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February 7, 2006

Dear Concerned Citizen,
by Dinesh D'Souza
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When the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten published a series of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad, the editors probably expected Muslims to respond with the same timidity and indifference that has characterized Christian responses to religious provocation and blasphemy. The editors couldn't have been more wrong.

Salman Rushdie probably thought he was being deliciously iconoclastic when he published The Satanic Verses in which he portrayed the Prophet Muhammad's sexual fantasies and compared his wives to prostitutes. This kind of thing goes over big in the literary salons of the West. Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khomeyni, on the other hand, issued a death fatwa against the author.

Obviously, in the Muslim world, blasphemy is a big deal. But if Muslim intolerance has gone too far, have Christians taken tolerance to excess?

In America blasphemy is a fashionable way for art to challenge conventional norms. Remember the fellow who got a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for his photograph depicting a crucifix immersed in urine?

Evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics are frequently portrayed by secular liberals as fierce religious fanatics who are trying to impose their morality on others and perhaps even to turn America into a theocracy. But what is striking about conservative Christians is how passive and invertebrate so many of them are when their deepest beliefs are violated. The distinguishing quality of the Christian seems to be niceness, and I don't mean this as a compliment. When a man calls your wife a whore it is not a virtue to respond with niceness. When your religion is mocked and blasphemed, it is sign of cowardice to pretend not to notice.

Muslims don't. Activist Muslims were not amused by Rushdie's book, and they are equally incensed about the Danish newspaper's cartoons showing Muhammad wearing a turban with a lit fuse, and Muhammad telling would-be suicide bombers that they should slow down because heaven is running out of virgins. Protests have erupted across the Islamic world, and there have been calls to ban Danish products.

The reaction of newspapers in Europe has been to reprint the offensive cartoons in the name of freedom of expression. "We would have done exactly the same thing if it had been a pope, rabbi or priest caricature," wrote the editor of France Soir. He was reflecting the secular view of fairness. This concept of fairness was exhibited when Muslims complained that school girls were prohibited from wearing Islamic dress. The French government responded by declaring that Christians could not wear crosses either. Look, say the French, we are being fair by discriminating equally against all religions. This was the point being made by the editor of the paper: we are insulting the Muslims just like we routinely insult Jews and Christians.

When the movie "The Last Temptation of Christ" came out several years ago, it was shown to critical acclaim throughout the West despite its blasphemous portrayal of Christ's sexual fantasies at Calvary. The only countries that banned the movie were the Muslim countries. The reason is that Muslims consider Christ, like Moses, to be a prophet. Not only do Muslims protect the reputation of Muhammad, but apparently they also care about how Christ is portrayed as well. Whose reputation silent Christians are protecting is anybody's guess.

Yes, I know that freedom of speech is a right and maybe the Muslim protesters don't understand that very well. But there is an equivalent blindness that we in the West should be attentive to. Sometimes in focusing so much on our rights, we are liable to forget what is right. The fact that you have a right to do something does not mean you are right to do it.

The issue here isn't censorship, it is the blithe willingness to mock the sacred sensibilities of others. Secular Americans know exactly what I am talking about. If an American newspaper were to distort and discredit Martin Luther King's legacy by printing a series of cartoons depicting him as a drug-dealer or a street thug, the reaction might be quite similar to what we are now seeing in the Muslim world. The only difference is that, in the case of Martin Luther King, there would be widespread and justifiable howls of "racism" and the need for America to look into the darkness of its soul. I highly doubt that other American newspapers would reprint the cartoons to show their support for freedom of speech.

There are things that we in the West will stand up for. Unfortunately, traditional religious faith is usually not one of them.
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Responses to Is Secularism Inevitable?:

In order to better understand the argument about secularism, I went to your link to Robert Bork’s review of Philip Hamburger’s book about the separation of church and state. I see merit in his statement from Hamburger that there is evidence the first amendment spoke to “prohibition of an established national church,” as a state church had been the experience (often negative) of many of our country’s founders. However, I do not believe one can then conclude that a particular expression of Christianity, or even Christianity itself, should be the protected religious expression in America. To draw that conclusion essentially establishes Christianity as the state religion, something I believe the first amendment prohibits. Because America’s founders had been persecuted for religious dissent, I believe they chose to protect all persons’ right to freedom of (freedom from) religious expression. This protects the Muslim, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Taoist, etc., as well as the Christian. (I am a Christian, the wife of an evangelical pastor.) - M. B. R.

Dr. Benjamin Wiker response:

I’m forced to give one of those dreaded no-one-will-like-this kind of responses because I think that the infamous church-state question is far more complicated and convoluted than most people realize—and it is precisely because of the rise of radical secularism that it is so complicated and convoluted.

First, let’s deal with the question of establishment.  If you consult the history of our country, you’ll find that there were many established state churches, but there was no established national church.  Thus, the whole notion that the first amendment is adamantly against establishment is simply incorrect. The issue wasn’t establishment, but where it could and couldn’t occur.  The contemporary notion of wiping out every vestige of religion from the public square would have horrified the founders, and the way the First Amendment is now interpreted would have been incomprehensible to them. 

A second, more complex point.  Our founders were a mix of devout Christians (Protestants, for the most part) and equally devout Deists.  They were divided about the nature of God and revelation; they were united about the content of morality. The Deists—and many of the famous founders were Deists or at least heavily tinged with Deism—rejected Christian revelation, and asserted instead that nature revealed everything about God that we could or needed to know.  But in rejecting Christianity, they continued to hold to its general moral tenets.  Thus, they had common moral ground with Christians.  On this common moral ground, both Christians and Deists thought they could build common political ground, while keeping the larger religious questions from becoming national political questions.  They wanted to avoid the kind of national religious conflicts that had caused such trouble in Europe, but not want to erase religion from public life by some alleged “wall of separation.”  Both Christians and Deists believed that religion was necessary for public order, and that without it, there would be social chaos.

And now the third point, one that really mixes things up.  To be all too quick, the Deists were part of the larger secularizing movement in Europe, that began in England and the Netherlands in the mid 1600s, and famously flourished in France in the 1700s—the movement that had Comte as one of its later secular flowers. While secularists started from the same moral ground, it soon became clear that their devotion to a secular order—a novus ordo seclorum—demanded a new and different morality from Christianity.  Europe experienced the widening of this moral divide between Christians and Secularists in the 18th and 19th century; Americans, lagging a bit behind, began experiencing the first cracks in the late 19th century, and ever widening fissures during all of the 20th century.

Today, we are caught in that very struggle. The common moral ground has dropped out, and hence we are torn, as a nation, between those who hold to the moral world of Christianity and those who hold to the moral world of secularism. That is why we are divided about sexuality, marriage, abortion, euthanasia, genetic research, and on and on. Without that common moral ground, the notion of a separation of church and state, understood as some kind of cosmic wall keeping religion from entering the public square, simply means the victory of secularism.

Ah Ha! Another conspiracy theory to enwrap neo-conservative right-wing fundamentalism in the shroud of embattled orthodoxy. If Compte is the best you can resurrect as the source of secularism your arugement is rather thin. The challenge to Christianity is to stop insisting that indefensible myths are the core of Christian faith (Creationism, pro-life, pro-war, anti-gay etc.) The mystery of faith in God does not preclude logic. If faith is to be a functional part of our 21st century lives it needs to make sense. Christianity is constantly adapting to culture and re-interpreting the Gospel message in light of science, art, literature and technology. This is not a bad thing, but a witness to the continuing creative hand of God. - J. F.

Dr. Benjamin Wiker response:

It is hard to offer a response to Mr. Frisbie without writing an entire book (and perhaps I shall). To be all too short, the type of Christianity that he suggests we should embrace—one that is continually formed and reformed—is the very one that Secularists in Europe offered, beginning from Benedict Spinoza down to Comte himself. Spinoza offered it tongue in cheek, as a way to undermine Christianity itself. Comte simply stripped the trappings of Christianity and draped his own secular religion with them.

Thus, I don’t think indiscriminate devotion to whatever is new and allegedly improved is the answer to the question, “What, then, should we believe?” This is as true in regard to science, as it is for all other areas of human endeavor. It is one thing, therefore, for Christianity to take account of the latest and best findings of science—see my A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature, due out this spring. It is quite another thing for Christianity to conform itself to the modern reductionist materialism touted by Secularism. That is to embrace self destruction.

Simply put, Christianity cannot indiscriminately embrace anything and everything history happens to offer up on its continually changing cafeteria of ideas, any more than a healthy human being can remain healthy who eats anything and everything that passes by him on a plate. The point in regard to questions of literature, philosophy, science, art, and technology, is to choose what is true and good, not simply what is new and momentarily enticing.

This is a fine article with one significant exception. As a resident of Turkey I know that the debate about secularism in Muslim majority countries is as significant as it is in the US ? perhaps more. Turkish society is actively debating whether they should move from a French form of secularism to more of an American form. The difference between the two is that the traditional American view provides freedom for religions to operate but not control the government while the French view enshrines a humanistic faith as the official religion. Western evangelical protestants need to advocate a philosophy of religion and government that will bring justice and equity for minorities and majorities. A few years living in a Muslim majority country may provide some valuable perspective. - A. H.

The answer to your question is “By their fruits shall you know them.” If Christianity delivers on its message of ‘love God and love your neighbour as yourself’ of course it will survive. If it falls into extremism like rejecting evolutionary theory it will fail. - D. P.

I strongly disagree with virtually everything in every one of your messages. I’m no fan of Comte, but he got one thing right: religion is infantile. - H. N.

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We live complex lives. We strive to sort out priorities that sometimes conflict or seem incompatible. A moral framework is needed to help us understand the reality around us. Our Judeo-Christian heritage provides a framework to help us comprehend the choices we make and the conflicts that arise over them. It is not only the main source of our spiritual values, but also many of the secular values we depend on.

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Dinesh D'Souza   Dinesh D'Souza
Dinesh D'Souza, the Rishwain Research Scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, served as senior domestic policy analyst in the White House in 1987-1988. He is the best-selling author of Illiberal Education, The End of Racism, Ronald Reagan, The Virtue of Prosperity, and What's So Great About America. He is the designated expert on current American culture for tothesource.
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