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COMMENTARY
March 22, 2006
Where are we?
Every year about this time the Bush administration releases its National Security Strategy, and the President delivers an optimistic speech just after. We have, in that and other son et lumiere, the annual update on the purposes and progress of what was originally called the "War on Terror". Has it become any clearer after four years? Slightly.If you have read media reports on the National Security Strategy, you may wish to judge how inaccurate they were by reading the original 49-page document at: whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006. The reader will find there a large, plausible idea, cogently expressed: that there is a direct relationship between the nature of a regime, shown in its behaviour at home, and the danger it presents abroad. In particular, the Bush administration is not trying to spread democracy out of some naïve, rightwing, ideological crusade. It observes that governments constitutionally obliged to treat their own citizens with respect, do not behave as thugs in international relations, either. The tyranny of the ayatollahs in Iran is a good example -- where the citizen has no security of the person, no rights that could be vindicated in law, let alone the right to participate in his government. Look at the Revolutionary Guards, turned like vicious dogs on student demonstrators in Tehran, to appreciate the barbarity of the regime. But the West’s ultimate interests are only indirectly allied with domestic oppositionists. The Americans, under Bush’s or any administration, have never held that Persians must live like Americans. They aim to prevent the same barbaric regime from sending Hezbollah terrorists into Western streets, or a nuclear missile into Israel. Pushing democracy is a means to that end. An editorial in this newspaper yesterday called attention to the case of a man in the “new Afghanistan”, named Abdul Rahman, who is being tried for apostasy under Shariah law. He secretly converted to Christianity 16 years ago, while working with a Christian aid mission, and now members of his own family have outed him. Under Shariah, anyone who converts from Islam is guilty of apostasy, which has always been punished by death. It is the reason Christian missionaries have had so much less success in the Islamic world than elsewhere -- for the Muslim convert must choose Christ and martyrdom in a single step. He can save his life by reconverting to Islam, but then he is denying Christ, as Abdul Rahman refuses to do. I mention this case because it perfectly illustrates the impossibility of establishing a Western secular order in a country where Shariah is recognized as law. Or as the learned Bernard Lewis put it, as discreetly as he could, in his book Islam and the West: “The primary duty of the Muslim as set forth not once but many times in the Qur'an is ‘to command good and forbid evil’. It is not enough to do good and refrain from evil as a personal choice. It is incumbent upon Muslims also to command and forbid -- that is, to exercise authority.” This is at the root of the “clash” between the worldviews of our West and the Islamic East. Because our societies were built on Judaeo-Christian foundations, we take it for granted that it is wrong to kill someone for his religious beliefs. Whereas Islam holds it is wrong not to kill him, for abandoning Islam. (On the other hand, the right to convert TO Islam has been universally affirmed.) Shariah is logically coherent, and cannot be argued with on its own premises. The clash is therefore of premises. At the end of the day, we are attempting to impose our premises on societies that are conditioned to reject them. But of course, the Bush administration must pretend that our premises are universal, or at least, that men anywhere would embrace them given a free choice. The latter proposition may be true, but not the former. And it is in the transition that all National Security Strategies, presidential speeches, and the like, are bound to founder. Christian organizations in the U.S. are already demanding that President Bush intervene to save the life of this Afghan Christian. And Mr Bush might well be able to intercede. If he does, he passes over the line, from eliminating Afghanistan as an external threat, to telling Afghans how to live in their own country. If he doesn’t, what have we achieved? Any way you look at it, the “democratization” project asks Muslims to cease to think as Muslims, and think as post-Christian “seculars” instead. This was the project Kemal Ataturk embarked upon, in trying to modernize Turkey after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In Turkey, it involved the suppression of nearly every visible manifestation of Islam in public life -- and it worked, for a while. Turkey became modern. But now, nearly a century later, Islam is visibly resurgent even there. The Bush administration does not know how to square this circle. Does anyone? David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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