in struggles of the past, the victor will get to write the histories. If Francis Fukuyama is correct and Liberal Democracy comprises the end of history then none of the objections from Socialists, anarchists, Islamists, Revolutionaries or any other political viewpoint will stand against it in the long run.

Moving up the mountain and standing above it all, if Fukuyama is proved right and every form of government opposing Liberal democracy is eventually converted; then in looking back at the various wars we fought or are about to fight, the arguments may hinge on whether it was better to fight a war or let matters play themselves out. We haven’t fought a war with Iran yet; so is it better for Liberal Democracies to fight against Iran and prevent them from using nuclear weapons, or is it better to let them have their weapons because in the long run they will become a Liberal Democracy and it won’t really matter what they do now? Think of Vietnam for comparison. Millions were killed during the war so those opposing the war could later say “I told you so.” But Millions of people were killed by the Communists after the war so those favoring the war could say “I told you so.” Since then Vietnam has been slowly mellowing. The day may come when historians write that nothing that went on during that war really mattered in the long run. Will it be possible to one day say that about Iran?

A difference between Vietnam and Iran is that the former admired Communism, a political philosophy that has been discredited in almost everyone’s eyes; while the latter is devoted to Shia Islam which is not likely to become discredited in a comparable way. Shia Islam has fought against Sunni Islam for hundreds of years. Perhaps they will fight against Liberal Democracy for as long? At the end of those hundreds of years (we are still sitting on our mountain) we may argue that we should have had a war in 2012 to deny them nuclear weapons. But if we do have that war, it may be (from our mountain perch) that some argue that it took a few hundred years longer but in the end Iran was just like Vietnam.

Thomas Hart’s “Reading”

http://web.mac.com/tehart/Jurassic_Rants/Books_and_Rants/Entries/2011/10/16_Reading.html

I attempted to respond to Thomas Hart’s blog note on “Reading” but his blog wouldn’t let me; so I’ll respond on mine. The first difference I noticed is that Hart’s reading program is much more organized than mine. Also, he seems to have mapped out the reading he expects to do in the next ten to twenty years he expects to live (barring accidents). I haven’t any such schedule but my doctor leads me to believe I can expect to accompany Hart through most of the next twenty years – barring accidents and illnesses such as cancer which doctors can’t always anticipate.

Hart is a Carmelite secular, we read in his note “About Me” at http://web.mac.com/tehart/Jurassic_Rants/About_Me.html . He maps out the books he expects to enjoy through his remaining years which savors of monastic order, and a resting in secure belief. I on the other hand am Presbyterian, of a denomination consistent with the early American Presbyterians whom George III accused of starting the American Revolutionary War. The early Presbyterians were Calvinists and it was Calvinism, according to Max Weber, that gave rise to the “Protestant Work Ethic.” I didn’t become a Presbyterian until I was in my early 40s, but I always had something like the Protestant Work Ethic. I wouldn’t have been out of place in Pre-Revolutionary America.

I have a library like the one Thomas Hart has in his basement. Perhaps we have some of the same books. I have a substantial number of Catholic Theologians on my shelves, but perhaps not the same ones that Hart has. I had a very brief interest in Aquinas after having been called a Thomist by a Process Theologist (Process Theology was derived from the Process Philosophy of A. N. Whitehead). At the time I knew little about Aquinas and nothing about Process Theology. In the course of debating this fellow I rectified my lack of knowledge about the latter. My counter arguments caused this fellow to resort to insult in lieu of anything better. I set out on a mild quest to read Aquinas, but in the absence of a strong incentive my interest waned. I respect Aquinas and have nothing against him. I would probably have studied him at greater length were I Catholic. I recall that Martin Heidegger was offered a permanent position if he would agree to being a Thomistic philosopher. He rejected the offer believing it would confine him too much. I had no such worry in my own study of theology. I was doing it on my own without oversight.

While I haven’t too terribly much about theology on my blog, I studied it for about eight years back in the 80s. When I retired to San Jacinto in 1998 I may have had one of the largest theological libraries in town. Mine was larger than the pastors of the Presbyterian churches we were members of. I came to Presbyterianism because it was closest to what I believed not because I was brought up in it. I was never interested in restricting myself to Presbyterian writers. On Church history I was very impressed by Jaroslav Pelikan, especially his five-volume series on The Christian Tradition. In an on-line discussion at the time a Professor at Westminster Theological Seminary (the seminary which educates most of the conservative Presbyterian pastors) asked me why I spent so much time with Lutherans so I asked him for the names of some alternatives. He mentioned Heiko Augustinus Oberman. I appreciated Oberman but I appreciate Pelikan as well. As to Catholics, I have appreciated among others Aloys Grillmeier’s series Christ in Christian Tradition, although I have not read Grillmeier in a systematic way.

My theological presuppositions, a la Cornelius Van Till, were centered on the canon. I accumulated a wide variety of points of view on each book of the Bible and would pit them against each other as I studied. After several years and numerous debates, the aforementioned professor asked me why I kept on. I wasn’t going to be a pastor or teach in a seminary, so why did I keep studying? I didn’t have a good answer.

Later I thought the best answer was that I was a sort-of lower-case polymath who believed in the ethic presented in Proverbs which isn’t inconsistent with the Protestant Work Ethic, “whatever thy hand finds to do, do it with all thy might.” I haven’t just studied theology. I mastered engineering well enough while working in aerospace. At one time I was interested in geology and went on rock and mineral expeditions in Southern California. At another time I was interested in astronomy and cosmology. I had an even greater interest in archaeology and anthropology. Later I became interested in genetics. I am very interested in European, Medieval, and Military history. All the while I have been interested in writing. I have written a good deal of poetry and seven novels, although I haven’t tried in any more than a perfunctory way to get any of them published.

Unlike Hart, after 9/11 I studied Islam, Islamism, and the histories of the most of the Muslim nations. I tend to do everything with “all my might”; which sometimes translates into a great deal of thoroughness.

Most recently I have taken up an interest in photography. One can see a number of these photographs at www.lawrencehelm.smugmug.com A few people asked if I intended to become a “professional photographer.” I understand that to be asking whether I intended to sell any of my photographs. I told them I did not. I am pursuing photography with the same intensity I have pursued everything else. Perhaps because of this I have become a better photographer than most people are willing to become, but so what? Christians are taught not to compare themselves with others but to compare themselves with themselves; which I take to mean an evaluation of one’s gifts and then a determining through self-examination whether one is exercising them to the fullest extent. I haven’t the comfort of a Carmelite framework. When I expire during the next twenty years, I hope to be “about my father’s business.”

Trilling on T. S. Eliot, III, (the Christian State)

Eliot [in his The Idea of a Christian Society] “projects a society which will exist in three aspects – what he calls the Christian State, the Christian Community, and the Community of Christians.  This more or less Platonic triad exists, as we cannot help observing, on a rather minimal Christianity.  For the heads of his Christian State Mr. Eliot demands no more than that they be educated to think in Christian categories; for the rest, the criterion of their value is to be the same to which statesmen have always submitted – not devoutness but effectiveness.  ‘This may,’ Mr. Eliot says, ‘frequently perform un-Christian acts; they must never attempt to defend their actions on un-Christian principles.’  The State, we are told, is Christian only negatively and is no more than the reflection of the Christian society which it governs.  Yet this society itself is not permeated by a very intense Christianity.  The mass of its citizens make up the Christian Community and their behavior is to be ‘largely unconscious’ – for, because ‘their capacity for thinking about the objects of faith is small, their Christianity may be almost wholly realized in behavior: both in their customary and periodic religious observances and in a traditional code of behavior toward their neighbours.’

“What is left, then, to give the positive Christian tone to the Christian Society is what Mr. Eliot calls the Community of Christians, a group reminiscent of Coleridge’s ‘clerisy’ but more exclusively an elite, constituted of those clerics and laymen who consciously live the Christian life and who have notable intellectual or spiritual gifts.  It is they who, by their ‘identity of belief and aspiration, their background of a common system of education and a common culture’ will collectively form ‘the conscious mind and conscience of the nation.’  They are not to constitute a caste and so are to be loosely joined together rather than organized, and Mr. Eliot compares them in their possible wide effectiveness with the segregated in intellectuals who now write only for each other.”

COMMENT: While Eliot’s Christian-State “solution” may be naïve and impractical, his recognition of the problem is valid.  I recall a great number of discussions and debates where an act or a course of action was asserted to be good or evil, but when I questioned the basis, the set of assumptions, the standards that must or at least ought to bear upon such an assertion, the discussion lapsed into smoky vagaries.  Some of what Eliot is advancing is based upon solid ground, that is, the principles that have been developed through the Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian moral tradition. 

The Marxist-Left has no such system of principles.  Consequently when they gained power in Russia they “winged it,” they made up principles as they went along.  We saw the effects of that in the U.S. known as “the party line.”  There was no univocal “principle” but merely a “line,” what happened to be believed at the present time, and could be, and frequently was, changed during Stalin’s reign and that of the leaders who followed him.  This “Left” was negatively constructed.  They attempted to set up a Leftist society based on a Marxist oriented Party Line, but it succumbed to raw human nature with its desire for power.  Nietzsche’s “will to power” provided a better description of the mature Soviet society than Marx’s Communism.

Rampant Christianity gave rise to Western Civilization as we know it.  Christian moral principles remain good and reasonable.  Lest I be accused of vagueness, consider the Ten Commandments (using the KJV) which comprise the great foundation and example of Christian morality:

I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the Land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.  Thou shalt have no other gods before me.  Gloss:  While belief in God cannot be mandated, those how do believe in the Christian God will have no “other Gods” and that in today’s terms would include such beliefs as Fascism and Communism.  We might observe from a practical standpoint that Liberal Democracy, which rose out of Christianity in the West has proved more effective than anything developed from those who ran after “other gods.”  Fukuyama’s “End of History” is consistent with having “no other Gods” from a pragmatic standpoint.  Fukuyama may be an atheist, I don’t know, but on this one point, he is consistent with the idea of having no other gods.  More specifically we see Marcel Gauchet’s The Disenchantment of the World, describing Christianity as the necessary foundation of the West.  It was during the developmental period monotheistic.  Since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, this commandment has been weakened in the West.  Not only are nations prevent from mandating Roman Catholicism or Protestantism, they are prevented from mandating any religion (or God).

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”  Gloss:  This two might best be considered applicable only to practicing Christians.  In a Liberal-Democratic Society, non-Christians should be permitted to create graven images if they like.

“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.  Gloss:  Again, belief in God cannot be mandated in a Liberal Democratic society, but it seems to be a demonstrable fact that beliefs are handed down from father to son and one generation to the next.  And if an erroneous or impractical belief is handed down, there will probably be consequences.  I think here of the anarchism that arose in Europe prior to WWI (see Shattuck’s The Banquet Years, The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I), and the pacifism that developed later.  Those erroneous and impractical beliefs resulted in destructive consequences to those nations who most strongly held them.  People who inherited these beliefs were of the third and the fourth generation of those who originated them.  France in 1940 was perhaps the most pathetic example of the consequences of following the erroneous beliefs of ones’ foolish ancestors. 

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”  Gloss:  This applies to believers.  Someone who speaks frivolously of the God he claims to believe in would not be seen as sincere in his belief by other believers.

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”  Gloss:  This applies to believers in different forms.  Some Christians follow the Jewish tradition and keep a literal day as holy.  Some Christians say the Jewish Sabbath was translated into the “Lord’s Day” by Jesus.  Some Christians invoke Hebrews Chapter Four and see the entire Christian era as “the Day of the Lord,” as we rest from our own works and trust in Christ for our salvation.

“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”  Gloss:  This commandment in a Christian Society would be applicable to all, believers and unbelievers. We can see it at work in many of our social programs.  We in the West have taxed ourselves in order to provide Social Security and Medical aid to our old people. 

“Thou shalt not kill.”  Gloss:  Pacifists have used this commandment to justify their position, but a majority of theologians exegete this commandment to mean “Thou shalt not murder,” and murder is against the law throughout the West.  We cannot say it is a universal law because many societies do permit murder.  For example, consider the “honor killings” practiced by Conservative Muslims.  Judicial executions and killing in war are not considered (by a majority of theologians) to be proscribed by this commandment.

“Thou shalt not commit adultery.”  Gloss:  This commandment is applicable to believers.  No Christian church I know of condones adultery.   Some churches may excommunicate those who commit adultery, probably not for a single lapse that is repented of, but in perhaps all denominations the serial adulterer will have difficulty remaining a member in good standing.  In some churches adultery, adultery leading to divorce, remarriage after divorce considered as adultery are treated as “unforgiveable sin”; however, the only sin described as unforgiveable in the New Testament is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which is usually interpreted as repudiating an act of the Holy Spirit when he is urging someone to turn to Christ and be saved. 

“Thou shalt not steal.”  Gloss:  This seems to be a universal principle, applicable to believers and non-believers alike.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”  Gloss:    This is often considered to mean “thou shalt not lie,” but that would be true only if it was expanded to say “thou shalt not lie in such a way that someone else is harmed.”  Going to court and lying about someone in such a way as to cause them to be convicted of something they didn’t do would be a violation of this commandment, but any lie that hurt someone else would also be a violation.  On the other hand if you said to the Gestapo in 1943 “there are no Jews hiding in my cellar,” when your cellar was chockablock full of them,” you would not be in violation of this commandment.  We have laws against slander that are consistent with this commandment.  Telling your sensitive aunt Margaret that her ugly hat looks great would not be a violation of this commandment (unless your false statement caused her to injure herself or someone else).

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbours.”  Gloss:  While this commandment has not been translated into law in any Western nation as far as I know, most of us can appreciate that it is wise advice (even for those who don’t accept it as a commandment).   “Keeping up with the Joneses is a cliché for bankrupting oneself in pursuit of neighborhood status.  Coveting someone else’s wife has led to many a divorce, not to mention ruined lives and the occasional murder.  Coveting a neighbor’s car might cause one to buy a car he really can’t afford resulting in eventually having it repossessed or perhaps resulting in personal bankruptcy.  Being content with what one can afford and what one has is an attitude to be cultivated as a wise alternative.

The Liberal Imagination

Billy,
I’d be interested in why you don’t “agree with any of this,” and what precisely you mean by “this.”
I read the entire article being referred to.   It is at http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Lionel-Trilling---the-critical-imagination-7178  the author of the review, Gertrude Himmelfarb writes that Adam Kirsch (the author of the book she is reviewing) never encountered Trilling when he was an English major in the mid-1990s.  I on the other hand did encounter him as an English major in the mid-1950s.  I can’t bring anything to mind that I would call an influence, but after reading the article I suspect that I have been influenced because Trilling seems to me little more than common sense; which probably implies a stronger influence than I would have readily conceded. 
I suspect that some of your disagreement regarding Trilling has to do with the definition of “Liberal.”  I am a Liberal in the Trilling sense.  Many modern “Liberals” might better be called Leftists, because they aren’t Liberals in the Trilling sense.  Trilling fits the definition, I believe, of “Classical Liberalism.” 
I suspect you are thinking of politics, and Trilling wasn’t mostly about that.  But Himmelfarb lapses into politics as well, drawing a connection between Trilling and Irving Kristol.  Somewhat in that theme I’ve continued a bit more in Hitchens’ Hitch 22.  He got to events surrounding 9/11 by page 244, writing “As time had elapsed, I had gradually been made aware that there was a deep division between Noam and myself.  Highly critical as we both were of American foreign policy, the difference came down to this.  Regarding almost everything since Columbus as having been one continuous succession of genocides and land-thefts, he did not really believe that the United States of America was a good idea to begin with.  Whereas I had slowly come to appreciate that it most certainly was, and was beginning to feel less and less shy about saying so.”  I have been critical of much of what Hitchens did and said in the earlier part of his book, but not here. Here Hitchens is “Liberal.”  Chomsky of course is not.
Similarly, Paul Berman on page 206 of Terror and Liberalism, on page 206 writes, “. . . the totalitarian movements flourished also because the climate of modern life allowed them to flourish.  To arrive at a situation in which Nazis have conquered Europe, you not only need to have the Nazis themselves, you need to have all the other right-wing movements that look on Nazis in a friendly light, and you need to have left-wing opponents like the anti-war French Socialists, who cannot see that Nazis are Nazis.  To end up with Stalin tyrannizing half of Europe, you not only need the cagey Soviet leaders and the Soviet tanks, you need the naïve trade union leaders and the ignorant workers, who believe what they are told.  You need the foolish fellow travelers who never intend to be Stalinists themselves but who convince themselves that liberal societies are halfway fascist, anyway, and that communism is a forward step, for all its imperfections.  The totalitarian movements arise because of failures in liberal civilization, and if they go on flourishing, it is because of still more failures – one liberal failure after another.
“Right now [Berman’s book was copyrighted in 2003] we are beset with terrorists from the Muslim totalitarian movements, who have already killed an astounding number of people, mostly in the Muslim countries, but not just there.  What have we needed for these terrorists to prosper?  We have needed immense failures of political courage and imagination within the Muslim world.  We have needed an almost willful lack of curiosity about those failures by people in other parts of the world – the lack of curiosity that allowed us to suppose that totalitarianism had been defeated, even when totalitarianism was reaching a new zenith.  We have needed handsome doses of wishful thinking – the kind of simpleminded faith in a rational world that, in its inability to comprehend reality, sparked the totalitarian movements in the first place.  We have needed a political left that, in its anti-imperialist fervors, has lost the ability to stand up to fascism – and has sometimes gone a little further down the slippery slope.  We have needed a cynical application of ‘realist’ or Nixonian doctrines over the decades – the doctrines that governed the Gulf War of 1991, the doctrines that even now lead to friendly ties with the most reactionary of feudal systems.  We have needed an inability to cling to our own liberal democratic principles, an inability even to articulate those principles.  We have needed a provincial ignorance about intellectual currents in other parts of the world.  We have needed foolish resentments in Europe, and foolish arrogance in America.  We have needed so many things!  But there has been no lack – every needed thing has been here in abundance.”
Do Hitchens and Berman have Liberal Imaginations?  I think so.  Do they always seem Liberal to me.  No, they don’t, but that is in the nature of our Liberal Democracy.  There is no expectation that every individual and every corporation will behave with this imagination at all times.  If we tried to guarantee such a thing we would have to leave Classic Liberalism and embrace some sort of Totalitarianism and not come anywhere near what we sought to achieve. 
There is an anti-totalitarian thread in the South.  The Civil War for many there was more a matter of State’s rights than Slavery.  The founding fathers sought to guarantee the smallest government (government being in a sense totalitarian) in order to provide citizens with the greatest freedom.  Most things in our Liberal Democracies seem a mess, but in a moral sense Liberal Democracy is “white” and totalitarian governments and movements who hate Liberal Democracy are “black” – it seems to me.  Is that a moral judgment?  I don’t know.

Karl Albrecht Schachtschneider on Sharia Law

Karl Albrecht Schachtschneider, Professor of Law at Erlangen-Nurnbert University, and well-known critic of the EU is here interviewed by the RT: http://rt.com/news/eu-doomed-failure-schachtschneider-051/

Schachtschneider has a poor opinion of the European Union and its currency, but at one point the reporter asked, “Multiculturalism has failed, say European leaders. But what are the actual consequences of that failure?”

Schachtschneider responded with “If by multiculturalism you mean people from southern Europe, Germany, northern Europe, Hungary, Poland, Russia, all European nations, living together, then no, it has not failed. There is no problem at all.

“The problem is with the Muslims. It’s not the people who constitute the problem, but Islam. And Islam comes with Muslim people. They build active groups that promote Islam and advocate the establishment of Sharia law. And Sharia law, particular its criminal section, is absolutely impossible for European relationships. We have religious pluralism in Europe and not a single religion is dominant. But Islam is the religion that tolerates another religion as long as it has no power.

“Secularization was the biggest political event for Europe. It meant that state and church were divided and no one is entitled to impose its religion. I am determined against any tolerance of Sharia law. But it has nothing to do with tolerating Muslim people.”

Shariah court established in Antwerp

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/radical-islamic-group-opens-shariah-court-in-belgium/

A shariah court has been established in Antwerp, Belgium to handle marriage disputes and inheritance issues if requested by the parties involved in lieu of a civil court hearing.

The court opened at the insistence of a radical Islamic group called “Sharia 4 Belgium,” according the Belgian news outlet Het Laatste Nieuws (HLN). . . .”

“De Coninck did concede, however, that it would have been better if this particular Shariah court weren’t championed by radical fundamentalists– in this case, with a history of calling for the Islamization of Europe and support for the proclamation of Al Qaeda terrorist Anwar Awlaki.

“In the past, Sharia 4 Belgium has promoted online Jihad videos and invited Belgians to convert to Islam lest they wait for the Islamic conquest and become forced to live out their lives as dhimmis (distantly second-class citizens).

“Despite that ideological background, the group claim to be non-violent.

“Belgian right-wing politician Vlaams Belang does not accept that this Shariah court is merely a benign mediator, and said recently that (translated from HLN):

“‘This court is a new step in the Islamization of Antwerp… you certainly can’t have a parallel system of Sharia courts developing besides the official judicial bodies, which judges based on principles which clash with the values of our democratic constitutional state.’”

COMMENT:

One of the primary duties of any government is to protect its citizens against enemies.  Belgium didn’t do a very good job of that prior to World War II and isn’t doing a good job now.  What mind set or set of assumptions could Belgium leadership have to invite a group with an announced goal of converting Belgians to Islam before the Islamic conquest to set up shop?  This group obviously believes in that conquest and looks forward to it.  It also believes it appropriate that after the conquest unbelieves should be dhimmis.  There is no softness in Islamic Fundamentalism.  Its goal is to conquer the world for Islam; which includes killing infidels when necessary and later, after the conquest and the killing, making some of the survivors dhimmis. 

I shouldn’t pick on Belgium.  Other European nations are doing the same thing.  They don’t believe Islamic Fundamentalism is a threat.  But then most of these nations didn’t believe Hitler was a threat.  Later, after WWII, many in France turned to Communism as a preferable alternative to Liberal Democracy.  And when the USSR failed many intellectuals turned their interest to the philosophy of Heidegger – an opponent of Liberal Democracy.

Maybe Fukuyama will be proved correct.  Maybe Liberal Democracy will ultimately supersede all other forms of government, but France, Belgium and some other European nations seem bent on trying everything else first. 

Lawrence

Muslims cheered on 9/11, many still do

http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/flashback-muslims-cheered-911-attacks-video/

“Many Muslims celebrated on 9/11. Many continue to celebrate. Some even want a huge mosque at Ground Zero. Never forget. Never submit.”

“ The area also includes two luxury apartment high-rises that erupted into cheers when the World Trade Center fell on 9/11. Law enforcement has dubbed them the “Taliban Towers.” Investigators routinely find posters and computer screen savers celebrating Osama bin Laden as a hero.

“ Down the street is a Saudi charitable front for al-Qaida once run by bin Laden’s nephew. The U.S. branch of the dangerous Muslim Brotherhood is in the same office park. Farther down in Alexandria is the Saudi madrassa that’s graduated several terrorists, including the al-Qaida operative who plotted to assassinate President Bush.

“ Agents on the ground working the inordinate number of terror cases in the area say it’s no less than the base of operations for the bad guys in America”

COMMENT: Too many anti-American, pro-anyone-who-is-not-American Liberal/Leftists are promoting the same sort of thing David Horowitz has railed against in his Unholy Alliance, Radical Islam and the American Left. Nothing seems to have changed. I recently criticized some disruptive Islamist actions only to have Leftists try to turn the tables on me: It was really disgruntled Jews and Brits who were disruptive. Another searched a You-Tube of the disruption by Muslims of the Zubin Mehta concert in honor of the Queen of Denmark and declared “I don’t see any Muslims.” Maybe he didn’t, but why say that as though the story was being concocted to persecute poor innocent Muslims?

Muslims who attack any part of the West, or seek to undermine it through their “Creeping Sharia” should be opposed. We should also oppose those who defend the nefarious acts of anti-Western Muslims. Those who assert that 9/11 was caused by Americans or Jews are doing just what recent Leftists did on a smaller scale who blamed the disruption of the Zubin Mehta concert on Jews and Brits.

Imagine what our present world would be like if after December 7^th 1941, people like our present-day leftists railed at us for causing the attack? Those poor Japanese only attacked us because we were cutting off their supply of oil. We shouldn’t have done that. We should have left their Chinese enterprises alone. It isn’t our business what they do over there. Who are we to challenge the Japanese? Do we think we are better than they are? That’s pure racism!

That, of course, didn’t happen. We went to war against the Japanese, defeated them, and in subsequent years saw them adopt Liberal Democracy patterned on the U.S. model.

After 9/11 Bush launched a war against the Islamists. Islamists didn’t have a single name and it took some research to get their various elements straight, but it didn’t matter. We were able to figure out who are enemies were. We attacked them in Afghanistan and in Iraq. America’s Left-Wing enemies verbally attacked us on cue for not having dotted our i’s and crossed our t’s; what did Saddam Hussein, they demanded, ever do to us. Claire Berlinski’s grandfather was dying at the time (http://www.city-journal.org/2011/eon0909cb.html ). He assessed the attack on 9/11 in these words: “They must pay for it with a city.” We took more than a city. We conquered two antagonistic nations and set them on the road to democracy. Leftists are looking under the table and the other way, but there is every reason to believe that Bush’s “war on terror” provided one of the causes, if not the main impetus for the “Arab Spring.” -- yes, quite a bit more than a city.

In a review of Hitch-22 in “The Australian” David Free writes, “While Noam Chomsky and others construed the attacks as a more or less straightforward response to US foreign policy, Hitchens, seasoned by the Rushdie affair, called the hijackers "nihilists . . . at war with culture as a whole". One of his earliest ripostes to the Chomsky position has stuck in my mind. Noting that September 11 happened to mark the anniversary of the 1973 military coup in Chile -- a CIA-backed enormity that gave democratic Chileans every right to resent the US government -- Hitchens wrote: ‘I don't know any Chilean participant in this great historical struggle who would not rather have died -- you'll have to excuse the expression -- than commit an outrage against humanity that was even remotely comparable to the atrocities in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.’”

One day after the attack, Hitchen’s wrote, “It was as if Charlie Manson had been made God for a day.”

The Left of course will never agree with such assessments. They will never say anything good about the U.S. or the West. That is a given so there is no point trying to placate them – any more than there is to placate Islamists, shrouding the fact (as the Obama administration seems to be doing) that it was Islamic forces bent on subverting freedom that brought down the twin towers so as not to offend members of the Muslim Brotherhood and their ilk.

An editorial in this morning’s “The Press-Enterprise” begins “America’s institutional memory of Sept, 11, 2001, is shaping up as a sense of loss without context. There seems to be an effort to forget, whether out of revulsion or political correctness, that 19 religious fanatics drove jets full of people and fuel into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and crashed another in Pennsylvania. As the nation pays its respects today to the 2,977 innocent victims of the attacks, Americans should also remember that the attacks arose from a totalitarian impulse that free people must defeat.” Some of us do – I don’t know how many.

Chuck Norris speaks out against Creeping Sharia

It is not only the radical Leftists who foster the creep of Sharia law, it also the people unwilling to speak out for fear of Islamic violence. As we might expect, Chuck Norris is not afraid to stand against these avowed enemies of Liberal Democracy. http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=288297#ixzz1JsaAap7H Here are some excerpts from his article, the first in a series: “. . . many Americans watch on video a Middle Eastern woman allegedly caught in adultery, buried in the ground up to her head and being stoned to death, and think, ‘That could never happen in America.’ But they fail to see how Shariah law has already been enabled and subtly invoked in our country, and that any such induction like it is brought about by understated lukewarm changes, like a frog boiled in a kettle by a slow simmer. . . .”

“In the end, it seems to me we have a choice to believe that Shariah law is, or is not, a pro-Islamic system of civic, religious, moral and social laws, which is being used to run other countries and governments but is not being (nor ever will be) invoked to run ours, based upon the belief that our constitutional republic and Bill of Rights is inferior.

“Many think we should just drink the Kool-Aid and adopt the "very small" changes of Shariah law, as Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra described them when being questioned about its influence in Great Britain: "We're looking at a very small aspect of Sharia for Muslim families when they choose to be governed with regards to their marriage, divorce, inheritance, custody of children and so forth."

“Then again, maybe Sheikh Mogra explained between the lines everything we need to know when he said, "It is very complex. It is not as straightforward as saying that we will have a system [in Britain]. We do not wish to see a parallel system or a separate system of judiciary for Muslims. …”

COMMENT: Norris’s writing is a little hard to follow, but his point seems to be that Muslims have their foot in the door in various Western nations with their “very small” Sharia Law, but their ultimate intention is to replace all previous Legal Systems with full-blown Sharia Law.

Why even bother to say this obvious thing about what Muslims believe? They, after all, admit to this belief. We need to speak out because Left-over Lefties from the Cold War attack anything the U.S. says or does in its own self-interest vis-à-vis Radical Islam or any other enemy. And it is in America’s self-interest to oppose Creeping Sharia.

Listen to these Lefties for only a short time on such a subject as this and you will find them blaming the Jews and blaming the U.S. for acts perpetrated by Radical Islam. This is the same thing Radical Islam does: blame the Jews and blame the U.S. The Lefties claim that they are not in cahoots with Radical Islam and maybe they aren’t. But if they aren’t, why do they dress in the same closet?

Muslims disrupt Israeli philharmonic

One can find a fuller description of what happened at http://yourjewishnews.com/10666.aspx  Muslims around the audience popped up at different times.  Here is a description of the disruptions:

“The concert started as normal and then "a group of 10 to 15 people stood up in the choir stalls [behind the orchestra]," said London lawyer Paul Infield, 56, who was in the audience. “Each person was carrying a white sheet on which had been drawn a letter spelling out 'Free Palestine.' “The group was singing words to the tune of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" and went quietly when ushers removed them, he said.

“Infield continued his account, saying that many in the audience of close to 6,000 booed, hissed and shouted "Get out!" and "Go home!" along with obscenities. The audience also responded to the protest with slow hand clapping, which is considered an offensive gesture in Britain. Subsequent disruptions, which eventually numbered about half a dozen, were played out in a similar fashion. A man who had silently displayed an Israeli flag was also removed by Royal Albert Hall staff.

And yes, those attending the concert and wishing to hear the music were upset:  “According to Infield, the final disruption of the evening involved some shouting from the gallery about the siege of Gaza, which was silenced with a punch thrown by an adjacent audience member. Both parties were escorted quickly from the premises.”  The man who threw the punch probably isn’t as tolerant of creeping sharia as some in Britain seem to be.

“The British newspaper the Telegraph reported that the group Palestine Solidarity Campaign was responsible for the disturbances.”

And here is a blog I haven’t encountered before http://citizenkeep.blogspot.com/2011/09/islams-war-on-western-culture-bbc.html: “Islamic degradation of civil societies. What was once beautiful and precious is now the battleground for subhumans and savages. In a disgusting display of Islamic Jew-hatred, the BBC was forced to cancel its broadcast of the BBC proms concert at London's Royal Albert Hall for the first time in history.”

That’s rather harsh.  Where does this Citizen Watch person live, I wonder?  After a description of the disruption, not dissimilar from the one above, he concludes, “This is not new -- so many performances by Jewish artists and musicians are disrupted and ruined by these savage neanderthals who would have the whole world living under the bloody and brutal sharia, devoid of love, music, art and happiness.”

I must protest his use of the term “Neanderthals.”  I suspect they were much better behaved than anti-Neanderthal prejudice has allowed.  Recent genetic discoveries prove that they passed some very useful genes down to us.  Muslim disrupters aren’t passing anything useful to us as far as I can tell.

Lawrence

From: lit-ideas-bounce@freelists.org [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@freelists.org] On Behalf Of Lawrence Helm
Sent: Friday, September 09, 2011 5:37 PM
To: Lit-Ideas
Subject: [lit-ideas] Muslim disrupt Israeli philharmonic concert for Dutch Queen

http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/muslims-disrupt-israeli-philharmonic-and-concert-for-dutch-queen-videos/

Maybe you in Britain are used to this and take your usual offense at those of us in the U.S. expressing shock, but someone needs to be ashamed of this sort of behavior – if not the Muslim perpetrators then the permissiveness that permits them to misbehave.

If rather than condemn these clowns you excuse them, and via Google find something comparable happening in the U.S, I’ll save you the trouble.  I would feel the same way if it happened here, and it probably will.  Left-wing Liberalism is everywhere.

Re: Islamism and Creeping Sharia

Lawrence had written: "No, no, no. You may have used the term 'Jihadis and Salafists,' but those deriving from the teachings of Sayyid Qutb prefer 'Islamists' and those deriving from Saudi Wahhab teachings prefer Salafist."

OW (Opposing Writer): My attempt at nomenclature was not meant to label every fundamentalist group but rather to distinguish those groups which strive to establish an Islamic society, and with it a hierarchy of religious and political authority, from those groups which strive to create the conditions where Muslims can practice a pure Islamic faith, without interference from authority, whether religious or political. Lawrence lumps the Khomeini 'movement' with its principle of vilayat-e faqih, or the guardianship of the jurist where both religious and political authority is placed in the hands of a divinely appointed individual, with Qutb and his rejection of the very idea of religious authority.

OW continues: If the goal is to understand whether Sharia courts are a threat to Western civilization, then confusing these two kinds of groups is unhelpful. Whatever you want to call them, groups like al-Qaeda would strongly object to Sharia courts since they presume that some Muslims have authority over other Muslims, and that there is a need to use reason to apply Sharia. For this and other reasons, members of al-Qaeda have declared Shia Muslims as takfir, or heretics, and deserving of death. Lawrence may object to the labels I assign to these two different groups but that does not change the fact that these are two different groups.

Lawrence had written: "Bin Laden was raised a Wahhabi. While fighting against the USSR in Afghanistan he formed "the base" aka Al Quaeda. He was influenced by Sayyid Qutb, but then Sayyid Qutb was a member of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers led by Hassan Al Banna who had been influenced by the Wahhabis who later chose to call their Islamic sect, Salafism."

OW: Yes, Qutb was at one point a member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood but left the movement. The Muslim Brotherhood grew out of discontent with the corruption and poverty of Egyptian society and aimed to create an Islamic social organization that provided healthcare, education, support for the poor. The aim was to create a truly Islamic society, not necessarily an Islamic state. As far as I know, the Brotherhood has never officially embraced violence and today explicitly rejects violence and supports democracy. Qutb, and those who follow him, have explicitly embraced violence as a means for overthrowing any authority that threatens the purity of the Islamic faith. For those who follow Qutb, there is no interest in establishing a government or social organizations that would improve the living conditions of Muslims. There is then an important difference between those who follow Qutb, like many in al-Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood or even the official Wahhibism of Saudi Arabia. Again, if the goal is to understand the role Sharia courts might play in the West, it is important to understand these kinds of differences.

Lawrence now writes: What happened to all the other areas of disagreement, I wonder? I didn’t just disagree about labels. Have all the other matters been recast into this new argument? Notice the title Islamism and Creeping Sharia. How does that relate to your attempt to "distinguish those groups which strive to establish an Islamic society, and with it a hierarchy of religious and political authority, from those groups which strive to create the conditions where Muslims can practice a pure Islamic faith, without interference from authority, whether religious or political? Why not continue to see the agreement or disagreement between Islamism and Creeping Sharia? What you present is a new subject.

The second group of yours would be like Christians today, everyone practicing his religion as his conscience dictates with minimum interference from deacons, elders, pastors, or priests. And if church leadership cracks down on a person in order to discipline him, there is nothing to prevent his changing denominations. I don’t see that sort of thing existence in the Middle East.

Sayyid Qutb didn't believe in national boundaries, but then neither did Nassar, sort of. Pan-Arabism is a secular construct of the traditional Ummah. The idea of the Ummah is of long-standing. Current middle-eastern boundaries were created after World War I by Britain and France primarily although the U.S. and Italy were there when this happened. Qutb repudiated those boundaries. There should be no “boundaries.” The Ummah does not need boundaries.

Andrea Nusse has written a book that bears upon this issue, Muslim Palestine, the Ideology of Hamas. Hamas started out as a follower of Qutb's teaching which emphasized the Ummah and repudiated national boundaries, but when the chance came to gain political power in Palestine, Hamas took it.  Does that mean they repudiated Qutb.  We shall see that it does not.

On page 14 Nusse writes "Following the example of the first Muslims who emigrated to Medina (hijra) and only attacked Mekka when they felt strong enough to do so, Qutb elaborated the theory of an ever growing nucleus of 'true' believers that should be developed until it can wage a "Jihad” against the surrounding society and its rulers. He believed that only through Jihad could the sovereignty of God . . . be re-established. This would be achieved when the Sharia has become the only source of law. Qutb did not elaborate how exactly that state, society and economy would be organized under the Islamic order.”

Did Qutb reject “the very idea of religious authority”? No, he didn’t need to develop the idea of what the Religious State should look like because Mawdudi had already done that, and Qutb accepted Mawdudi’s ideas on this point. Nusse writes, “. . . the Indian fundamentalist thinker Abu Ala al-Mawdudi developed a detailed blueprint for the organization of an ideal Islamic state and built up the group ‘Jamia Islami, founded by him in 1941 in British India along these lines. In fact, Mawdudi had already developed the interpretation of Jahiliyya which Qutb then made a major element of his analysis.”

“Any territory that is once ‘opened’ (maftub) to Islamic rule has to remain ruled by Muslims. As Muslims have to establish an Islamic society on earth, no territory can be left to non-Muslims to rule. . . The final goal can never be the protection and expansion of Dar al-Islam, but the spread of God’s rule to the whole earth. . . thus the attachment to a specific territory even for allegedly religious reasons is rejected by the ideologues of modern fundamentalism.”

Hamas doesn’t exactly repudiate Qutb’s opposition protection of Dar al-Islam, but it concentrates upon the idea that once land is conquered and belongs to the Ummah, it must never be abandoned. This land Hamas is concerned about “happens to be called Palestine.”

I didn’t have Nusse on either of yesterday’s lists because she doesn’t fit either category. She doesn’t think of herself as an outsider considering whether or not Islamists are a threat. She seems to have gone a bit native. She believed (her book was published in 1998) that once Hamas had a taste of national power it would abandon the violent aspects of Qutb’s ideas. That hasn’t happened, witness an article of last month entitled “Hamas Violent Message”: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=183312

As to Sharia Law, no I wouldn’t say the “goal is to understand the role Sharia courts might play in the West . . .” I would say Sharia courts threaten Western societies and should be opposed. Three concerns about them come to mind: 1) The institutors of Sharia Law believe as Hamas does, that once land belongs to the Ummah, it does so forever. This includes all the enclaves in Western nations practicing Sharia Law. 2) Sharia Law despite the gloss of harmlessness applied by “tolerant” westerners is aggressive by nature. 3) Enclaves with Sharia Law provide a haven for overtly aggressive activists. See that happening in Germany: http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/spread-of-islamic-sharia-law-in-germany-far-more-advanced-than-previously-thought/#comment-56226 The article begins, “The spread of Islamic Sharia law in Germany is far more advanced than previously thought, and German authorities are “powerless” to do anything about it, according to a new book about the Muslim shadow justice system in Germany.

“This ‘parallel justice system’ is undermining the rule of law in Germany, Wagner says, because Muslim arbiters-cum-imams are settling criminal cases out of court without the involvement of German prosecutors or lawyers before law enforcement can bring the cases to a German court.”

“The 236-page book titled “Judges Without Law: Islamic Parallel Justice Endangers Our Constitutional State,” which was authored by Joachim Wagner, a German legal expert and former investigative journalist for ARD German public television, says Islamic Sharia courts are now operating in all of Germany’s big cities.”

Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brothers since 9/11

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/09/us-sept11-alqaeda-future-idUSTRE7881DS20110909

Mark Hosenball of Reuters writes,

“Al Qaeda's core leadership is badly wounded and almost certainly incapable of mounting another attack like the one on September 11, 2001, in New York and Washington, according to U.S. and European security officials.

“But even as the threat of spectacular, coordinated mass-casualty attacks by al Qaeda seems to have faded, it has been replaced by new worries -- the network's violent spinoff groups and individual radical "lone wolves," to name two.”. . .

"AQ Central has never been weaker, they have been pounded into submission" by CIA drone attacks, said Roger Cressey, a former top White House counterterrorism official, referring to al Qaeda by its initials. . . .”

“A worrisome development is the proliferation of individual violent militants -- the "lone wolves" -- who operate unseen by intelligence agencies and police and can create mayhem with a carful of home-made explosives or guns. The result is a lower risk of future large conflagrations but a growing threat of smaller attacks that could be harder to detect and thwart.”

COMMENT: I don’t agree that the “proliferation of individual violent militants” is a new “development” if that is what is being implied. Khomeini discussed this sort of thing years ago. He didn’t want to give names to militant groups. Groups with names and organizations could more readily be coopted. He had the Muslim Brothers as an example of that. They became much less militant through their efforts to be recognized as non-threatening in Egypt. They claim (in private) to have the same goals, but the more militant activists don’t believe them.

Also, In an editorial earlier this year entitled “Obama and the Muslim Brothers” http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/30/obama-and-the-muslim-brothers/ a Washington Times representative writes, “The administration is reaching out to Egypt’s radical Muslim Brotherhood ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for September. “The political landscape in Egypt has changed, and is changing,” an unnamed White House source told Politico. “It is in our interests to engage with all of the parties that are competing for parliament or the presidency.” As President Obama’s previous attempts at outreach to Islamists have failed, there is little reason to believe this effort will succeed. . . .”

“The White House appears to be blind to the schizophrenic message it is broadcasting throughout the Middle East. Mr. Obama says he wants to improve relations with Islam, yet he supports policies that offend orthodox Muslim morality.”

COMMENT: One can hardly blame Obama for recognizing that the real power in the Middle East is with radical Muslims. Maybe the “orthodox” Muslims are offended, but some of us have been offended by their unwillingness to deal with or ever challenge radical Islam. And didn’t Jimmy Carter, of whom it was said that he never met an authoritarian ruler he didn’t like, set the pattern for this?

Apparently Obama is still reaching out to the Muslim Brothers inasmuch as they were invited to the National Cathedral 9/11 program. The most popular Christian denomination in the U.S.(Baptist) is publicizing the fact that while the Muslim Brothers were invited by Obama, it was not.

Islamism and Creeping Sharia

The following comprises a dialogue between an OW (opposing writer) and Lawrence:

Lawrence:  "As to the danger of the 'increase of Sharia Law,'  Fundamentalist Muslims deriving from Salafist and Sayid Qutb teaching believe in a 'Creeping Sharia Law' as one of the devices intended to complete the Jihad that Mohammad started. That Jihad will only be completed when the entire world is Muslim."

OW: Lawrence is here confusing two very different, and in fact conflicting, movements within Islamic fundamentalism. I haven't found labels that I am happy with, but I have in other contexts used the terms Jihadis and Salafists. As I use the terms, Jihadis are Muslims who are committed to establishing an Islamic Caliphate. Jihad is an expression of religious faithfulness in the service of the body of Muslim believers for the purpose of bringing about an Islamic state.

OW: Jihadis tend to be committed to organizations and hierarchies, with a variety of authorities. They could promote peaceful means for bringing about this Caliphate, like Hizbut Tahrir and the Muslim Brotherhood, or they could adopt violence, like Hezbollah. They tend to also be very involved in social issues like healthcare and poverty. These groups would promote the use of Sharia courts as a means of bringing about the 'Islamicization' of society and the would encourage Muslims to listen to religious authorities.

Lawrence: No, no, no. You may have used the term "Jihadis and Salafists," but those deriving from the teachings of Sayyid Qutb prefer "Islamists" and those deriving from Saudi Wahhab teachings prefer Salafist. There is also the Khomeini "movement" which has the same goal as the Islamists, and since Khomeini strove during his life time toward developing a pan-Islamist movement he didn't approve of distinct names. There is also a movement deriving from Maududi in Pakistan out of which the Student movement known as the Taliban derived. But all Fundamentalists seek the victory of Islam throughout the world and it is debatable whether there are many "traditional Muslims" willing to go back to the old way of looking at things which was very passive about this goal -- sort of like the Postmillennial Christian position which believes in the eventual success of Christianity throughout the world, but isn't doing anything of note to bring it about.

OW: But groups like al Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, both heavily influenced by Qutb, are very different. I would call them Salafists in that they believe that there was at one time a pure practice of Islam and that there is a single clear understanding of Sharia and what is expected of Muslims. This view is found in Qutb who taught that there is no need to interpret Sharia, that every circumstance in life is clearly addressed by Sharia, and so there is no need for religious authorities to provide guidance. Followers of Qutb, including most members of al Qaeda, reject the idea that a Muslim should ever turn to another Muslim for religious guidance, and so they reject the notion of fiqh and Sharia courts. Think here of evangelical Protestants who embrace the personal and individual quality of faith and reject 'religion'. Salafists are not interested in establishing Islamic governments since this would be to establish religious authority. What Salafists are working towards is an idealic time when every Muslim can live out their faith in as pure a form as is possible. The government can be any form, as long as it does not interfere with faithfulness.

Lawrence: What, what, what? Bin Laden was raised a Wahhabi. While fighting against the USSR in Afghanistan he formed "the base" aka Al Quaeda. He was influenced by Sayyid Qutb, but then Sayyid Qutb was a member of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers led by Hassan Al Banna who had been influenced by the Wahhabis who later chose to call their Islamic sect, Salafism. Don't forget, Sayyid Qutb spent most of his creative time (the time when he created most of his influential writings) when he was in an Egyptian jail; so he kept to the level of theory for the most part. Others later filled in details which he may or may not have approved of, but were consistent with his outline. He died for example before he could explain what he meant by his "fundamentalism" or Taqfir. He called those who didn't adhere to his strict interpretation as Islamic belief as backsliders. His followers haven't known how to interpret that and whether these backsliders should be killed. While some take a strict, kill the infidel view of Qutb and Khomeini teachings. Others find justification for using other means to accomplish the same end.

Lawrence; As to Sharia Law, Qutb very much subscribed to it. He didn't believe Islam could exist without it.

OW: When there is need for authority, it takes the form of an Emir, to whom people swear obedience. When this Emir dies, as in the case of bin Laden, a new Emir has to be chosen and people can choose to give fealty or not. Because purity of faith is paramount, it is possible to declare Muslims who deviate as takfir, or apostate, and require that they be killed. This is why al Qaeda groups have killed more Muslims than Westerners. It is also not necessary that the whole world be Muslim. What is necessary is that non-Muslims not interfere in the affairs of Muslims. It was this kind of interference, the presence of Westerners in the land of the Two Holy Cities, that set off bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Lawrence: Al Quaeda is a unique paranoid organization that didn't enlarge itself very much beyond those who fought the Russians in Afghanistan, but it did approve of and send out activists willing to kill themselves in a violent exercise. What happened to Al Quaeda fulfill's Khomeini's prediction: if an organization is well-named and well-known it is more likely to be coopted by the enemies of Islamism.

OW: Sharia courts do not represent the creeping presence of al Qaeda for the simple reason that al Qaeda rejects most of the logic behind these courts, for example fiqh and the need to use reason to interpret Sharia. There is no creeping presence of al Qaeda. al Qaeda is devoted to purifying the lands of Islam through whatever means necessary.

Lawrence: good grief, who ever said that al Quaeda was creeping Sharia, certainly not me? Sharia Law is "creeping ahead" as a handmaiden of its more violent brethren. Consider Christian evangelism as a parallel. There have always been a few activists who will go out on the streets to witness, but there is also a more passive form called "life-style witnessing." But both forms of witnessing have the same end, just as those advocating Creeping Sharia have the same goal as those advocating violence.

OW: There is also no creeping presence of Jihadis. Groups like the Muslim Brotherhood or Hezbollah thrive in contexts where the state is corrupt and fails to provide for the basic needs of citizens. This was how the Muslim Brotherhood started and it was under these conditions that it spread though out the Middle East. In most Western countries, these conditions do not exist and so the appeal of these Jihadi groups is largely non-existent. There are of course some Jihadis who work towards a world wide Caliphate, but the vast majority of Muslims, for many different reasons, reject this crusade.

Lawrence: As I said, Sayyid Qutb was a Muslim Brother and insofar as Muslim Brother teaching is concerned, it is Qutbism, but the Muslim Brothers had to morph in order to survive in Egypt and have been accused of selling out, but they claim they have not and have the same goal they always did.

OW: As I said before, in my opinion, Islam and Muslims as a whole do not represent a threat to anyone but themselves. On the other hand, individuals who are Muslim and groups of these individuals can be extremely dangerous.

Lawrence: While Islamist and Creeping Sharia Muslims have the same goal, we on the outside have two different theories about the threat they represent to us. To name some of the people I've read that would fall on one side or the other. John Esposito, Raymond William Baker, Edward Said, Olivier Roy, and Jules Kepel, think the threat is exaggerated. Scholars and journalists who believe the threat is a matter for concern include Bernard Lewis, Paul Berman, Bruce Bawer, Claire Berlinski, Youssef Choueiri, Jean Elshtain, Oriana Fallaci, George Friedman, Dore Gold, Victor Davis Hanson, David Horowitz, Robert Kagan, Sandra Mackey, Walter Russell Mead, Richard Miniter, Daniel Pipes, Ralph Peters, Kenneth Pollack, David Selbourne, Robert Spencer, Mark Steyn, Amir Taheri, and Kenneth Timmerman.

Lawrence: Some others are harder to place, Robin Wright for example. The Islamism is not a serious threat group claim her, but I've read several of her books and don't think they are justified. She reports in detail what she has found but doesn't take a strong position like those above. Another is Francis Fukuyama. He has voiced his admiration of Olivier Roy and Jules Kepel, which would seem to put him on the Islamism is not a series threat side, but the Neocons derived their foreign-affairs philosophy from Fukuyama's teaching and there is a logical association, but Fukuyama wrote a book denouncing the Neocons saying they should not have taken his passive theory and advocated action to hasten the elimination of one of the remaining enemies of Liberal Democracy.