Symbiotic Enablers

Something that continues to confound my logic is this: how is it that so many people who confess to be secular liberals can march arm and arm with Islamofascists who have openly declared that it is their intention to destroy the West and it's secular liberal values?

Spengler, writing in the Asian Times last week, skillfully sketches the connection between what draws fundamental religious zealots and secular leftist atheists into each other's arms.

It is easy to change what we think, but very hard to change how we think. Contrary to superficial impressions, Islam is much closer in character to atheism than to Christianity or Judaism. Although the "what" of Muslim and atheistic thinking of course are very different, I shall endeavor below to prove that the "how" is very similar.

Secular liberalism, the official ideology of almost all the nations of Western Europe, offers hedonism, sexual license, anomie, demoralization and gradual depopulation. Muslims do not want this. In Africa, Christian missionaries go to Muslims and offer them God's love and the hope of eternal life. But I am aware of no Christian missionaries active in the Muslim banlieue (outskirts) of the Paris suburbs or the Turkish quarters of Berlin.

A major reason this secular liberal mindset is pervasive in western pop-culture today results from the increasingly popular belief that college is a "right" to be had rather than a "privilege" to be earned. As such, there are more people attending college than ever before. On the face of it, a more educated population is preferable to a less educated population. But if one peaks behind the curtain, one may be surprised to see numerous examples of political grievances turned into college majors being taught by professors who are not shy about sharing and propagating their political dogma. This liberalism--hedonism, sexual license, etc.--so entrenched in the never, never land of our universities can only be characterized as childish; it is certainly not the underpinning of an education that should prepare one to be a productive and critical thinking member of society. That's all fine and well when one is young, the problem arises when this mindset endures outside the halls of academia where it becomes a corrosive cancer on society. Anomie, demoralization and depopulation are predictable symptoms of this cancer.

Allah is everywhere doing everything at all times. He sets the spin on every electron, measures the jump of every flea, the frequency of every sneeze. That notion of a god who accepts no limitation, not even the limit of laws of nature that he created, characterizes mainstream Muslim thought since the 11th century. St Thomas Aquinas wrote of its deficiency, drawing on the critique of the 12th-century Jewish theologian and philosopher Moses Maimonides.

It is a commonplace observation that Islam is "fatalistic". Muslims typically conclude any statement about the future, eg, "I'll see you at work tomorrow morning," with the qualifier, "Insha'Allah", "God willing". Because God is everywhere and in every action, acting without intermediate causes, the Judeo-Christian concept of divine providence is inconceivable in Muslim terms. If Allah refuses to be entangled by intermediate causes, no divine plan could possibly exist that humankind cannot understand directly, but works itself out through God's intermediaries. Rather than providence, Islam believes in the old pagan fate, the summation of the innumerable capricious acts that Allah in his absolute transcendence performs at every instant.

Allah is everywhere, which is to say that Allah is nowhere in particular. Allah's world is indistinguishable from the primeval world of paganism, in which the "colorfully contending pantheon" of nature-gods arranges a chaotic and incomprehensible show at every moment. The world without Allah would look not much different; if Allah acts in a whimsical manner without the constraint of laws of nature, we cannot tell the difference between Allah's actions and chaos.

The empty and arbitrary world of atheism is far closer to the Muslim universe than the Biblical world, in which God orders the world out of love for humankind, so that we may in freedom return the love that our creator bears for us. Atheism is an alternative to Islam closer to Muslim habits of mind than the love-centered world of Judaism and Christianity.

Muslims, in their fatalistic world view, believe that everything that happens is a result of Allah's will. The result is chaos. Secular liberals, in their ultimately nihilistic world view, deny that God exists. The result is chaos.

Different causes, same effect; each enabling the other.