Salman Rushdie: confusing "secular values" with freedom
Remember Salmon Rushdie? Yeah ya do.....decades ago THIS was the guy who was the canary in the coal mine warning to the west of Islamic fanaticism and it's fascist embodiment in Islamic governments. He's the guy who first warned us about fundamentalist Imams reinterpreting the Islamic theological texts to suit their new found love of totalitarian control over their people.....as a sign of gratitude Rushdie had a "fatwa" issued against him ( sort of a $2.8 million hit contract paid for by the foamy-mouthed Islamic church).
Well the recent "fatwa" these Islamist foamers have placed on Denmark for that nation's free press publishing some political cartoons the foaming Mullahs took exception to, has reaffirmed Rushdie's warnings about Islam. Rushdie's empathy with these Danish Cartoonists, who now have an Islamist bounty on their heads has inspired him to speak out against this Islamist madness in an Anti-Jihad manifesto. Unfortunately he was joined by some flakey French academics and as usual, they convolute the principles of civil freedom.
I applaud this man for risking his life to defend his and our right to freely speak our mind and to oppose totalitarian strictures on the right to read what we chose. Here is an except from Rushdie's recent " Anti-Jihad manifesto" :
“After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism. We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.
The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.”
The above sentiment clearly displays Rushdie's passion and commitment to civil freedom but also the manifesto’s major philosophical defects. The defective reasoning is courtesy of the French leftists he has collaborated with on this anti-Islamist statement. It's true Islamism can be considered a perversion of religious faith however, the three terrors of the past century – Fascism, Nazism (National-Socialism) and Stalinism – were certainly secular ideologies which produced societies with enforced "secular values".
Neither Adolf Hitler nor Joseph Stalin were the theocrats to which they are being compared. It takes flakey leftist “French intellectuals” to use the main component of humanity's horribly failed experiment with National-Socialism and Stalinism to create an emotional trigger to oppose “religious totalitarianism” with a battle call for “secular values,” which they hold to be “universal values.” All this does is trade secular totalitarinism for non secular totalitarianism.
Secularism does not guarantee a civil society, just cultureor human rights as the various 20th century forms of secular statism have demonstrated. It escapes today's secular left (statists) that the civil freedom, human rights and democratic governing systems they enjoy in western free nations are the product of proto-libertarian thinkers and jurists who applied the ethics of the reformed Christian belief system into law, civil institutions and governing systems......the builders of Western culture's greatest triumphs: common law, civil rights, civil liberty, equality under rule of law and representative democracy, were anything but secular. Locke, Blackstone, Jefferson, Hobbs, Paine....all committed Christians who incorporated the inherent respect for life and dignity of the individual of moderated Christiandom into the law and governing institutions of the west's most civilly evolved nations.
Today's defenders of western Democracy and civil liberty have no doubt Islamism is a threat to freedom and human dignity. However, as rational libertarians have warned before, some people, undoubtedly brave and well intentioned, but nevertheless mistaken, are prepared to weaken certain basic freedoms, in their fight against Islam and religion in general.
Well the recent "fatwa" these Islamist foamers have placed on Denmark for that nation's free press publishing some political cartoons the foaming Mullahs took exception to, has reaffirmed Rushdie's warnings about Islam. Rushdie's empathy with these Danish Cartoonists, who now have an Islamist bounty on their heads has inspired him to speak out against this Islamist madness in an Anti-Jihad manifesto. Unfortunately he was joined by some flakey French academics and as usual, they convolute the principles of civil freedom.
I applaud this man for risking his life to defend his and our right to freely speak our mind and to oppose totalitarian strictures on the right to read what we chose. Here is an except from Rushdie's recent " Anti-Jihad manifesto" :
“After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism. We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.
The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.”
The above sentiment clearly displays Rushdie's passion and commitment to civil freedom but also the manifesto’s major philosophical defects. The defective reasoning is courtesy of the French leftists he has collaborated with on this anti-Islamist statement. It's true Islamism can be considered a perversion of religious faith however, the three terrors of the past century – Fascism, Nazism (National-Socialism) and Stalinism – were certainly secular ideologies which produced societies with enforced "secular values".
Neither Adolf Hitler nor Joseph Stalin were the theocrats to which they are being compared. It takes flakey leftist “French intellectuals” to use the main component of humanity's horribly failed experiment with National-Socialism and Stalinism to create an emotional trigger to oppose “religious totalitarianism” with a battle call for “secular values,” which they hold to be “universal values.” All this does is trade secular totalitarinism for non secular totalitarianism.
Secularism does not guarantee a civil society, just cultureor human rights as the various 20th century forms of secular statism have demonstrated. It escapes today's secular left (statists) that the civil freedom, human rights and democratic governing systems they enjoy in western free nations are the product of proto-libertarian thinkers and jurists who applied the ethics of the reformed Christian belief system into law, civil institutions and governing systems......the builders of Western culture's greatest triumphs: common law, civil rights, civil liberty, equality under rule of law and representative democracy, were anything but secular. Locke, Blackstone, Jefferson, Hobbs, Paine....all committed Christians who incorporated the inherent respect for life and dignity of the individual of moderated Christiandom into the law and governing institutions of the west's most civilly evolved nations.
Today's defenders of western Democracy and civil liberty have no doubt Islamism is a threat to freedom and human dignity. However, as rational libertarians have warned before, some people, undoubtedly brave and well intentioned, but nevertheless mistaken, are prepared to weaken certain basic freedoms, in their fight against Islam and religion in general.
posted by W.L. Mackenzie Redux | 9:31 AM
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