Secular Humanism Hasn’t a Chance in Hell Against Radical Islamism. A Warning from Eurabia.
Paddy Siochain
July 5, 2015 at 2:54 am
Last week, three Irish citizens were murdered on the beaches of Tunisia. In France, an Islamic nutcase murdered and beheaded his former boss. In Kuwait, Islamic extremists bombed and killed more than two dozen people and injured many hundreds more. In the Syrian border town of Kobane, ISIS massacred at least 146 civilians. Since 9/11, hundreds of thousands of people (the majority of them Muslims) have died at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Every week, across the globe, exponents of Islamic supremacy murder and maim hundreds. From Boko Haram in Nigeria to Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Yemen; from Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank to ISIS in Northern Syria and Iraq – Islamic extremism is on the march.
The West is in theory fundamentally opposed to this deadly human virus, but in practice frighteningly paralyzed in the face of the greatest threat it’s faced since the end of the Cold War. As religion in the West declined in the latter half of the 20th century, it became impossible for secularized opinion-formers to take religion seriously. Religious belief and its power had little impact on their own hearts and minds, they seemed to think, so why should it matter to others? Their apostasy left them unable to deal with reality: For many people around the world (a growing number, too), religion is not merely for ceremony or funerals, but everything in life — and worth taking lives, too.
To their credit, some Western secularists have woken up to this deadly threat. They have called on Europeans and Americans to create a new Enlightenment, one that espouses secular values alone, to destroy Islamic and religious fundamentalism. The highest-circulation daily paper in Ireland recently featured a letter arguing that the key to defeating ISIS was not bombs but Europeans who espoused the secular values of the Enlightenment: freedom, tolerance, equality, and secularism. That’s my summary in my own words, but note: no religion allowed. It almost made me laugh, it was so naive.
The most famous female apostate from Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, fled Somalia for tolerant Holland. She lost her faith and became infatuated with Enlightenment philosophers and values. In her book Infidel, she wrote, “Society worked without reference to God, and it seemed to function perfectly.”
But her views soon got her into trouble in enlightened, secular Holland. For you see, the Dutch elite portray themselves as freedom-lovers, but Ali discovered that when she used her to freedom to criticize Islam, the liberal elite in the Netherlands didn’t want to know. She found out to her cost that they would not protect her, either.
She wasn’t the first. Oriana Fallaci, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, and Geert Wilders also discovered that “enlightened” post-Christian Europe wasn’t nearly as friendly to freedom of speech or expression as advertised. Hate-speech laws and the threat of violence now pose an ever-present danger to those who challenge the status quo.
Why?
William Kilpatricks, author of the great book, Christianity, Islam and Atheism, suggests a plausible answer:
Some believe this doesn’t matter. They hold that Enlightenment humanism emerged ex nihilo, or perhaps from spontaneous advances in science, reason, and ethics. Thus, they say, Enlightenment values have no need of God. Yet when confronted, these people can never explain why these values have fallen on hard times precisely in those places that are most thoroughly post-Christian.
Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion are defended much more vigorously in still-Christian America (even if it is weakening, perhaps, by the day) than they are in post-Christian France or Holland. Ask Geert Wilders, who is regularly arrested and threatened with jail for speaking his mind and criticizing Islam. He praises the United States for its First Amendment, which Holland and the EU do not have. His countrywoman Hirsi Ali likewise fled to America in fear of her life. Fallaci was driven out of Italy and to the US by Italy’s hate speech laws. The irony of fleeing to a country that many enlightened Europeans regard as backward is not lost on them.
Ironically, Europeans will find more freedom of speech in the Bible-belt of America — loathed by sophisticated, wife-swapping secular Europeans as a land of imbeciles — than in your average European university or public sphere. With their speech codes, hate-speech rules, and habit of banning “controversial” speakers (pro-life, anti-Islam, pro-Israel, conservative, Catholic), European and American universities are among the least free institutions in Western society. It’s no coincidence that most of them can be described as post-Christian, and in some cases, anti-Christian.
In the same article, Kilpatricks states, profoundly:
Having lost their religion, many are discovering their unwillingness to fight and die for post-Christian values. But the religious are more than willing to fight and die for theirs. Europe is heading for a new Dark Ages. Christianity, much-maligned and mocked, will not be there to help us this time.
Pray for us and my country.
https://ricochet.com/secular-humani...inst-radical-islamism-a-warning-from-eurabia/
Paddy Siochain
July 5, 2015 at 2:54 am
Last week, three Irish citizens were murdered on the beaches of Tunisia. In France, an Islamic nutcase murdered and beheaded his former boss. In Kuwait, Islamic extremists bombed and killed more than two dozen people and injured many hundreds more. In the Syrian border town of Kobane, ISIS massacred at least 146 civilians. Since 9/11, hundreds of thousands of people (the majority of them Muslims) have died at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Every week, across the globe, exponents of Islamic supremacy murder and maim hundreds. From Boko Haram in Nigeria to Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Yemen; from Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank to ISIS in Northern Syria and Iraq – Islamic extremism is on the march.
The West is in theory fundamentally opposed to this deadly human virus, but in practice frighteningly paralyzed in the face of the greatest threat it’s faced since the end of the Cold War. As religion in the West declined in the latter half of the 20th century, it became impossible for secularized opinion-formers to take religion seriously. Religious belief and its power had little impact on their own hearts and minds, they seemed to think, so why should it matter to others? Their apostasy left them unable to deal with reality: For many people around the world (a growing number, too), religion is not merely for ceremony or funerals, but everything in life — and worth taking lives, too.
To their credit, some Western secularists have woken up to this deadly threat. They have called on Europeans and Americans to create a new Enlightenment, one that espouses secular values alone, to destroy Islamic and religious fundamentalism. The highest-circulation daily paper in Ireland recently featured a letter arguing that the key to defeating ISIS was not bombs but Europeans who espoused the secular values of the Enlightenment: freedom, tolerance, equality, and secularism. That’s my summary in my own words, but note: no religion allowed. It almost made me laugh, it was so naive.
The most famous female apostate from Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, fled Somalia for tolerant Holland. She lost her faith and became infatuated with Enlightenment philosophers and values. In her book Infidel, she wrote, “Society worked without reference to God, and it seemed to function perfectly.”
But her views soon got her into trouble in enlightened, secular Holland. For you see, the Dutch elite portray themselves as freedom-lovers, but Ali discovered that when she used her to freedom to criticize Islam, the liberal elite in the Netherlands didn’t want to know. She found out to her cost that they would not protect her, either.
She wasn’t the first. Oriana Fallaci, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, and Geert Wilders also discovered that “enlightened” post-Christian Europe wasn’t nearly as friendly to freedom of speech or expression as advertised. Hate-speech laws and the threat of violence now pose an ever-present danger to those who challenge the status quo.
Why?
William Kilpatricks, author of the great book, Christianity, Islam and Atheism, suggests a plausible answer:
Enlightenment values are inextricably tied to Christian values. This view has been put forward most forcefully on the Continent in recent years by Marcello Pera (former President of the Italian Senate, and an agnostic) and by Benedict XVI (not an agnostic). They have argued that the Enlightenment grew out of Christianity organically, as a tree grows from its roots. Cut off from its roots the tree dies.
This history teacher cannot but agree. The belief that every person has a value and dignity of his own, separate from his membership in a tribe or a society, originates in the Judeo-Christian declaration that man is made in the image of God. It does not come from the Enlightenment, which stole this idea and stripped from it its religious foundation. Secular societies can only assume human dignity and human rights. These values, which entered the world through Christians and Jews, are objectively true no matter how poorly Christians and Jews have failed to live up to them.
Some believe this doesn’t matter. They hold that Enlightenment humanism emerged ex nihilo, or perhaps from spontaneous advances in science, reason, and ethics. Thus, they say, Enlightenment values have no need of God. Yet when confronted, these people can never explain why these values have fallen on hard times precisely in those places that are most thoroughly post-Christian.
Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion are defended much more vigorously in still-Christian America (even if it is weakening, perhaps, by the day) than they are in post-Christian France or Holland. Ask Geert Wilders, who is regularly arrested and threatened with jail for speaking his mind and criticizing Islam. He praises the United States for its First Amendment, which Holland and the EU do not have. His countrywoman Hirsi Ali likewise fled to America in fear of her life. Fallaci was driven out of Italy and to the US by Italy’s hate speech laws. The irony of fleeing to a country that many enlightened Europeans regard as backward is not lost on them.
Ironically, Europeans will find more freedom of speech in the Bible-belt of America — loathed by sophisticated, wife-swapping secular Europeans as a land of imbeciles — than in your average European university or public sphere. With their speech codes, hate-speech rules, and habit of banning “controversial” speakers (pro-life, anti-Islam, pro-Israel, conservative, Catholic), European and American universities are among the least free institutions in Western society. It’s no coincidence that most of them can be described as post-Christian, and in some cases, anti-Christian.
In the same article, Kilpatricks states, profoundly:
What happened in the universities is essentially what happened in Europe. Both suffered a loss of faith … and in the process of losing their religion both became increasingly uninterested in cultivating or protecting genuine freedoms. Moreover, like post-Christian Europe, the post-Christian university has shown little ability to resist Islamization. Thanks to Saudi money and well-organized Muslim student associations, many universities are beginning to act like apologists for the Wahabbi faith.
So what of secular values? It’s becoming increasingly clear to serious believers, as well as to agnostics and atheists capable of serious thought, that it is unlikely a secular Europe – even if it ascribes to a humanistic and enlightened form of secularism — can defeat radical Islam. It’s precisely this secular ideology that produced the spiritual and population vacuum in Europe. Atheists have fewer children. Europe has to import people to sustain its entitlement-funded economies. The vacuum is now being filled by Islam.
Having lost their religion, many are discovering their unwillingness to fight and die for post-Christian values. But the religious are more than willing to fight and die for theirs. Europe is heading for a new Dark Ages. Christianity, much-maligned and mocked, will not be there to help us this time.
Pray for us and my country.
https://ricochet.com/secular-humani...inst-radical-islamism-a-warning-from-eurabia/
