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Tradition and Islam
[Rod Dreher 03/24 08:47 AM]Vince, no crunchy-con he, writes: To what degree does traditional conservatism resemble traditional (sometimes militant) Islam? Minus the violence, there are similarities which trouble me, even more after 9/11. Have you considered the extent to which 9/11 shook out many of our assumptions like an old rug? Moving the Middle East forward means championing some things which conservatives have previously been neutral or hostile to (women’s rights, for example). In order to drain the swamps of terrorism, anything that looks isolationist, antidemocratic, anti-industrial, and antimodern has to go. That means traditional conservatism has to adapt or finally be rejected. After 9/11, we necessarily have to become champions of democracy, modernity, and progress, all of which terrorists despise. There is something wrong when traditional conservatives and militant Islamists speak the same language in their disgust with America. Well, for one thing, it depends on what you want to conserve. I do not wish to conserve the values of the Ayatollah Sistani, and would be thrilled to see them pass into history, while Muslims conserve what is most humane in their tradition. Alas, it does appear that American blood and American treasure — quite a lot of it — has gone to institutionalize Sistani’s worldview. Be that as it may, it is fallacious to argue that because militant Islam has problems with modernity as it is playing out in contemporary America, that therefore traditional conservatism shares the same taint. This is guilt by association. And it is a false choice to say one must either have Hugh Hefner or the Ayatollah Sistani. Remember my story about the practicing Muslim mother I met in Dubai, who lives in London and who told me she and her husband despise Islamic fundamentalism, but also despise the eroticized, materialistic secular culture in Britain. They feel caught between a rock and a hard place. Traditional conservatives here understand what she means.
Roger Scruton wrote a wonderful short book about terrorism and modernity, called The West and the Rest, in which he says: It may be hard to sympathize with these spoiled and self-indulgent advocates of violence [Western-educated, wealthy Islamist ideologues]. But it is not hard to sympathize with the feelings upon which they depend for their following. Globalization, in the eyes of its advocated, means free trade, increased prosperity, and the steady erosion of despotic regimes by the growing demand for freedom. In the eyes of its critics, however, it means the loss of sovereignty, together with large-scale social, economic, and aesthetic disruption. It also means an invasion of images that evoke outrage and disgust as much as envy in the hearts of those who are exposed to them. In the United States, where pornography is protected as free speech, people are able to accept that this assault on human dignity is thte price we must pay for freedoms too precious to relinquish. But if you have not known those freedoms, and believe in any case that happiness resides not in freedom but in submission to God’s law, the impact of porongraphy is devastating.
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