Or, why Muslim anger in reaction to the Pope's intervention is not as simple-minded as it seems
Yesterday I spent a large part of the afternoon working on an article titled 'The Pope, the Muslims, and the Eurodweebs'. JU devoured almost all of it as I attempted to edit it from the forum 'Tools' tab - something I don't recommend anyone else to do. This is not a rant about the shortcomings of JU. I mention it to explain why the truncated remains of that article are still available on my blog (it looks messy and I'd delete it if I could but I seem no longer to have access to that function). And I mention it to explain that what follows is a reconstruction of that article, with further thoughts added.
On September 12 Pope Benedict XVI gave a lecture in the University of Regensburg, Germany, where he was once part of the faculty. It's title was 'Faith, reason and the university: memories and reflections'. On its surface it's a wide-ranging discussion of the relationship of reason to faith, both within and without an academic institution. But it carries within it subtexts that, in our present situation, are far more important than what Benedict immediately and apparently had to say. As a consequence of his lecture Muslims are once again burning effigies, dancing in the streets with rage, and demanding apologies for the 'hurt' caused to their 'feelings'.
Poor things.
Their petulant rage is, as ever, unjustified and completely out of proportion to the supposed offence. But for the more intelligent among the jihadi mobs, those who combine some kind of cultural awareness with their malice, there actually is something to be concerned about in what Benedict had to say. Benedict's lecture is an assault on the irrationality of Islam (irrationality defined in a very specific way) and a defence of some of the core values of the West. It is an opportunity for Western recuperation and resistance to Islam. In that way his lecture can be seen as a standard-bearer for a resurgence in self-belief in the values and achievements of the West and a departure from the self-flagellating guilt-trip and historical revisionism provided by the 'left' here in America, and thus in much of Europe also. And I'm certain that Osama bin Laden is already aware of Benedict's lecture, and aware of what it is that it represents.
I'm neither a Catholic nor a Christian and I support the separation of Church and State. But for too long the only lead our politicians have given us in how to respond to Islamist anger has been an appeal to moral relativism (we did bad things to them so now they get to do bad things to us because we're all equally immoral), or an appeal to a now moribund multiculturalism (let's all hold hands and get along together). None of them have dared to say that there is a real difference between Islam and the West; that the difference has worked in our favor; and that the difference is worth defending. Whether out of fear of prompting further attacks, or of loss of vital interests, or addiction to politically correct speech, none of our leaders have made any effort to defend our culture, our history, our achievements. And by 'our' I mean the caucasians of Northern and Western Europe, who for centuries now have led the world in political, philosophical, scientific and technological advancement: the races of Christendom, as it used to be called (I can hear the liberals screaming in outrage as I type - let them scream).
The immediate cause of this latest bout of rage and foot-stamping among Muslims is a quote from a dialogue between the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and 'an educated Persian', on the topic of Christianity, Islam, and truth. The dialogue originally took place in 1391, and was recorded in writing by Manuel II Paleologus during the siege of Constantinople by Muslim armies during 1394 - 1402. The conversation between Emperor and Persian covered a large number of topics - including the validity of Holy War. The text of the Koran the Emperor had in mind was, apparently, this: Surah 2; 256 - "There is no compulsion in religion".
This is one of the early Surahs, composed or revealed (take your pick) when Islam was merely the raving of one more sunstruck desert 'prophet' and Muhammad and his followers were under threat from other desert tribes. The later verses, advocating conversion through force, were composed when the Islamists were in ascendancy - and therefore freer to reveal the truth of their intentions. Manuel II Paleologus, noting the difference in tactics, has this to say about the relationship of religion to violence: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
This is the text, over 600 years old, that has once again thrown Muslims into paroxsysms of fury. Actually they have something far more substantial to be angry about.
Benedict uses the Emperor's comment as a preface to a discussion of the different types of reason or unreason that form the foundations of Christianity and Islam. To understand what Benedict said (as opposed to understanding the citation from the Emperor) it's necessary to understand a term that is central to the whole lecture. That term is 'Logos'. One derivative of 'Logos' is 'logo' - a symbol used to differentiate one type of commercial product from another. But its most widely known usage, at least among Christians, is 1 John: 1 - In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Logos, the Word, is an ordering principle, a principle of organization, the means of differentiating order from chaos.
Using Logos to mean 'the ordering principle which makes God to be God and which cannot be transcended without God ceasing to be God' he points out the presence of this principle in all aspects of Western development. It's the foundation of our concept that the universe can be known, and that it can be manipulated. It's the foundation of empirical reason, which is the source of our science and technology. It's the foundation of the American Republic, and of the political life of the West.
Logos is the imago dei, the image of God in which we are all formed, Since that principle of order is in God it's also in us and in the universe at large, so that all three - God-universe-man - are in that measure known to each other and comprehensible to each other. This is what Benedict refers to as the 'bounded' concept of God: God cannot transcend Its own defining order without ceasing to be God.
At the heart of Islam, however, is another concept entirely, the 'voluntaristic' concept. Nothing binds the god of the Mullahs except its own will. If Allah decided and decreed that it should be done, Muslims would once again worship idols, eat pork, drink alcohol, or whatever. The bounded concept of God gives rise to an attitude of mind that says the world can be known, understood, and used for the betterment of the life of humanity. The voluntaristic concept gives rise to a mysterious chaos where nothing can be known with certainty except that the will of Allah is sovereign and incomprehensible.
One of the implications of Benedict's lecture is that the chronic decline of scientific endeavour, and of political and social development among Muslims, is due to this belief in an inherently unknowable universe. The voluntaristic concept may even "[...] lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions."
Such a God might well find righteousness in the beheading of the bound and defenceless, might well reward such actions with 70, or 700, or 7000 virgins perpetually available for fornication in Paradise. Or it might not. One can deduce nothing of the nature of Allah from Its reported actions, can place no trust in any of Its revelations, because It's bound to nothing but Its own will. In this sense Islam is a hopelessly irrational religion (because devoid of Logos) and its adherents are necessarily bound to that irrationality, are quite literally madmen.
If any of these demented creatures were capable of realising that that is what Benedict had said then even I might agree they had some grounds for anger - not that I care. I'm no more interested in religious justifications for their murdering ways than I am an adherent of Benedict's Christian theology. I presently admire Benedict for having the balls to tell the Muslims that their god is a raving lunatic, and that their ignorance, backwardness and poverty are due to their devotion to a cult that properly belongs in the stone age.
But his lecture has another subtext too, which is the renewal of Christendom in its European heartlands, and by implication throughout the West, through a new understanding of reason as possessing a legitimate spiritual component. By 'spiritual' Benedict means 'Christian'. I myself would not limit 'spiritual' in this way, to some particular schismatic splinter, no matter how many adherents it has world wide. I would include any aspect of 'the Spiritual' that can demonstrate it possesses Logos, some internal structure and coherence, not as a recognition of the 'truth' of these logoi but as a political act intended to provide a rallying point around which the diverse forces of the Western cultural tradition can gather to resist the incoherent dementia that is Islam - even those forces, such as Wicca, that the West itself has long since turned its back on.
No. I do not accept Benedict's theology. I accept his contention that Western culture has been structured around a type of Logos, and that this principle of order is entangled at the deepest levels with the rise to diominance of the West. I admire his courage (provided he does not repudiate what he has done) in articulating a defence of that culture - no matter how veiled in the language of the academy. And I hope, I hope that what he has said was intended as a political act of resistance to the current tide of ennui, cynicism, and hopelessness now engulfing the West.
Someone capable of commanding attention throughout the world must begin to articulate such a resistance, otherwise we will surrender to the demented Islamic murderers by default. As any good philosopher should, Benedict has started with first principles - what is it that divides us from them. He has developed, on the basis of the faith that has shaped European and Western progress generally, a means to take a stand against the barbarians currently at our gates. It now remains to be seen if his conviction that the West is indeed superior to the lunatic mouthings and endless self-justification of incoherent desert demagogues, can take root and become a banner around which we, the caucasian peoples, can rally to our own defence.