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(0) (1) (Reply) (Go Down) Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:26pm On Jan 21, 2012 Alphonse de LaMartaine Never has a man set for himself, voluntarily or involuntarily, a more sublime aim, since this aim was superhuman; to subvert superstitions which had been imposed between man and his Creator, to render God unto man and man unto God; to restore the rational and sacred idea of divinity amidst the chaos of the material and disfigured gods of idolatry, then existing. Never has a man undertaken a work so far beyond human power with so feeble means, for he (Muhammad) had in the conception as well as in the execution of such a great design, no other instrument than himself and no other aid except a handful of men living in a corner of the desert. Finally, never has a man accomplished such a huge and lasting revolution in the world, because in less than two centuries after its appearance, Islam, in faith and in arms, reigned over the whole of Arabia, and conquered, in God's name, Persia Khorasan, Transoxania, Western India, Syria, Egypt, Abyssinia, all the known continent of Northern Africa, numerous islands of the Mediterranean Sea, Spain, and part of Gaul. If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astonishing results are the three criteria of a human genius, who could dare compare any great man in history with Muhammad? The most famous men created arms, laws, and empires only. They founded, if anything at all, no more than material powers which often crumbled away before their eyes. This man moved not only armies, legislations, empires, peoples, dynasties, but millions of men in one-third of the then inhabited world; and more than that, he moved the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and

the souls. The idea of the unity of God, proclaimed amidst the exhaustion of the fabulous theogonies, was in itself such a miracle that upon it's utterance from his lips it destroyed all the ancient temples of idols and set on fire one-third of the world. His life, his meditations, his heroic revelings against the superstitions of his country, and his boldness in defying the furies of idolatry, his firmness in enduring them for fifteen years in Mecca, his acceptance of the role of public scorn and almost of being a victim of his fellow countrymen: all these and finally, his flight his incessant preaching, his wars against odds, his faith in his success and his superhuman security in misfortune, his forbearance in victory, his ambition, which was entirely devoted to one idea and in no manner striving for an empire; his endless prayers, his mystic conversations with God, his death and his triumph after death; all these attest not to an imposture but to a firm conviction which gave him the power to restore a dogma. This dogma was twofold the unity of God and the immateriality of God: the former telling what God is, the latter telling what God is not; the one overthrowing false gods with the sword, the other starting an idea with words. "Philosopher, Orator, Apostle, Legislator, Conqueror of Ideas, Restorer of Rational beliefs, The founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire, that is Muhammed. As regards all standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask, is there any man greater than he? (Historie de la Turquie, Paris 1854, Vol. 11 pp. 276-277) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:27pm On Jan 21, 2012 George Bernard Shaw I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Saviour of Humanity." I believe that if today an autocrat of Mohammeds caliber assumes world leadership, he could solve all problems of humanity splendidly. The world will become an abode of peace and happiness. I predict that tomorrows Europe will embrace Islam." ('The Genuine Islam,' Vol. 1, No. 8, 1936) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:27pm On Jan 21, 2012 Michael Hart My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the worlds most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the secular and religious level. , It is probable that the relative influence of Muhammad on Islam has been larger than the combined influence of Jesus Christ and St. Paul on Christianity. , It is this unparalleled combination of secular and religious influence which I feel entitles Muhammad to be considered the most influential single figure in human history. (The 100, A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons In History,' New York,

1978) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:28pm On Jan 21, 2012 Edward Gibbon The greatest crimes, the greatest sin of Mohammed in the eyes of Christian West is that he did not allow himself to be slaughtered, to be crucified by his enemies. He only defended himself, his family and his followers; and finally vanquished his enemies. Mohammeds success is the Christians gall of disappointment He did not believe in any vicarious sacrifices for the sins of others. The good sense of Muhammad despised the pomp of royalty. The Apostle of God submitted to the menial offices of the family; he kindled the fire; swept the floor; milked the ewes; and mended with his own hands his shoes and garments. Disdaining the penance and merit of a hermit, he observed without effort of vanity the abstemious diet of an Arab. (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 1823) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:28pm On Jan 21, 2012 Thomas Carlyle The lies which we [Christians] have heaped round this man (Mohammed), are disgraceful to ourselves only. A silent great soul, one of that who cannot but be earnest. He was to kindle the world, the worlds Maker had ordered so. ('Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History,' 1840) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:29pm On Jan 21, 2012 Edward Gibbon and Simon Oakley The greatest success of Mohammads life was effected by sheer moral force. It is not the propagation but the permanency of his religion that deserves our wonder, the same pure and perfect impression which he engraved at Mecca and Medina is preserved after the revolutions of twelve centuries by the Indian, the African and the Turkish proselytes of the Koran, The Mahometans have uniformly withstood the temptation of reducing the object of their faith and devotion to a level with the senses and imagination of man. I believe in One God and Mahomet the Apostle of God is the simple and invariable profession of Islam. The intellectual image of the Deity has never been degraded by any visible idol; the honors of the prophet have never transgressed the measure of human virtue, and his living precepts have restrained the gratitude of his disciples within the bounds of reason and religion. (History of the Saracen Empire, London, 1870) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:30pm On Jan 21, 2012 Encyclopedia Britannica, 4th & 11th editions

Muhammed was the most successful of all religious personalities. Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:30pm On Jan 21, 2012 James Gavin, Speeches by a U.S. Army General Among leaders who have made the greatest impact through the ages, I would consider Muhammed before Jesus Christ Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:31pm On Jan 21, 2012 M.H. Hyndman "Mohammed never assigned himself a status more than a common man and a messenger of God. People had faith in him when he was surrounded by poverty and adversity and trusted him while he was the ruler of a great Empire. A man of spotless character who always had a confidence in himself and in Gods help. No aspect of his life remained hidden nor was his death a mysterious event." (The Awakening of Asia) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:31pm On Jan 21, 2012 Sir William Muir Mohammed brought an end to idol worship. He preached monotheism and infinite Mercy of God, human brotherhood, care of orphan, emancipation of slaves, forbidding of wine - No religion achieved as much success as Islam did." (Life of Mohammed) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:32pm On Jan 21, 2012 Philip K. Hitti Within a brief span of mortal life, Muhammad called forth of unpromising material, a nation, never welded before; in a country that was hitherto but a geographical expression he established a religion which in vast areas suppressed Christianity and Judaism, and laid the basis of an empire that was soon to embrace within its far flung boundaries the fairest provinces the then civilized world. (History of the Arabs) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:32pm On Jan 21, 2012 M. Gandhi I wanted to know the best of the life of one who holds today an undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind, I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter selfeffacement of the Prophet the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle. When I closed the second volume (of the Prophet's biography), I was sorry there was not more for me to read of that great life. (Young India,'1924.)

The sayings of Muhammed are a treasure of wisdom not only for Muslims but for all of mankind. (Preface to The Sayings of Muhammed by Sohrawardi) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:33pm On Jan 21, 2012 John Austin In little more than a year he was actually the spiritual, nominal and temporal rule of Medina, with his hands on the lever that was to shake the world. (Muhammad the Prophet of Allah, in T.P.'s and Cassel's Weekly for 24th September 1927) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:33pm On Jan 21, 2012 John William Draper, M.D., L.L.D. Four years after the death of Justinian, A.D. 569, was born at Mecca, in Arabia the man who, of all men exercised the greatest influence upon the human race, To be the religious head of many empires, to guide the daily life of one-third of the human race, may perhaps justify the title of a Messenger of God. (A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, London 1875, Vol.1, pp.329-330) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:34pm On Jan 21, 2012 Arthur Glyn Leonard It was the genius of Muhammad, the spirit that he breathed into the Arabs through the soul of Islam that exalted them. That raised them out of the lethargy and low level of tribal stagnation up to the high watermark of national unity and empire. It was in the sublimity of Muhammad's deism, the simplicity, the sobriety and purity it inculcated the fidelity of its founder to his own tenets, that acted on their moral and intellectual fiber with all the magnetism of true inspiration. ('Islam, Her Moral and Spiritual Values') Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:34pm On Jan 21, 2012 James Michener Like almost every major prophet before him, Muhammad fought shy of serving as the transmitter of Gods word sensing his own inadequacy. But the Angel commanded Read So far as we know, Muhammad was unable to read or write, but he began to dictate those inspired words which would soon revolutionize a large segment of the earth: "There is one God"." In all things Muhammad was profoundly practical. When his beloved son Ibrahim died, an eclipse occurred and rumors of God 's personal condolence quickly arose. Whereupon Muhammad is said to have announced, An eclipse is a phenomenon of nature. It is foolish to attribute such things to the death or birth of a human being'." At Muhammad's own death an attempt was made to deify him, but the man who was to become his administrative successor killed the hysteria with one of the noblest speeches in religious

history: If there are any among you who worshiped Muhammad, he is dead. But if it is God you Worshiped, He lives for ever'. (Islam: The Misunderstood Religion, Readers Digest, May 1955, pp. 68-70) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:35pm On Jan 21, 2012 Annie Besant It is impossible for anyone who studies the life and character of the great Prophet of Arabia, who knew how he taught and how he lived, to feel anything but reverence for that mighty Prophet, one of the great messengers of the Supreme. And although in what I put to you I shall say many things which may be familiar to many, yet I myself feel, whenever I reread them, a new way of admiration, a new sense of reverence for that mighty Arabian teacher. (The Life and Teachings of Mohammad,' Madras, 1932) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:36pm On Jan 21, 2012 W.C. Taylor So great was his liberality to the poor that he often left his household unprovided, nor did he content himself with relieving their wants, he entered into conversation with them, and expressed a warm sympathy for their sufferings. He was a firm friend and a faithful ally. (The History of Muhammadanism and its Sects) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:36pm On Jan 21, 2012 Reverend Bosworth Smith Head of the State as well as the Church, he was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without the Pope's pretensions, and Caesar without the legions of Caesar, without a standing army, without a bodyguard, without a police force, without a fixed revenue. If ever a man ruled by a right divine, it was Muhammad, for he had all the powers without their supports. He cared not for the dressings of power. The simplicity of his private life was in keeping with his public life. In Mohammadanism every thing is different here. Instead of the shadowy and the mysterious, we have history, We know of the external history of Muhammad, while for his internal history after his mission had been proclaimed, we have a book absolutely unique in its origin, in its preservation, on the Substantial authority of which no one has ever been able to cast a serious doubt. (Muhammad and Muhammadanism,' London, 1874) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:37pm On Jan 21, 2012 Dr. Gustav Weil Muhammad was a shining example to his people. His character was pure and stainless. His house, his dress, his food - they were characterized by a rare simplicity. So unpretentious was he that he would receive from his companions no special mark of reverence, nor would he accept any service from his slave which he could do for himself. He was accessible to all and at all times. He visited the sick and was full of sympathy for all. Unlimited was his benevolence and

generosity as also was his anxious care for the welfare of the community. (History of the Islamic Peoples) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:38pm On Jan 21, 2012 Charles Stuart Mills Deeply read in the volume of nature, though extremely ignorant of letters, his mind could expand into controversy with the wisest of his enemies or contract itself to the apprehension of meanest of his disciples. His simple eloquence was rendered impressive by a manner of mixed dignity and elegance, by the expression of a countenance where the awfulness of his majesty was so well tempered by an amiable sweetness, that it exerted emotions of veneration and love. He was gifted with that authoritative air or genius which alike influences the learned and commands the illiterate.(History of Mohammadanism) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:39pm On Jan 21, 2012 Stanley Lane-Poole He was one of those happy few who have attained the supreme joy of making one great truth their very life spring. He was the messenger of One God, and never to his life's end did he forget who he was or the message which was the marrow of his being. He brought his tidings to his people with a grand dignity sprung from the consciousness of his high office, together with a most sweet humility. (Studies in a Mosque) He was the most faithful protector of those he protected, the sweetest and most agreeable in conversation. Those who saw him were suddenly filled with reverence; those who came near him loved him; they who described him would say, "I have never seen his like either before or after." He was of great taciturnity, but when he spoke it was with emphasis and deliberation, and no one could forget what he said, ('Speeches and Table Talk of the Prophet Muhammad') Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:39pm On Jan 21, 2012 J.M. Rodwell Mohammad's career is a wonderful instance of the force and life that resides in him who possesses an intense faith in God and in the unseen world. He will always be regarded as one of those who have had that influence over the faith, morals and whole earthly life of their fellow men, which none but a really great man ever did, or can exercise; and whose efforts to propagate a great verity will prosper. ( the Preface to his translation of the Holy Qur'an) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:39pm On Jan 21, 2012 W. Montgomery Watt His readiness to undergo persecution for his beliefs, the high moral character of the men who believed in him and looked up to him as a leader, and the greatness of his ultimate achievement all argue his fundamental integrity. To suppose Muhammad an impostor raises more problems that it solves. Moreover, none of the great figures of history is so poorly appreciated in the West

as Muhammad, Thus, not merely must we credit Muhammad with essential honesty and integrity of purpose, if we are to understand him at all; if we are to correct the errors we have inherited from the past, we must not forget the conclusive proof is a much stricter requirement than a show of plausibility, and in a matter such as this only to be attained with difficulty. (Muhammad at Mecca,' Oxford, 1953) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:40pm On Jan 21, 2012 D. G. Hogarth Serious or trivial, his daily behavior has instituted a canon which millions observe this day with conscious memory. No one regarded by any section of the human race as Perfect Man has ever been imitated so minutely. The conduct of the founder of Christianity has not governed the ordinary life of his followers. Moreover, no founder of a religion has left on so solitary an eminence as the Muslim apostle.(Arabia) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:40pm On Jan 21, 2012 Washington Irving He was sober and abstemious in his diet and a rigorous observer of fasts. He indulged in no magnificence of apparel, the ostentation of a petty mind; neither was his simplicity in dress affected but a result of real disregard for distinction from so trivial a source. In his private dealings he was just. He treated friends and strangers, the rich and poor, the powerful and weak, with equity, and was beloved by the common people for the affability with which he received them, and listened to their complaints.In his private dealings he was just. He treated friends and strangers, the rich and poor, the powerful and weak, with equity, and was beloved by the common people for the affability with which he received them, and listened to their complaints. ('Mahomet and His Successors) His military triumphs awakened no pride nor vain glory as they would have done had they been effected by selfish purposes. In the time of his greatest power he maintained the same simplicity of manner and appearance as in the days of his adversity. So far from affecting regal state, he was displeased if, on entering a room, any unusual testimonial of respect was shown to him. ('Life of Muhammad,' New York, 1920) Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:41pm On Jan 21, 2012 Bertrand Russel Our use of phrase The Dark ages to cover the period from 699 to 1,000 marks our undue concentration on Western Europe, From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization of Islam flourishedTo us it seems that West-European civilization is civilization, but this is a narrow view. [Bertrand Russel in History of Western Philosophy, London, 1948, p. 419] Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:43pm On Jan 21, 2012 H.G. Wells

The Islamic teachings have left great traditions for equitable and gentle dealings and behavior, and inspire people with nobility and tolerance. These are human teachings of the highest order and at the same time practicable. These teachings brought into existence a society in which hardheartedness and collective oppression and injustice were the least as compared with all other societies preceding it, Islam is replete with gentleness, courtesy, and fraternity. Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:44pm On Jan 21, 2012 Robert Briffault Science owes a great deal more to Arab culture (Islam), it owes its existence [Robert Briffault in the Making of Humanity] Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:45pm On Jan 21, 2012 John William Draper I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of Europe has continued to put out of sight our obligations to the Muhammadans. Surely they cannot be much longer hidden. Injustice founded on religious rancour and national conceit cannot be perpetuated forever. The Arab has left his intellectual impress on Europe. He has indelibly written it on the heavens as any one may see who reads the names of the stars on a common celestial globe. [John William Draper in the Intellectual Development of Europe] Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:46pm On Jan 21, 2012 De Lacy OLeary History makes it clear, however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of sword upon conquered races is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated [De Lacy OLeary in Islam at the Crossroads, London, 1923] Re: Praise And Admiration By Prominent Non-muslims For Islam and the Prophet by LagosShia: 4:47pm On Jan 21, 2012 T.W. Arnold Islam is a religion that is essentially rationalistic in the widest sense of this termand the dogma of unity of God has always been proclaimed therein with a grandeur a majesty, an invariable purity and with a note of sure conviction, which it is hard to find surpassed outside the pale of Islam, A creed so precise, so stripped of all theological complexities and consequently so accessible to the ordinary understanding might be expected to possess and does indeed possess a marvelous power of winning its way into the consciences of men. [Edward Montet, La Propagande Chretienne et ses Adversaries Musulmans, Paris 1890. (Also in T.W. Arnold in The Preaching of Islam, London 1913)]

The Downfall of Political Islam

by Samir Yousif (December 2010)
Introduction

he theme of my argument is the following statement: Islam, as a

religion, has nothing to offer to economic or political theory. This simple idea has serious consequences. Political Islam, when it runs the country, will ultimately fail. It has no appropriate agenda that provides solutions to real political or economic challenges such as underdevelopment, unemployment, inflation, recession, poverty, just to mention a few. (I will not touch upon the most significant political-socioeconomic issue which is income inequalities, because Islam accepts a society composed of very rich classes living side by side with very poor classes- examples can be found from history or from today's Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, and Iran). While some Islamists continue to claim the existence of "Islamic economics," they have failed in producing anything close to a simple theory of economics. I believe that the main reason for the downfall of Muslim civilisation was the inherent social crisis: a society composed of few rich surrounded by the poor masses kept going by a strong religion. Social and political revolutions took place several times during the heyday of Muslim civilisation, as happened during the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, in Muslim Spain, and the famous Zanj Rebellion during the year 869 in Basra. But historians have ignored such revolutions. Muslim economies have failed throughout history to solve the very basic problem: the wage equation. Unskilled and skilled workers were downgraded to the lowest classes in Muslim societies, and were paid the minimum. History has showed that under Islam the wealth of the country went mainly to the Calipha, feeding his palace, army, the royal family, and to the vested interest that the Calipha has chosen himself. The

tax system was mainly imposed on the agricultural sector, what was known as the produce tax (Kharaj). "Islamic economics" is a term used today to justify the significant income inequalities in such societies and to find religiously- accepted investment opportunities for the rich. The Wrong Foundations of Islamic Economics Islamic economics consists of nothing more than changing terminology of the market economy. The word "interest" vanished, because it was haram (forbidden) under Islam, and was replaced by the word "profits," which is accepted in Islam. So as you deposit your money in an Islamic bank you will be entitled to sharing the profits of that bank at the end of the year. In practice it is exactly the same as what happens to your money when it is deposited in a normal bank. The "customer" is called "contributor," and he owns shares in the bank equal to as much as he deposits. Islamic Economics started with the publication of few books written by a religious man called Ayatollah Mohamed Baqir Al-Sadir at the beginning of the 1960's. The most important are Our Economy (1961), and the principle of Speculation (Mudharaba) introduced in his second book: The Non-Rabawi Bank in Islam (1969) - Reba = interest, here referring to the rate of interest of a bank. The principle of speculation in Islam is completely different from its normal meaning, and it refers to the relationship between the investor and the financer of that investment. It implies that both parties are partners sharing the profits and the losses according to an agreed percentage. This is known as Mudharaba and it is central to the role of an Islamic bank, and general commercial Islamic activities. In practice having an Islamic Government meant nothing to the man in the street (apart from applying Sharia Law). The distribution of wealth, the economic structure and the ownership of the means of production never changed. The poor remained poor, while the rich became much richer. Income redistribution is not part of the agenda of political Islam. But Ayatollah Mohamed Baqir Al-Sadir, the main Islamic finance reference, committed serious theoretical mistakes. The term reba does not correspond to interest, as he incorrectly assumed (and as many other assume also today). It was Prophet Mohammed who introduced this term reba, and made it haram in Islam. The reasons behind this go back to the struggle with the Jewish community during the early stages of Islam. As the Muslims achieved final victory and controlled both Medina and Mecca, Mohammed introduced

what we call today economic sanctions against the entire Jewish population through making reba haram. Mohammed did not use force against the Jews but he made one of their main economic activities, lending money with interest, to be haram. It is this activity of lending money that implied reba and it is haram, and not the rate of interest that is actually the price of capital at a moment of time. Neither is it the same as the rate of interest that allocates investments over time. Islamist economists do not consider the role of the rate of interest in investment allocation over time in all their publications. So this misunderstanding between reba and the rate of interest is the factor behind the introduction of Islamic economics and as such, it began on the wrong basis. This can be compared with the Communists during the Soviet era when they made similar mistakes by assuming that the rate of interest is part of a capitalist economy, and cannot be part of a socialist economy. By abolishing the rate of interests, the Soviets made major mistakes in investment decisions over time. Actually the rate of interest is the invisible hand that directs investments correctly over time, and it has nothing to do with reba as originally envisaged by Mohammed. Political Islam: Walayat Al Faqieh Having said that, we should not be surprised to find that Islamist governments miss the required tools for economic manipulation that they need in order to fulfil their promises. Many commentators would assume that political Islam has its deep roots well-established in Muslim societies. What comes to the surface is just the top of the iceberg. I beleive the truth is the other way around. Political Islam burst on the scene in 1979 as a result of the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution in Iran. Grand Ayatollah Khomeini had his own political theory: Walayat Al Faqieh (The Mandate of the Imam). It came with the promise that "Islam is the solution" (which is the main political slogan of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt today, as it was during the 1970's in Iran. It is also the slogan of the Dawa Party in Iraq today, and of the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria during the 1990's). Theoretically speaking, political Islam started with the publication of Grand Ayatollah Khomeini of his theory Walayat-Al-Faqieh in 1972. This theory did not have to wait that long to find its application by the author himself in Iran at the end of the 1970's. Iran & Saudi Arabia

"Islam is the solution," is a statement that you would find everywhere in 1970's Iran. Many events played different roles simultaneously that helped Grand Ayatollah Khomeini and brought down the Shah's regime. The Shah had a choice: either to clamp down the revolt or to step down. The streets in Tehran were boiling, as was the situation in other Muslim countries. The Islamic Revolution achieved victory. Everybody celebrated, and a new era in the history of human kind had just started. This was a summary of the expectations prevailing in Iran, and in many other Muslim countries, at that time. But no one ever asked the simple question: How can Islam be the solution? So Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, and for the first time in history, became the acting imam of the time (as stated by Walayat-Al-Faqieh). This is a special status in Islam that nobody had enjoyed (since the death of the 4th Caliph after Prophet Mohammed in the year 661). This new status is alien to western political theory and has no counterpart. But there is a fact that should be stated clearly. The downfall of the Shah was not just the result of the revolt of Grand Ayatollah Khomeini's supporters. At that time many groups, especially from the Iranian left-wing, were very active in political actions. All forces played their part, including the oil workers' strike in Abadan, in the final downfall of the Shah. But it was political Islam that succeeded in reaping the fruits of that political upheaval. The new Islamic regime, like any other totalitarian regime, monopolised power just for itself, and excluded all the other forces that were active against the Shah for decades. A new political struggle started at the end of the 1970's, and has not ended yet. The Islamic regime started implementing new policies to reward the masses that showed their loyalty to Grand Ayatollah Khomeini. Trivial and marginal decisions were issued by the new Government, like free electricity to the poor quarters of Tehran. A real socialist plan to help the lower classes was never proposed by any of the regime's policy makers. Religious leaders were simply far away from the concepts of class struggle, and the demands of the working classes. What was available to the policy makers were the few books written by Mohamed Baqir Al-Sadir. Apart from that the term "economics of Islam" is nothing but just an empty political slogan. In practice having an Islamic Government meant nothing but applying Sharia Law through execution of criminals in the open streets, and stoning of women. The economic structure and the ownership of the means of production never changed. The poor remained poor, while the rich became much richer. In Iran, as in Iraq, Muslim Shia'a leaders received their finances from the Khumus (note that wealth put into business has no

Khumus, but only un-used wealth - the word Khumus means literally one fifth). This simple fact made the religious leaders linked closely to the rich, and naturally led to political alliances between them. As for the poor, they have no representative in such a religious system. History after more than thirty years of Islamic rule in Iran showed that Islamic economics is nothing more than changing the terminology of capitalism. Actually, capitalism under Islam is similar to 19th-century capitalism: the absence of the welfare State and the rights of the working class. Today Iran finds that the use of Islam as its official ideology fits with its external imperial ambitions. Through the ideology of Islam, Iran managed to have a strong influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and many other Muslim countries (also HAMAS in Gaza and the Western Bank). As an example we find that the Iraqi Parliament failed to pass the new oil law. Iran opposes the idea of allowing Western oil companies to have concessions in the area. In Lebanon as the case with Hezbollah and HAMAS in Gaza, the politics of Iran are prevailing. After 30 years of the rule of Walayat-Al-Faqieh in Iran, we find that the number of the poor has increased by fourfold, and corruption has reached its peak. The government can keep the population under control through use of the oil revenue to keep prices of basic foodstuff at acceptable levels. So it is the oil revenues that keep the regime from collapsing, and not the economics of Islam. Today, everybody in Iran has discovered that "Islam is not the solution." The green revolution of 2009 cannot be kept under control, as the regime has reached bankruptcy. Today "Islam is not the solution" became the widely accepted new political slogan in the streets of Tehran. Turning to Saudi Arabia, we find the situation to be not that different from Iran. An authoritarian regime based upon an old religious ideology with the worse income distribution ever known in history. The influential religious leaders are State employees. Poverty is widespread, and political reform movements are strictly prohibited. One can argue, correctly, that the absence of a proper tax system can never be introduced into such a system because it would lead to the redistribution of income away from the ruling class. That is simply impossible without a political change. Actually we find that the religious establishment in both Iran and Saudi Arabia plays a central role in preventing social and political change. Any political reform will simply imply the total collapse of the prevailing political system.

Iraq & Algeria Political Islam in Iraq was defeated even before it took power. When the Americans entered Baghdad in 2003, they found out that Saddam Hussein has wiped out all forms of political resistance. The Americans could not find any political parties to work with, just a few exiled Iraqis. The Governing Council (2003) that was introduced by the Americans composed only of religious and ethnic representatives without any political movements. What are the political agenda and economic programme of political Islam? Political Islam, in all different Muslim countries, whether it is Afghanistan or Morocco, has no political agenda or economic programme, but it has one clear objective: The introduction of Sharia. Political Islam believes that by introducing Sharia, and making it the constitution of the land, all politicalsocial-economic problems will be solved. For Sharia is the law of God. It is beyond the comprehension and understanding of human beings. It works in ways and through means that are beyond our understanding. Actually the basic downfall of political Islam can be traced back to this specific issue: the non-availability of political or economic programs put forward by political Islam - only Sharia. Let us take a real example. When the Americans established the Governing Council in Iraq in July 13, 2003, one of the first decisions of the religious parties constituting this council was the re-introduction of Sharia according to each specific religious sect. So the Shia'a will have their own courts while the Sunni will have different ones. The same applies to other religions like the Christians, the Saab'a, and Yazidiya. They actually went in abolishing the civil law, and replacing it with Sharia. This decision caused a serious outburst of reaction and demonstrations against it. Religious leaders did not understand why there was so much resistance and negative opposition to their decision. They thought they are doing what the people wanted. But they discovered that history cannot be pushed backwards. Citizens of Iraq had enjoyed decades of living under a modern civil law where all citizens are equal before the law. This incident was the first major setback of political Islam in Iraq. The special situation in Iraq provided the religious leaders with a unique historical situation that gave power, easily, to them. As one of their leaders commented on the results of the first general elections: "we were surprised to see that number of votes coming to us. We actually did not understand

why people were voting for us. "The government that was formed out of the first general election was basically a religious one. Political Islam came to power in Iraq in 2005, but what did it achieve? The answer to this question was the results of the second national election in 2010. People voted for non-religious parties, and for secular personalities. Political Islam failed to strengthen its position, on the contrary it retreated. The Supreme Islamic Council (Al Hakim party) that was the main religious block managed to win only 8 seats out of 325. The reasons for this outcome coincide with the argument of this paper: Islam cannot provide solutions to present-day social and economic challenges. In a democratic set-up, political Islam cannot stay in power, it gets exposed quickly and it fails to fulfil its promises. This is why it is essential to allow political Islam to assume power, because this will lead, eventually, to its defeat. This is the main mistake that happened in Algeria in the beginnings of the 1990's. When the Islamic Salvation Front won the elections and was prevented from assuming power by the military. By doing that the military further strengthen political Islam in Algeria. If the Islamists had been allowed to assume power they would have failed in addressing any of Algeria's main economic challenges. That would have been the end of them. They should be given the chance to discover that they have no magical recipe, and religion provides no guide to solving real economic crisis. Turkey As for Turkey the situation is the other way around. The secular state (Atatrk 1923-38) that established modern Turkey after the First World War actually opened the door for the Islamists to assume power. An Islamic society taken by the rule of law away from its basic beliefs cannot stay silent for good. But political Islam in Turkey is significantly different from that of Iran, Iraq or Saudi Arabia. Political Islam in Turkey has so far shown no contradiction with secularism and modernity. On the contrary, it improved the situation by providing a proper bridge between modernity and the culture of the country. This was made possible through keeping the Islamic reactionary forces away from the political picture. The State successfully established the necessary social and civil institutions that are the basis of a modern state. Turkey today is similar to any Western European country where the government role is distinguished from the role of the state. And because of this unique historical situation that was available to Turkey, other Muslim countries cannot benefit from it. In other Muslim countries Islam represents today the barrier before social development and progress.

Finally I would point out that political Islam has failed to provide a political model that can compete with other contemporary political models, such as the Chinese model, Western democracies, or even developing democracies such as India and the other Asian countries. That comes with no surprise, as religion, any religion, keeps itself centuries behind. Main References: 1. Khomeini, Grand Ayatollah R.M, Walayat-Al-Faqieh, najaf, 1972. 2. Sadir, Grand Ayatollah, M.B., Our Economic, Beirut, 1961. 3. Sadir, Grand ayatollah, M.B. Non-Rabawi Bank in Islam, Beirut, 1969. Samir Yousif is a graduate of the London School of Economics (1976) and has worked in different sectors in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Bahrain, and in Europe. He worked as a professor in economics (1986-1994) at the University of al-Qadisiyah (Iraq), and at the University of Al-Fateh (19941996) in Tripoli, Libya. Mr.Yousif is a Norwegian Citizen, at the present living in the city of Stavanger, Norway.

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In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful

The Changing Face of Secularism and the Islamic Response

Imam Zaid Shakir

If we are to intelligently discuss issues related to secularism it is imperative that we first define the term. Secularism is the divorcing of religious belief, religious ritual, or a sense of community based on religious affiliation from the moral life of society. Secularism has manifested itself historically in both a subjective and an objective sense. Subjectively, or at the level of individual experience, secularism involves the disappearance of religious thought, feeling and imagery from the understanding of worldly things. At this level of experience, many people who may appear outwardly extremely religious, may in fact be thoroughly secularized as their thought processes, sentiments, and worldview are void of any truly religious referents.

At the objective level secularism involves the exclusion of religious offices, institutions, and ceremonies from public life. All modern states are thoroughly secularized. This reality also includes the states of the Muslim world as our countries are ruled by elites who have adopted the secular institutional and bureaucratic structure of the Western Kafir state. Even those states, which have undergone some degree of Islamic reform, have done little to alter those structures. The roots of secularism have been variously identified as emanating from Hellenic rationalism, the civil and communal values of Greco-Roman life, the Renaissance, the Reformation, Calvinism, and most prominently the moral and empirical philosophies spawned by the Enlightenment. Regardless of which of these developments we view as being pivotal in the development of secularism, we must return to one salient fact: Secularism constitutes open rebellion against Allah. We are informed that the rationale for the creation of the human being is to worship Allah, and that the Islamic polity and the principles, which underlie it, are instituted to facilitate that worship. Hence, Islam is fundamentally anti-secular. Allah informs us in the Qur'an: I have only created the Jinn and Humans that they worship Me. Al-Dhariyyat: 56 He also informs us that the rejection of that worship involves grave consequences. He says: Whoever turns away from My Remembrance will have a wretched life and We shall resurrect him blind on the Day of Judgment. Ta Ha: 124 Whoever rejects the Remembrance of his Lord, He [Allah] will lead him into a severe, unbearable punishment. Al-Jinn: 17 Having thus defined secularism, we turn to the second theme introduced by the title of this lecture: secularism's changing face. If we understand that secularism initially involved a struggle between its advocates and the European Church, we can see that it has indeed undergone significant changes. The first major change occurred during the latter 19th Century when the struggle between secularism and the church was replaced by a struggle between two competing versions of secularism: the Marxist/Socialist version and the liberal version. With the victory of the liberal version, a victory finalized by the falling of the "Iron Curtain" and the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union, a set of circumstances was created which led to the return of the debate between secularism and religion. Secularism was to indeed change faces, or more precisely to reveal a new manifestation of an old face. In the new debate between secularism and religion, Islam emerged as the standard bearer of religion. The reason for this is that Islam is, as admitted by Ernest Gellner, Zbigniew Brezinski and other leading Western intellectuals, the last true, or normative religion. The current secularist assault against Islam is thus assuming the intensity that characterized the earlier attack on Christianity. It is our contention that the origin of

this assault lies in the rebellion of Satan against Allah, and his subsequent declaration of war against the descendants of Adam. The Qur'an describes that declaration in the following words: Because you have caused me to stray, I'm going to lie waiting to ambush them [humankind] along your Straight Path. I'm going to assault them from in front, from behind, from the right and from the left; and you won't find most of them thankful [for you blessings]. Al-'Araf: 16 It is interesting to note that the earliest Muslim commentators as producing all of the psychological and behavioral traits that characterize the contemporary secular individual have understood this assault of Satan. Ibn Kathir relates the following passage in his commentary on this verse: 'Ali ibn Abi Talha relates from Ibn 'Abbas (May be Pleased with them both) that Satan's assault from in front means he will cause them to doubt about the Hereafter. From behind means he will make them excessive in their craving for the World. From the right means he will cause them confusion concerning their religion. From the left means he will make sin appealing to them. (This quote is from memory thus there may be slight changes from the original wording) When one views the damage which has been wrought by secularism in the Christian world, and the nature of the damage which is currently manifesting itself in the Muslim world, one can readily see the accuracy of Ibn 'Abbas' explanation. In the Muslim world, the reality of a life after death seems the furthest thing from many people's mind. The obsession with the World, which drives Muslim participation in a new globalized consumer culture, is too clear to warrant further comment. Increasingly large numbers of Muslims feel deprived if growing arrays of labels and logos arent plastered over their clothing. The confusion in the Din is apparent in the expanding ranks of the religiously noncommitted, and the increasing pettiness of the issues being vehemently argued by the committed. The appeal of sin can be gauged by the ubiquitous nature of the satellite dishes which adorn the rooftops of houses throughout the Muslim world and the increased viewing of soft and hard pornography which those dishes facilitate. The need for an Islamic response to an increasingly pervasive secularism is all too clear. The destructiveness of man's effort to orchestrate the social, economic and political life of society has to be arrested if we are to conceive of a meaningful future for this planet. At the individual level, the insecurity, rootlessness, and anomie resulting from the elimination of religiously informed traditional institutions provides the conditions which encourage gangs, ethnically-based hate groups, and an oftentimes violence-prone religious fundamentalism. The legions of willing recruits for extreme Zionist groups, ultraconservative armed militias in the American Midwest, chauvinistic Hindu nationalism, and increasingly inflexible "Jihad" groups in the Muslim world are all the direct or indirect result of secularism. At the family level, the disintegration of traditionally ascribed roles, rights, and

responsibilities for men, women, and children is leading to stresses that many families cannot survive. In the Muslim community, the familial stability which made spouse and child abuse rare occurrences has given way to a volatile instability whose presence can be gauged by the rapidly escalating numbers of battered women, homeless children, and divorces. Environmentally, secularist ideals have led to what Professor 'Abd al-Hakim Murad has referred to as the "gang rape" of the planet. The toxic byproducts of an ill-conceived developmental model poison our land, air, and the seas. Untreated sewage chokes and defiles our rivers and streams. Whole communities in coastal areas are rendered economically unviable due to overfishing so severe that in some areas even the hardy, once abundant codfish has disappeared. Even in remote areas of the planet which are presented by the tourist industry as "island paradises" the destructiveness of man's economic hubris is all too clear. In Oahu, the most populous of the Hawaiian islands, a ceiling of smog hovers over the densely populated downtown area and the airport/American Air Force base during still summer days. Beaches are often closed due to sewage spills. The countryside is littered with garbage dumps and junkyards. Large areas of the island have been transformed into treeless wastelands, abandoned by the pineapple industry, which has moved on to greener pastures in the Philippines and elsewhere. What few forested areas remain rapidly disappearing as developers throw up acres of new "ticky tacky" condominiums. Keeping golf courses green uses up a disproportionate percentage of available fresh water, while pesticide residues from those same golf courses poisons scarce ground water. The above-mentioned victory of the liberal version of secularism has meant the victory of what Francis Fukuyama, one of the leading advocates of that version, refers to as free market capitalism and liberal democracy. These twin forces have worked to ensure that the ethics of profit replace the ethics of the Prophets (Allah's Peace and Blessings be upon them). Corporate profits determine if potentially privatized schools will teach children to think or to mindlessly consume. Profits determine if our rivers and lakes are swimmable. Profit determines if genetically engineered food grown in warehouses will eliminate the small farmer throughout the "developing" world just as corporate greed and agribusiness giants have practically eliminated the family farm in America. Furthermore, the relentless pursuit of profit has been the primary impetus behind the oppressive provisions of the recent Uruguay Round of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and the associated WTO (World Trade Organization). This will allow massive transnational corporations to dump cheaply produced junk food, junk products, and a junk culture on any nation of the world, with the right to declare any opposition to that process -no matter how principled that opposition- as an impediment to free trade. In terms of liberal democracy, the corrupt implications of this arrangement are epitomized by one of its leading philosophical schools -deconstruction. This school elevates a form of literary criticism and linguistic analysis to inform social action. It posits that just as language is the product of a set of subjectively experienced "deep structures" which don't admit the existence of any universal referents for meaningful objective knowledge, so too social and political reality is subjectively formed and experienced. Hence, there are no universal or objective referents for meaningful transcending social or political action. Whatever, social or political action does unfold in this intellectual climate, unfolds along fragmented ethnic, cultural or gender lines. The

spiritual strength and philosophical principles necessary to challenge the destructive hegemony of transnational capitalism disappear before they are created leaving both pseudo-liberated woman and a growing array of multicuturalisms united by a single unchallengeable characteristic: consumerism. This dangerous school of thought, of which the more fundamentalist wing of our current Islamic reform is in many ways an unwitting agent, eliminates the possibility of meaningful social and political action leaving a void in the human soul which is filled by consumerism. It is no accident that McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken, two symbols of the emerging global consumer culture, have appeared in Mecca, the Holiest place in Islam, under the auspices of the most fundamentalist of all Muslim governments. Taken to it logical end, this consumerism will destroy the Earth. Islam obviously opposes this arrangement. Although deconstructionalists don't admit the existence of universal principles such as tolerance or compassion, which make ethnic, cultural and gender politics possible, Islam contains no such internal contradiction. Let us consider one of numerous examples. Allah declares in His Noble Book: What is wrong with you that you don't fight in the way of Allah and the oppressed; men, women, and children who say, "Our Lord deliver us from this town whose people are oppressors. And raise up for us from yourself one who will protect us, and raise up for us from yourself one who will help!" Al-Nisa': 75 Assisting the weak, working to eliminate oppression, and protecting the defenseless are higher principles the knowledge of which is made possible by the existence of an ultimate, objective reality from which all else derives its existence, and upon which all else depends for its continued existence -Allah. Hence, Islam admits an ultimate reality. It admits a higher purpose to life, the worship of Allah. It similarly presents a set of principles and ideals that serve as the basis for meaningful collective action. Reflecting on the state of the world, one cannot help but be struck by the penetrating words of Allah in His Glorious Book: Corruption has appeared in the land and sea because of what the hands of men have wrought [by their sinful recklessness] This is so that We may give them a taste of what they have done, in order that they may return [to the way of Divine Guidance]. Al-Rum: 41 If man is to return to the way of the Divine, it will be the Muslims who will lead that return. Islam presents a viable critique of contemporary atheistic thought and it is also the only major socio-religious force with a viable ecological philosophy. The thoughtless abuse and waste which characterizes our contemporary secular world is roundly condemned by the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Allah declares in the Qur'an: Eat and drink from the provision of Allah and don't go through the Earth working corruption.

Al-Baqara: 60 Son of Adam! Adorn yourselves at every place of prayer; eat, and drink, but don't waste. Surely, He [Allah] doesn't love those who are wasteful. Al-'Araf: 31 Allah says concerning the mercy which His Messenger (Allah's Peace and Blessings be upon him) exemplified: We have only sent you as a mercy to all the Worlds. Al-'Anbiya: 107 It is interesting to note that in the opening chapter of the Qur'an, Al-Fatiha, after mentioning his Lordship over all creation, Allah immediately mentions the vastness of His Mercy. He says, "Al-Hamdu lillahi Rabb al-'Alamin, Al-Rahman Al-Rahim (All Praise is for Allah the Lord of All the Worlds, The Most Beneficent, The Most Merciful). Allah similarly reminds humanity that all living creatures comprise organized communities which have many of the basic rights possessed by humans. He says: There is no creature on the Earth, nor any bird flying upon its wings, except that it comprises communities like yourselves. Al-An'am: 38 Muslims must honor the rights of those creatures as part of our custodianship over the Earth. However, petty little Islamic groups cannot exercise that custodianship. If Muslims are to provide badly needed direction for humanity we will have to transcend the divisions, which in many cases are the byproducts of the ill-conceived schemes of small men. In his insightful book, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century, Zbigniew Brzenski clearly implies that Islam can potentially offer a viable socio-political alternative for humanity. However, that Islamic alternative is generally unknown because unlike the failed communist alternative it hasn't been articulated at the state level. Such an articulation must occur before Islam can respond seriously to the challenge of secularism. In order for Islam to be a viable international actor, state or nonstate, Muslims will have to move beyond the petty political divisions which have afflicted the Ummah for much of the past century. In the West, we will have to prevent the emerging "Traditionalist-Salafi" division from becoming a fundamental, irreconcilable split. One way to do this is to define Ahli al-Sunnah w'al-Jama'ah as broadly and as inclusively as possible, instead of the narrow, exclusive definitions, which dominate current discourse. One such definition is provided by Tahir al-Bagdadi (d. 429 AH) in his book, al-Farq bayn al-Firaq (The Difference Between the Sects). He mentions Ahl al-Sunnah w'al-Jama'ah as being comprised of eight basic groups. These groups accommodate all of the orientations, which serve as the basis for the thought of informed Traditionalists and Salafis. He then mentions an objective standard (Dabit) which distinguishes these eight groups from the adherents of the sects such as the Khawarij, M'utazilah, and others. Adopting such a broad view, which represents the best of a rich academic tradition, is essential if we are to move forward as a unified community.

I have chosen to close by emphasizing the need for Muslim unity because the tremendous challenges confronting humanity and our Ummah require our collective action. Secularism, doesn't have to be the enduring socio-political legacy of humanity. Islam, as we have tried to show, offers something a lot better to humanity, to a ravaged Earth, and her creatures. It is up to us Muslims to demonstrate to humanity through our unity, our love, our spiritual elevation, our sacrifice, our living, and our dying that Islam is truly the "solution." If we can understand and take up the challenges of the day humanity will be able to see the first rays of a new dawn after a long, dark, and difficult night. Zaid Shakir Aylesbury, England February 1999

Darwinism, Secularism, and the Decline of the West Part 3: The Impact of Darwinism
February 11, 2014 By Bruce Gordon in Philosophy Tags: Darwinism, education, politics, Progressivism, Secularism 2 Comments

Through the end of the nineteenth century, the vast majority of scientists were at least deists and more likely Jewish or Christian theists. In fact, in 1872, Charles Darwins cousin, Francis Galton (1822-1911), one of the founders of quantitative psychology and an outspoken atheist and enthusiastic advocate of eugenics, conducted a survey of English men of science to determine whether youthful religion had a deterrent impact on the freedom of their scientific research (Galton 1875). To his dismay, not only did over ninety percent of the respondentsincluding Charles Darwin himselfrespond in the negative, almost every respondent indicated a church affiliation. In 1914, in another effort to establish the irreligiosity of scientists, the American psychologist James Leuba conducted a more rigorous survey (Leuba 1916 [1921]). He found that 41.8 percent of his sample group believed in a God who answered prayer, another 41.5 percent had a more deistic view, and 16.7 percent had no belief in God whatsoever. If Leubas results are restricted to leading scientists, however, the number holding some substantial form of religious belief dropped to 30 percent. When Leubas exact survey was repeated in 1996 the results remained much the same, except that the number of leading scientistsrepresented by members

of the National Academy of Scienceshaving strong religious beliefs dropped below 10 percent (Larson and Witham 1997). A broader survey of religious belief by scholarly field that included 60,028 academics was conducted by the Carnegie Commission in 1969. It indicated levels of religious belief among natural scientists in the 55 to 60 percent range, with about two-thirds of these being orthodox. The percentage of religious believers in the social sciences was much lower, however, averaging around 45 percent, with the worst field being anthropology, where only 29 percent had any manner of religious belief at all, and only 11 percent were orthodox (see Stark 2003: 194). The moral of these surveys seems to be that while religious belief persists among scientists and academics in general, it has declined precipitously since the nineteenth century, especially in its orthodox form, and especially among those regarded as being at the top of their field. So what happened to bring this about? What has led to the tremendous changes in the social and cosmic imaginaries that have overtaken Western civilization in the last century, changes that have given rise to the widespread and presumptive acceptance among the intellectual elite of the causal closure and self-subsistence of material realitywhat Charles Taylor (2007) calls the the causal closure of the immanent frame? Part of the explanation is no doubt to be found in unwarranted conclusions drawn from the efficacy of the mechanical philosophy; another part undoubtedly lies with the social impact of false narratives alleging a state of warfare between science and religion, a misperception given considerable impetus by Andrew Dickson Whites dissembling tomes at the end of the nineteenth century. But we should also not underestimate the impact of Charles Darwins (18091882) theory of universal common descent, which purports to offer an explanation of speciation and growth in complexity in the history of life solely by means of natural selection acting on random variation in populations. What random variation is conventionally taken to mean, of course, is an objectively undirected process without discernible purpose. That this was Darwins intent seems clear, for he remarked in 1876 that there seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows (Darwin 1876 [1958], p. 87). Indeed, until Darwins theory gained wide acceptancean eventuality given a boost by the discovery of the genetic basis of inheritance and a neo-Darwinian synthesis in which natural selection sifts random genetic mutationsdesign was regarded as the formative principle in biology. What Darwin is thought by many to have provided, as Richard Dawkins has gone to great lengths to emphasize, is a way of explaining the appearance of design in organisms without recourse to actual design. In light of this, Dawkins has no compunction about claiming that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist (Dawkins 1986, p. 6). It is for this reason, and others, that Daniel Dennett describes Darwinism as a universal acid that eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view (Dennett 1995, p. 63). By Dennetts account, of course, that revolutionized worldview is a radical philosophical naturalism in which traditional religion is preserved only as a curiosity in a cultural zoo (1995, p. 520). This disavowal of design and purpose is, to be sure, fundamentally a philosophical stance. Even if the neo-Darwinian picture were accepted, the assertion that genetic mutation as the basis of variation is ontologically random and that environmental selection is absolutely blind is an

unverifiable and gratuitous postulation. The gratuitousness of this assertion has not stopped its appearance in a wide variety of textbooks used in secondary and tertiary education, however, which as an expression of the mindset of the authors of these educational materials, speaks to the pervasive influence of philosophical naturalism in most institutions of higher learning and the broader cultural impact of Darwinism. It is also revelatory of Darwinisms fundamental transformation of the way that humanity conceives of the universe and our place in it that has been effected in the last century. If we are looking for the historical locus at which formal and final causes were purged from the scientific view of reality, it clearly was not with the mechanical philosophy, which retained formal causes in the design plan of the mechanism and final causes in the purposes they were intended to serve; rather, as we have seen, formal intent realized through purposeful implementation was banished by the advent of Darwinism and the evolutionary naturalism it made conceptually possible. Another factor that has eroded the metaphysical foundations of human freedom and the mindset of classical liberalism in Western culture, of course, is the modern embrace of methodological naturalism as normative for science and scholarship, since it insists that all explanatorily relevant causality is found in the immanent frame. Methodological naturalism has a long history (Numbers 1977; Dilley 2007) throughout which it has gradually acquired a stranglehold on scienceeven though it was emphatically rejected by Newton, whose presence towers over physics even today. The effect of Darwins insertion of it into biology as a catalyst for the spread of irreligion/secularism cannot be underestimated. What especially strengthened its impact was the fact that the presence of discrete intentional design in the biological realm had been one of the mainstays of natural theology (Roberts and Turner 2000, pp. 28-29, 47, 91-92, et passim). Darwin did more than introduce methodological naturalism into biology however; he contended that the exclusion of non-immanent causation was an indispensable criterion for any theory to be regarded as scientific (Darwin 1859 [1964], p. 488; see also the epigraphs opposite the title page). As William North Rice, a professor of geology at Wesleyan University and a Methodist Christian, stated the matter: The great strength of Darwinian theory lies in its coincidence with the general spirit and tendency of science. It is the aim of science to narrow the domain of the supernatural, by bringing all phenomena within the scope of natural laws and secondary causes (Rice 1867, p. 608). Rice was not alone among Christians in advancing this conception of science. There were a good many Christian thinkers who regarded methodological naturalism as a principle for discovering the laws by which God governed creation, and this understanding has provided and still provides a context for justifying it within the broad framework of a Christian metaphysics. It is an intellectual stance that is as unnecessary by way of its heuristic restrictions, however, as it has been unfortunate in terms of its broader effects. In conjunction with Darwinism, methodological naturalism had the unintended consequence of screening off the theological basis of natural science from the practice of science in a way that has led to a definitive intellectual lopping off of theistic metaphysics. This severance completed the causal closure of the immanent frame in the realm of natural sciencewhich, by the end of the nineteenth century, was regarded as the paradigm intellectual activity and the model for epistemic rigor that represented the standard to which all other academic disciplines should aspireand it contributed mightily to the current

pervasive influence of an evolutionarily-framed philosophical naturalism and concomitant exclusive humanism in the academy. This was particularly manifest in the fledgling human sciences of anthropology, psychology and sociology, which felt bound, in their quest to be truly scientific, to emulate the natural sciences and endorse the principle of methodological naturalism (Roberts and Turner 2000). In their desire for scientific respectability, anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists so thoroughly naturalized the study of humanity that we became nothing but the material products of our environmentin short, we were denaturedand thus lost our humanity. Working in concert with the Darwinian drift of science were broader intellectual developments in the academy that drew together the varying shades of evolutionary historicism inherent in the thought of Hegel, Comte, Marx, and Nietzsche (Ceaser 2010; Cohen 1978; Comte 1844, 1853, 1891; Hegel 1807, 1821; Marx 1843; Miller 2009; Nietzsche 1882, 1885, 1886, 1887, 1888; Pestritto and Atto 2008; Singer 1980). These European thinkers had a profound influence on the American academy in the post-Civil War era, and their ideas found intellectual and sociocultural expression in the rise of progressivism, a school of thought hostile to the natural right and natural law principles of the American founding enshrined in the Constitution. Progressives have consistently sought to change the conception of the Constitution from a fixed framework of foundational laws that places limits on government by a separation of powers and a system of checks and balances, to an evolving structure of case law amenable to an unbridled expansion of government capable of transforming society in accordance with progressive goals (Goldberg 2007, 2009; Pestritto 2005; Watson 2009, 2010; West 2006, 2007; Wilson 1912). Nowhere have progressive ideas been more evident and influential than in the philosophy and social policy of John Dewey, whose primary formative intellectual influences were Hegel and Darwin, and whose role, along with William James, in establishing pragmatism as a major school of philosophical thought in America gave rise to the spread of relativism in American universities and its infestation of the broader culture in a variety of guises (Dewey 1916, 1920, 1930, 1934, 1935; Goldberg 2007, 2009; James 1977; McDermott 1973; Miller 2009; Pestritto and Atto 2008; Rorty 1982; 1989, 1998, 1999, 2000; Siegel 2009). As Dewey himself stated: Darwin was not, of course, the first to question the classic philosophy of nature or knowledgeBut prior to Darwin the impact of the new scientific method upon life, mind, and politics, had been arrested, because between these ideal or moral interests and the inorganic world intervened the kingdom of plants and animals. The gates of the garden of life were barred to the new ideas; and only through this garden was there access to mind and politics. The influence of Darwin upon philosophy resides in his having conquered the phenomena of life for the principle of transition, and thereby freed the new logic for application to mind and morals and life (Dewey 1910, pp. 1-19; the title essay was reprinted in McDermott, ed. 1973 [1981], pp. 31-41, see p.35). When we resume our discussion, it will be reasonable to ask, therefore, what has been wrought by progressivist philosophy through its appropriation and application of Darwinian principles, and begin a dark journey into what C.S. Lewis called the abolition of man. For further reading:

Ceaser, J. (2010). The Roots of Obama Worship: Auguste Comtes Religion of Humanity finds a 21st-Century Savior, The Weekly Standard 15 (18), January 25, 1821. Cohen, G. A. (1978). Karl Marxs Theory of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Comte, A. (2009) [1844]. A General View of Positivism. Translated by J.H. Bridges. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. _____. (2009) [1853]. The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, 2 volumes. Translated by H. Martineau. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. _____. (2009) [1891]. The Catechism of Positive Religion. Translated by R. Congrev. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Darwin, C. (1964) [1859]. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (facsimile edition, edited by Ernst Mayr). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Darwin, C. (1958) [1876]. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 18091882. N. Barlow (Ed.). London: Collins. Dawkins, R. (1986). The Blind Watchmaker: Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Dennett, D. (1995). Darwins Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. New York: Simon & Schuster. Dewey, J. (1910). The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy: And Other Essays. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc. _____. (1944) [1916]. Democracy and Education. New York: The Free Press. _____. (1948) [1920]. Reconstruction in Philosophy. Boston: Beacon Press. _____. (1999) [1930]. Individualism Old and New. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. _____. (1962) [1934]. A Common Faith. New Haven: Yale University Press. _____. (2000) [1935]. Liberalism and Social Action. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Dilley, S.C. (2007). Methodological Naturalism, History, and Science. Tempe: Arizona State University, Ph.D. dissertation. Galton, F. (1875). English Men of Science: Their Nature and Nurture. New York: D. Appleton and Company.

Goldberg, J. (2007). Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. New York: Doubleday. __________. (2009). Richard Elys Golden Calf, National Review, 61 (24), December 31, 33 36. Hegel, G.W.F. (1977) [1807]. Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A.V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press. _____. (1952) [1821]. Elements of the Philosophy of Right (translated by T.M. Knox). Oxford: Oxford University Press. James, W. (1977) [1906]. The Moral Equivalent of War, in J.J. McDermott (Ed). The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition (pp. 660-671). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Larson, E.J. & Witham, L. (1997). Scientists Are Still Keeping the Faith, Nature, 386 (April 3), 435. Leuba, J. (1921) [1916]. The Belief in God and Immortality. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co. Lewis, C. S. (2001) [1944]). The Abolition of Man. New York: Harper Collins. Marx, Karl (1977) [1843]. Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McDermott, J.J. (Ed.). (1981) [1973]. The Philosophy of John Dewey (Two Volumes in One). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Miller, T.J. (2009). John Dewey and the Philosophical Refounding of America, National Review, 61 (24), December 31, 3740. Nietzsche, F. (1974) [1882]. The Gay Science (translated by W. Kaufmann). New York: Vintage Books. _____. (1967) [1885]. The Will to Power (translated by W. Kauffman & R.J. Hollingdale). New York: Random House. _____. (1966) [1886]. Beyond Good and Evil (translated by W. Kauffman). New York: Random House. _____. (1967) [1887, 1888]. On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecco Homo (translated by W. Kaufmann). New York: Vintage Books.

Numbers, R.L. (1977). Creation by Natural Law: Laplaces Nebular Hypothesis in American Thought. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Pestritto, R.J. (2005). Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Pestritto, R.J. & Atto, W.J. (Eds.). (2008). American Progressivism: A Reader. Lanham: Lexington Books. Rice, W.N. (1867). The Darwinian Theory of the Origin of the Species, New Englander, 26, 603635. Roberts, J.H. & Turner, J. (2000). The Sacred and the Secular University. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rorty, R. (1982). Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. _____. (1989). Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. _____. (1998). Truth and Progress. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. _____. (1999). Philosophy and Social Hope. New York: Penguin Books. _____. (2000). Universality and Truth, in R.B. Brandom (Ed.), Rorty and His Critics (pp. 130). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, Inc. Siegel, F. (2009). Herbert Crolys American Bismarcks, National Review, 61 (24), December 31, 4345. Singer, P. (1980). Marx: A Brief Insight. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stark, R. (2003). For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, WitchHunts, and the End of Slavery. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Taylor, C. (2007). A Secular Age. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Watson, B.C.S. (2009). The Curious Constitution of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., National Review, 61 (24), December 31, 4142. _____. (2010). Darwins Constitution: Why progressives took it upon themselves to purify our founding charter of its meaning, National Review, 62 (9), 2834. West, J. (2006). Darwins Conservatives: The Misguided Quest. Seattle: Discovery Institute Press.

_____. (2007). Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science. Wilmington: ISI Books. Wilson, W. (1961) [1912]. The New Freedom (with an introduction and notes by W. Leuchtenberg). Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc

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Israels Coming Civil War: The Haredi Jews Confront the Militarized Secular Zionist State
By Prof. James Petras Global Research, February 21, 2013

Region: Middle East & North Africa Theme: Politics and Religion In-depth Report: PALESTINE

Israel is heading towards a profound internal crisis: a Jew-on-Jew confrontation, which has major implications for its relations with the Palestinians, as well as its Arab neighbors. The conflict is between the highly militarized Zionist state and the Haredi religious movement over a number of issues, including recent proposals by the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to end the religious exemption of Haradi youth from serving in Israel s colonial armed forces. Haredim and the Zionist Colonial State Even before the forcible imposition (founding) of the state of Israel , the Haredim were opposed to Zionism. Today the vast majority of Haredim in Israel remain staunchly opposed to the Zionist state for religious, ethical and political reasons. Haredi religious teaching claims that the Jewish people are bound by three oaths: (1) not to settle in Israel by using force or violence, (2) not to make war with other nations and (3) not to act as if the other nations of the world would persecute Israel . Haredim opposed Israel s violent ethnic cleaning of over 850,000 Palestinians in the course of establishing the Israeli State and continues to oppose Israeli settlers violently land grabs against Palestinians. Unlike other so-called ultra-Orthodox sects, who support Zionist colonialism and bless the Israeli military, the Haredim maintain that militarism corrupts the spirit and that Zionists have transformed Jews from righteous followers of the Torah into rabid ethnocentric supporters of a militarist state. For the Haredim, state worship, especially the waving of the Israeli flag in the temple, is a sacrilege comparable to the renegade Jews condemned by Moses for worshipping the Golden Calf. The majority of Haredim boycott elections, organize their own schools (Yeshivas), encourage students to deepen their religious studies, emphasize community and family values (of a profoundly patriarchal sort) with numerous children and strongly reject the Zionist states efforts to conscript Haredi youth into their colonial occupation army, the so-called Israeli Defense (sic) Force (IDF). All major Zionist political parties and the ruling colonial regime unite to demonize the Haredim, claiming they are shirking their patriotic military responsibilities. Via the mass media and public pronouncements Zionist politicians and the state incite Israeli hatred against the Haredim: A study in 2006 claimed that over a third of Israeli Jews identified the Haredim as the most unpopular group in Israel .

The Haredim, on the other hand, have reason to fear and loath the secular militarist Zionist state and politicians: They claim that after World War II in the Zionist-controlled relocation camps for refugee Jewish children in Teheran, the Jewish Agency imposed Zionist ideology and militarist anti-religious policies in order to cut Haredim children off from their spiritual roots. According to one Haredim report many religious Jewish youth from Poland , mostly survivors of the Holocaust and Soviet Russia, were subjected to unimaginable mental and physical cruelty with one goal in mind: (the) obliteration of Judaism. Given the Israeli drive today to harness a corrupted form of Judaism to serve colonial militarism, the Haredim have every reason to believe that the conscription of their sons and daughters will be accompanied by cruel, systematic Zionist brainwashing to ensure they make efficient (brutal) occupation soldiers. Haredim versus Israeli State Values The Haredim fervently believe in and practice the Biblical teaching: Be fruitful and multiply. They have large families and the median age among the Haredim is 16 years. Their peaceful message to the militarist Zionists could be summed up as: Make babies, not bombs. Some Haredim leaders have met with Palestinian and Iranian officials and, in line with their religious doctrine, have declared their support for peaceful resolution of conflicts and denounced Israel s aggressive military posture. Haredim are intensely religious and dedicate their time to discuss and debate the readings of their great religious scholars: Their message to the Zionists is to read Maimonides ethical treatises rather than listen to Netanyahus bellicose, blood curdling rants. Haredim live and study largely within the confines of their close communities. They insist on sending their sons to the yeshivas to study religious doctrine rather than to the West Bank to kill Palestinians. They call on their children to serve G-d not the IDF. They seek truth in the Torah not in conquest via the Preventive War Doctrines espoused by prestigious Israeli and overseas Zionist academic militarists. Haredim focus on building a better life within their community; they reject the efforts of the Zionist state to entice them into joining the violent self-styled Jewish settlers engaged in brutal land grabs in the West Bank , in the name of contributing to society (sic). The introverted Haredi way of life is seen as a righteous alternative to the crass militarism, money laundering, financial speculation, human body part trafficking and real estate swindles rife among the elite Israelis and among sectors of overseas Zionists engaged in procuring multi- billion dollar tribute from the US Treasury. Haredim believe, with exemplary evidence, that conscripting their youth into the Israeli colonial army would destroy their moral values, as their sons would be forced to grope and search Arab women at checkpoints, break the legs of stone-throwing Palestinian children, defend lawless selfstyled Jewish settlers as they paint obscene graffiti in mosques and churches and attack Arab children on their way to school not to speak of the ill effects of what secular Israeli Jews call a modern education, full of historical fabrications about the origins of Israel, scientific readings

on high tech war-making and advanced economic doctrines proclaiming the sacred role of the free market, and justifying the 60% poverty rate among Haredim as self-induced. The Haredim demand that the Israeli Jewish elite stop trying to conscript their youth into the IDF and stop the job discrimination, which has trippled the unemployment rate among Haredim. The Coming Civil War: Zionist State versus the Haredim The elected leader, Yair Lapid, of newly formed Yesh Atid Party, dubbed a centrist by the New York Times, and a moderate by the leading ideologues of the US Zionist lobby, ran on a platform of forcibly ending the Haredi exemption from conscription into the colonial military service. Yair Lapid, in the run-up to joining a new Netanyahu coalition regime, has launched a vicious attack on the Haredim. Lapid premises his agreement to joining Netanyahus war machine on his plans to forcibly confront the Haredi leadership. Yair Lapid taps the class and secular resentments of Israels upwardly mobile youth who bitterly complain of having to serve in the army, thus delaying their money-making opportunities, while the poor, semi-literate blacks (a derogatory term referring to the clothing of Haredim) engage in worthless studies of the Torah. Lapid, using the same perverted logic as Netanyahu, claims that Ten percent of the population cannot threaten 90 percent with civil war, (Financial Times, 2/14/13, p. 6.). Once again, the executioner (Lapid) accuses the victim (Haredim) of the violence he is about to commit. Lapids Yesh Atid, the centrist (sic) party, has allied with Naftali Bennetts neo-fascist Jewish Home Party (pushing for the annexation of all of Palestine and expulsion of non-Jews) in smashing Haredi exemption to military conscription. They hold veto power over the next cabinet. This rabidly secular militarist assault has provoked great opposition and united the otherwise Zionist-religious parties: The Shas Party (Sephardic Haredim) and United Torah Judaism have taken up the defense of the Haredim. Lines are being drawn far beyond a Haredim-Zionist State confrontation. The Larger Meaning of the Haredim-Zionist Conflict The Haredim hostility to the secular Zionist state is in part based on its opposition to military conscription, thus calling into question Israeli militarism, in general, and specifically its policy of colonial occupation and regional aggression. While some Haredim may oppose conscription for religious reasons and seek exemption solely for its own youth, objectively, the effect is to undermine Israel s violation of Palestinian rights and to call into question the entire apartheid system. By speaking to spiritual values, they deny the legitimacy of the idea of a Jewish police state based on force, violence, torture and disappearance of political prisoners. Their questioning of the institutional configuration upholding Jewish supremacy and Israel as the homeland of the Chosen People, they strike a powerful blow at the ideological underpinnings of the overseas activity of the Zionist power configuration. Their animosity to the fusion of Jewish chauvinism and religious rituals and the tribal deification of the Israeli state is counterposed to their embrace of Moses Ten Commandments.

The Haredim study the teaching of the profound Judaic philosopher Maimonides and abhor Zionist militaristic strategists like Walzer, Dershowitz, Kagan, Feith, Netanyahu, etc. who preach colonial just war doctrines. Representing 10% of the Israeli population and a far greater percentage of military age youth, the Haredim are in a position to sharply limit the scope of future Zionist wars. If they succeed in blocking conscription, they would provide a lasting contribution to making the world in general, and the Middle East in particular, a more secure and peaceful place to live. Facing the prospect of a loss of future cannon fodder to sustain its colonial ventures, and in their frenzied attacks on the Haredim, the Israeli-Zionist elite have incited the majority of Israeli Jews to demonize them as backward, illiterate, freeloaders and to blame the religious curriculum for their growing and current 60% rate of poverty and high unemployment. Israel s war machine needs fresh recruits to maintain its imperial quest for a Greater Israel. Demographics with families exceeding five children indicate the Haredim are likely to double their percentage of the Israeli population over the next two decades. Faced with the facts on the ground and in the cradle, the colonial expansionist imperative drives all the leading Zionist parties to end Haredi exemptions. In response Haredi leaders threaten to engage in massive civil disobedience if the Zionists impose conscription, rightly seeing conscription of its youth as an assault on its most profoundly held spiritual and family values and as an opening wedge in destroying traditional community solidarity and reciprocal relations. The Haredim share a common plight with Israel s Arab population: Both communities face increasing police harassment, discrimination, religious persecution and rising levels of poverty. A Haredim-Arab alliance would unite 30% of the population against a common secular militarist and plutocratic enemy. Farfetched as it seems on the subjective level, there are objective historical and structural processes which are driving the two groups together. It is one of the great ironies of history that the worlds modern secular anti-imperialist movements should find their most consequential allies among Israel s most traditional and deeply religious movement.

Articles by: Prof. James Petras Related content:

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which Jews and Palestinians might potentially live as equal citizens. Surprisingly, those
2. Gap among Jews widens on question of Zionism

A profound division has developed between Zionist advocates of Israel and Jews, secular and religious, who reject or question Zionism and actions taken by the state of Israel. Public debate about Israels place in Jewish continuity has become open and Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. The Center of Research on Globalization grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: publications@globalresearch.ca www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner. For media inquiries: publications@globalresearch.ca
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Secularism On The Decline In France

An analysis on what is putting France's longstanding separation of church and state at risk. By Emma-Kate Symons | March 4, 2014

Protest against the european simplified treaty by French Nationalists parties. Paris, France. (WM Commons) PARIS When 34 percent of surveyed voters admit they agree with the ideas of a political movement that is protectionist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-Euro, France has a problem. Frances far-right political party, Front National, has surged in popularity over the past year to its highest level in thirty years. Led by European Parliament Member Marine Le Pen, the party has bragged it could win elections in at least 15 cities this year. In 2011, Le Pen compared Muslims praying in the streets to the Nazi occupation of France. The party is known for railing against the countrys Islamisation, and calling for expulsions of Roma, a referendum restricting immigration, and a return to the French Franc. Come May, when elections for the European Parliament are held, the FN party, which is gaining popularity with older French and citizens under 24, could top the list of French political parties.

To the dismay of moderates such as socialist parliamentarian Christophe Borgel, and philosopher Pascal Bruckner, who says the French are afraid of everything French political culture and society are fragmenting. With mayoral elections one month away, the countrys ruling socialists are worrying about mass abstentions and voters turning to the far right in protest against President Franois Hollande, who has failed to reduce high unemployment still stuck at about 11 percent as he promised. The appeal of previously fringe political organizations and ideologies is dragging the birthplace of revolution further from national republican ideals. Not only are libert, galit, fraternit (liberty, equality, fraternity) under threat, but also laicit the republican value of secularism enshrined in Frances 1905 law separating church and state. Extreme right figures are pushing for the rechristianization of France erasing the secularism installed since the 1789 Revolution and the 1905 law. Meanwhile, militant Muslims refuse to accept national laws such as the ban on the burka. A new IFOP survey shows extremist ideologies are becoming normalized in France, home to Europes largest minority population of both Muslims and Jews. Fifty-five percent of French citizens agree with the FN that there are too many immigrants and that Muslims have too many rights, according to the survey. Emboldened by its domestic success, FN has even formed alliances with several far-right parties in other European countries. Alongside Geert Wilders Dutch Party for Freedom, the National Front could constitute a new united force in the European Parliament after May. Yet while more than one third of French voters are lurching towards the far right, there is a concurrent trend towards Islamist extremism. Sometimes members of the extreme right and Islamic extremists unite. Fundamentalist Muslims have joined forces with ultra-conservative Catholics, some of them staunch FN supporters, to oppose what they claim is the imposition of gender theory in the French primary school curriculum. Two Toulouse teenagers traveled to Syria last month to fight jihad, thanks to contacts largely forged through Facebook. Both were devout Muslims they said their daily prayers and performed regular fasts, according to leaked police and spy service interrogation documents. Manuel Valls, Frances Interior Minister says up to 700 French zealots have headed to Syria to wage holy war. The jihadists include large numbers of radical young converts to Islam. There is, however, one middle way between these extremes. It is being practiced in the heart of immigrant and Muslim Paris, in the suburban region of Seine-Saint-Denis. Paprec is a large recycling business employing 4,000 in the area, many of them Muslim. At the behest of owner Jean-Luc Petithuguenin, the company has instituted a charter of secularism and

diversity in the workplace banning ostensible signs of religion such as the veil, and prohibiting prayer rooms. As the head of the company, I believe I am responsible for enforcing social harmony, Petithuguenin told LExpress magazine. I am sincerely worried about the rise in religious fundamentalism, especially in France. In our organization there are people who have suffered enormously from religious conflictsand a certain number of our staff want to be protected from fundamentalist pressures, he added. The chief executive said some female employees fear they will be pushed into wearing the Muslim headscarf or head and body-covering veil if others are permitted to do so. Despite the toughness of the charter, it has been unanimously backed by staff and unions. I am fine with being a practicing Muslim but a prayer room at the workplace disturbs me, said Jamal Razzouki, the secretary of the workplace committee at one of Paprecs sites. I do not want people to come to me and say I am not a real believer because I practice my faith only in private. Some researchers and Muslim community leaders say this is good practice and protects all workers from pressure to be religious in the workplace, while on the other hand taking away excuses for extreme right sympathizers and racists to inflame religious and ethnic tensions. Isabelle Barth, director of the Strasbourg School of Management and author of the book Management and Religion, said charters on religion in the workplace often served to protect the silent majority who reconcile very well work and faith from the lobbying of a handful of others. But Paprecs landmark charter could find itself annulled under French law, which protects workers in the private sector from attacks on their personal rights and liberties. This would be a shame, Paprecs CEO Petithuguenin believes, because there is a uniquely French laicque secular way of managing tensions in a society with scores of nationalities and religions. A decade ago, former French President Jacques Chirac made international headlines for enforcing a ban on the Muslim headscarf and veil in schools. The controversial law was remarkably smoothly implemented, with only a very small number of Muslims withdrawing their children from the public system. Today there are new initiatives designed to reinforce the veil ban, such as the controversial charter of school secularism, brought in under the socialist government, which states that laicit is a fundamental value and principle of the republic. Analysts said the measure was aimed at

fending off parental pressure for sex-segregated classes and Halal food, and as a riposte to some students rejection of secular teaching methods, sex education and the teaching of evolution. The question is whether such initiatives will be enough to stop the society from fracturing, or if it will increase community tensions by making Muslims feel unfairly targeted. The Paprec case shows that a large number of of French Muslims favor the commitment to secularism. Europe is battling a wave of often-violent anti-immigrant sentiment and widespread prejudice against Muslims. It is in need of sensible laws and charters that respect religious differences but also protect the silent majority that does not share the world view of extremists. This article first appeared on Global Post. Share this article!

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The Multiple Histories of Secularism: Muslim Societies in Comparison

Nader Hashemi* Abstract - This article is intended to advance conceptual clarity on the topic of secularism in Muslim societies. It seeks to uncover unique historical developments that have influenced and shaped debate on this topic. In the first part, a distinction is made between the different social scientific categories of secularism, focusing on philosophical, sociological and political dimensions of secularism. The second section provides a broad overview of the different histories of political secularism, and focuses on the two dominant models that have been bequeathed to us from the Western tradition of political thought: Anglo American secularism and French secularism (lacit). In the final section, the political history of Muslim societies is briefly explored with the goal of providing a tentative answer to the question: historically, why did political secularism not emerge in Muslim societies?

Discussion about the topic of secularism eventually grounds to a halt over confusion surrounding the meaning of the concept. Often the same word is invoked to describe a different social phenomenon. Those involved in the discussion assume they are talking about the same idea when in reality they have rather distinct concepts in mind. The reason for this misunderstanding is that the term secularism is inherently an ambiguous concept. There is no global consensus

on what the term refers, where its origins lie and its various dimensions especially in relation to political questions. In this article, I seek to advance conceptual clarity with respect to the topic of secularism with a focus on Muslim societies. I seek to uncover a part of the unique history of secularism in Muslim societies that has influenced debate on the topic. In the first part, I distinguish between the different social scientific categories of secularism focusing on the philosophical, sociological and political dimensions of secularism. In section two, I give a broad overview of the different histories of political secularism with some emphasis on the two dominant models that have been bequeathed to us from the Western tradition of political thought: Anglo-American Secularism and French Secularism (laicit). In the final section I explore the political history of Muslim societies that has informed and shaped the debate on secularism in the late 20th and early 21st century. In the course of doing so I provide a tentative answer to the question: historically, why did political secularism not emerge in Muslim societies? In recent years, secularism has emerged as a new topic of intellectual inquiry. Notwithstanding the voluminous number of new monographs, essays, books and conferences on the topic, considerable confusion persists. This is especially true with respect to Muslim societies where it is believed that Islam and ideas that derive from Muslim political thought are inherently incapable of adapting to modern values, political secularism in particular, due to the alleged antimodern and fossilized nature of the Islamic tradition. While recent developments in Turkey, Indonesia and Iran with respect to the cultivation of an indigenous Islamic form of secularism undermine this perspective, there remains a vacuum on the history of secularism in Muslim societies. This article, while not a comprehensive treatment of the topic, seeks to partially fill this void. Three Dimensions of the Secular An immediate problem one encounters in discussing the topic of secularism is agreeing on a working definition of the term. What does the word secularism actually mean? What values does it promote and what problems does it seek to resolve? Does secularism imply anticlericalism, atheism, disestablishment, state neutrality and equidistance toward all religions, the rejection of religious symbols in the public sphere, the separation of the public and private spheres, the complete separation of religion from politics or more narrowly merely the separation of the institutions of the state from the influence of religion? All of the above, some of the above, or none of the above? If there is one thing that can be affirmed with certainty it is that the concept itself is deeply contested or as Charles Taylor has observed: [i]t is not entirely clear what is meant by secularism.[1] One simple way of enhancing clarity about secularism is to think about the concept in relation to three core disciplines in the social sciences: philosophy, sociology and political science. Philosophically, secularism refers to a rejection of the transcendental and the metaphysical with a focus on the existential and the empirical. This is what Harvey Cox was referring to in The Secular City (1966) when he discussed secularism as the liberation of man from religious and metaphysical tutelage, the turning of his attention away from other worlds and toward this one.[2] Sociologically, secularism correlates with modernization in terms of a gradual process

that leads to the declining influence of religion in social institutions, communal life and human relationships. This is arguably the most common understanding of secularism and is what Peter Berger called in The Sacred Canopy (1967) a process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols.[3] Politically, secularism entails a separation of the public and private spheres and more broadly a form of separation, which can vary, between the institutions of the state and the forces of religion.[4] This threefold breakdown of secularism is very similar to how other leading scholars have sought to characterize and breakdown the concept of secularism. Nikki Keddie has listed three ways secularization is commonly understood today: 1) an increase in the number of people with secular beliefs and practices; 2) a lessening of religious control or influence over major spheres of life; and 3) a growth in state separation from religion and in secular regulation of formerly religious institutions and customs.[5] Similarly, Jos Casanova adopts a tripartite categorization of secularism. He makes a distinction between secularization as differentiation of the secular spheres from religious institutions and norms, secularization as decline of religious beliefs and practices, and secularization as marginalization of religion to a privatized sphere.[6] Finally, in more recent intervention, Charles Taylor has sought to breakdown the concept of secularism into three distinct but related categories. According to Taylor: -Secularity 1 is the retreat of religion from the public sphere, the diminution of religion in peoples lives or the separation of church and state in public spaces. -Secularity 2 is the decline of religious beliefs and practices that can be seen in Western liberal democracies in terms of church attendance. It is related to Secularity 1 but it is different in scope. -Secularity 3 is the place of our self-understanding toward religion and the recognition that something has eclipsed it in terms of an alternative belief system. It is the problematization in Latin Christendom on this topic between 1500-2000 that looks at background conditions and the development of secularism from the longue duree.[7] In seeking an understanding of secularism it is important to realize that the above categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, one can be philosophically non-secular, in the sense that the moral references and basic guidelines in life are derived from metaphysical sources. This same person can live a life that is sociologically non-secular in the sense that one spends most of his/her time in social institutions and relationships that are heavily infused with religious references and symbols yet simultaneously this same person can be politically secular in that they support a separation between religion and state. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi would both fall into this category; so would millions of Americans, Indians, Latin Americans and others. The Different Histories of Political Secularism A major reason why secularism generates confusion is because secularism has multiple histories. This is especially true in the context of political secularism where religion-state relations have evolved to incorporate the principle that a just society necessitates some form of separation

between the realm of government and the domain of religion. Appreciating this fact and familiarizing oneself with these histories is essential to developing a firmer grasp of the topic. In short, the different histories of political secularism are a by-product of the unique political experiences and debates over the relationship between religion and state and controversies over the normative role of religion in emerging democracies. For example, in the Western tradition secularism has a different history and social impact in Protestant majority countries than in Catholic ones. This has led to at least two different political models of secularism: AngloAmerican secularism (which is more religion-friendly in terms of religions role in the public sphere) and French secularism or laicit (which is hostile to the manifestation of religious symbols in the public sphere and in state institutions).[8] Even within the Protestant tradition there is considerable variance between the different manifestations of political secularism. In American secularism, for example, there is no established religion while in the English context there is. None of this inhibits the functioning of democracy in either country nor does it tell us much about the role of religion in civil society. Rather, it is simply a reminder of the different historical experiences and political struggles over the role of religion in modern politics. Also from within the Western political tradition one can speak of another tradition of secularism in societies where Eastern Orthodox Christianity was the dominant creed. The existence of the phenomena of Caesaropapism, where one person was head of both the church and the state, has given the development of secularism in this part of the world a unique inflexion.[9] Similarly, there is a Marxist tradition of secularism, which is Western in origin and which still survives today in Cuba, China, North Korea and Vietnam. Within this strand of Western secularism there is a considerable variety between the manifestations of political secularism that draw upon a Marxist philosophical tradition.[10] Moving to the non-Western world we encounter a different set of historical experiences.[11] Arguably, the most successful model of political secularism in this region of the globe is the fascinating case of Indian secularism. Until recently, India was responsible for producing the greater number of books, essay and monographs on the topic of secularism.[12] Muslim societies have also had an experience with secularism during the 20th century. While it has not been a monolithic experience, in general terms these experiences have not been positive in the sense that the advent of political secularism has not been synonymous with the development of democracy, human rights and greater social and economic justice. Turkeys experience has been unique as has the case of Indonesia.[13] Iran has had produced a unique internal debate on secularism in recent decades which is a direct result of its experience with Islamist rule.[14] Finally, in the Arab world we have several experiences with political secularism; republican regimes stand separate from the situation in the Persian Gulf monarchies and the situation in North Africa differs from that of Lebanon and those countries located in the Eastern Mediterranean. Collectively, these negative experiences with secularism in the Muslim world have been intellectually explained by leading Western social scientists as a function of Islams unique inner civilizational ethos which is allegedly and essentially hostile to notions of modernity, secularity in particular.

Secularism in Muslim Societies: The Establishment View Islam has long been viewed as a religious tradition that is uniquely anti-secular. Influential scholars in the social sciences have argued that Islams early formative historical experience and its unique reaction to modernity have prevented secularism from developing. In one famous argument Bernard Lewis has written that the reasons why Muslims developed no secularist movement of their own, and reacted sharply against attempts to introduce one from abroad, will thus be clear from the contrasts between Christian and Muslim history and experience. From the beginning, Christians were taught both by precept and practice to distinguish between God and Caesar and between the different duties owed to each of the two. Muslims received no such instruction.[15] Similarly, Ernest Gellner put forward a sophisticated thesis on Muslim politics that sought to draw a distinction between the high culture of the urban clergy, which was characterized as scriptural and puritanical and which Gellner claimed is normative for the urban life of the entire Islamic world versus the low culture of the tribe and village life where folk Islam was practiced. Under modern conditions, Gellner argued, the puritanical Islam of the urban clergy is appropriated at the mass level due to political centralization, urbanization and mass education. Islamic fundamentalism is thus the demand for the realization of this norm, and the popular support it enjoys stems from the aspiration to the High Culture by the newly urbanized masses. This explanation of Muslim politics, argued Gellner, is compatible with the requirements of political modernity where contrary to the previously dominant assumptions of social theory modernity required secularization. Thus, Islams relationship to modernity is unique in that modernity strengthens religions hold over society and this explains why secularism has not flourished in Muslim societies.[16] The strength of these arguments were enhanced by the writings of political Islamists in the 20th century who similarly rejected any separation between din wa dawla (religion and government) in their normative theories on what constituted a just political order. Moreover, events on the ground in the latter half of the 20th century with respect to the rise of religious opposition movements who were overtly hostile to secularism, gave further impetus to this Islamic exceptionalist narrative. It is rightly noted that there is no equivalent translation of the term secularism in Arabic, Turkish or Persian. In Arabic the common term is ilmaniyyah (from world ilm, science) or almaniyyah (this-worldly); in Persian an adaptation of the English is used, secularism, while in Turkish the common term is laiklik from the French lacit. The reason, however, for the absence of a semantic equivalent of the word secular in the major languages of Islam is not because of Islams fundamental incompatibility with secularism but rather because historically speaking Muslims have never had the need to think about secularism. An analysis of the origins of political secularism in the Anglo-American tradition sheds considerable light on this topic. The Origins of Political Secularism in the Anglo-American Tradition: Lessons for the Muslim World In his widely acclaimed book The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West[17], Mark Lilla observes that historically almost every human civilization based its original

understanding of legitimate political authority on the divine nexus between God, man and the world. Political theology, Lilla suggests, is the original condition of civilizations as they try to make sense of the relationship between religion and politics and the natural order of the world that surrounds them. The question that is germane for this discussion is how did this divine nexus between God, man and society gradually erode in the case of Latin Christendom, thus leading to political secularism, and what are the comparative lessons today for Muslim societies? As I have tried to suggest in this article, the history of secularism in the West is long, complicated and varied. It is also generally misunderstood in intellectual debates in the West especially when making cross-comparisons with Islam. Charles Taylors A Secular Age[18], is a good place to start the discussion. In retrospect, four broad social trends are discernible which had secularizing consequences for the West: 1) the rise of modern capitalism; 2) the rise of modern nation-states and nationalism; 3) the Scientific Revolution; and, most importantly, 4) the Protestant Reformation and the Wars of Religion during the 16th and 17th centuries. It is this latter development which is central to the rise of political secularism, especially in the AngloAmerican tradition, and which is particularly helpful in illuminating the question of religion-state relations in Muslim societies. Post-Reformation Europe saw the emergence of new debates about religious toleration, not only between Catholics and Protestants, but critically among the various Protestant sects. In an age of gross intolerance, most Christian denominations were interested in enforcing religious uniformity on their societies, each of them claiming exclusive knowledge of Gods will on earth and warning of the dangers of social disorder and chaos if religious toleration were allowed to flourish. In brief, religious toleration and political stability were thought to be negatively correlated. Uniformity of religious practice in the public sphere and the need for an established state religion was widely believed to be a prerequisite for peace, order and prosperity. This was the dominant view at the time, right up to the late 17th century, as discussed by Perez Zagorin in his magisterial work, How the Idea of Toleration Came to the West.[19] It was left to John Locke to rethink the relationship between toleration and political order. In his famous A Letter Concerning Toleration (1685) he rejected his earlier support for the firm union of church and state and posited a new solution to the core political problem that was plaguing Europe. Religious pluralism in the public sphere and political stability were indeed compatible, Locke newly argued, on the condition that we can: distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other.[20] In other words, a soft form of secularism was required. The key interpretive point here is that political secularism emerged in England as the direct result of an existential crisis that was tearing the country apart. This conflict had been raging for many years and without a solution, Locke affirmed, Europe would not know peace, prosperity or stability. The colossal size of this crisis cannot be overstated. Mark Lilla rightly observes that without a resolution of this issue, the self-immolation of the West was a very real possibility. Quite literally, the future political stability of the Western world hung in the balance. Political secularism thus emerged in the Anglo-American tradition due to a critical crisis of survival. It was intimately and indelibly connected to these transformative events in the early modern period of Europe, or as Charles Taylor has written: the origin point of modern Western secularism was the Wars of Religion; or rather, the search in battle-fatigue and horror for a way out of them.[21] In short, the idea of a

separation between church and state originates as a political solution out of this existential dilemma. A contrast between this picture and the case of the Muslim world, with respect to the relationship between religious toleration and political order, is most illustrative. Muslim Toleration and its Consequences Historians are in broad agreement that comparatively speaking, Muslim societies were more tolerant of religious pluralism than Christendom. The fact that until the mid-20th century, for example, the city of Baghdad had a population that was one-third Jewish, speaks to this point. I am not suggesting here that the Muslim world was a bastion of liberal tolerance as we understand this concept today or that minorities and dissidents were never persecuted; far from it. I am simply stating that Muslim societies and empires historically did not face the same all consuming wars of religion and debates over religious toleration and political order that were so central to European political history in the early modern period. Comparatively speaking, Sunni-Shia relations and the treatment of religious minorities were far more tolerant in the Muslim world than in Europe over the last millennium.[22] The key political point that flows from this fact of relative Muslim tolerance (in contrast to centuries of Christian intolerance during the early modern period) is that no burning political questions emerged between state and society where religion was the key, all-consuming and overriding bone of political contention. As a result, no inner political dynamic emerged within the Middle East that would necessitate the development of intellectual or moral arguments in favor of religion-state separation as a way out of an existentialist political dilemma in the same way these arguments developed and were so critical to the rise of secularism in Europe during the 17th century. The primary political problems facing Muslim societies that threatened socio-political order were the corruption and nepotism of the royal court, natural famines and disasters, and most importantly foreign intervention and invasions such as the Crusades of the 11th to 13th centuries, the Mongol invasion of 1258 (which sacked the Abbasid Caliphate), the Castilian re-conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, and increasingly in the modern period growing Russian, French, British and later American penetration, colonialism and imperialism (to varying degrees depending on the country, region and time frame in question).[23] Due to this significantly different historical experience with respect to religious toleration and this is key to understanding the relationship between Islam and secularism Muslim societies never had the need to think about secularism in the same way the West did as there was no existential crisis that resulted from debates on religion-state relations where secularism might be posited as solution to a pressing political dilemma. Having noted this, I believe that Muslim societies do need to think seriously about political secularism today, especially if they are interested in constructing a political system where democracy and human rights prevail, especially gender equality. Moreover, as Noah Feldman has recently argued in The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State,[24] religion-state relations in the Muslim world were far more stable and amicable than they were in the West. For over a millennium, religion often played a constructive role as an agent of stability and predictability. In contrast to the European experience where religion in the post-Reformation period became a source of deep conflict, in the Muslim world religion and the scholars who

interpreted it, managed to place restrictions on the personal whims and ambitions of the caliphs and sultans by forcing them to recognize religious limits to their rule in exchange for conferring legitimacy on the state. In short, the rulers were not above the law as they later became during the 20th century but they were often constrained by it, thus limiting autocracy and arbitrary rule. Religion-state relations in the Muslim world have thus bequeathed different historical lessons and memories to the faithful where religion is viewed by large segments of the population not as a natural ally of political tyranny and a cause of conflict, but much more positively, as a possible constraint on political despotism and as a source of stability. According to Feldman, this partly explains why demands for a greater role for religion in politics have a sympathetic hearing in the Muslim world today (where Islamists are not in power). This brings us to the modern period. The Modern Muslim Experience with Secularism In the past 200 years, the Muslim worlds experience with secularism but has been largely negative. It is important to appreciate that in Europe secularism was an indigenous and gradual process evolving in conjunction with socioeconomic and political developments while supported by intellectual arguments and critically by religious groups and leaders that eventually sunk deep roots within its political culture. By contrast, the Muslim experience has been marked by a perception of secularism as an alien ideology imposed from outside first by colonial and imperial invaders and then kept alive by local elites who came to power during the post-colonial period. In short, secularism in Europe was largely a bottom-up process that was intimately connected to debates from within civil society, while in Muslim societies secularism was largely a top-down process that was driven first by the colonial state and then by the post-colonial state. As a result, secularism in the Muslim world has suffered from weak intellectual roots and with few exceptions, secularism has never penetrated the mainstream of Muslim societies. Furthermore, most states in the Muslim world by the end of 20th century were developmental failures. A pattern of state-society relations unfolded in the post-colonial era that further impugned the reputation of secularism. An autocratic modernizing state, often with critical external support, suffocated civil society thus forcing oppositional activity into the mosque, inadvertently contributing to the rise of political Islam. A set of top-down, forced modernization, secularization and Westernization policies by the state within a short span of time generated widespread social and psychological alienation and dislocation. Rapid urbanization, changing cultural and socio-economic relationships coupled with increasing corruption, economic mismanagement, rising poverty and income inequality undermined the legitimacy of the state. These developments reflected negatively on secularism because the ruling ideologies of many post-colonial regimes in the Muslim world were openly secular and nationalist.[25] Thus, for a generation of Muslims growing up in the post-colonial era, despotism, dictatorship, and human rights abuses came to be associated with secularism. Muslim political activists who experienced oppression at the hands of secular national governments logically concluded that secularism is an ideology of repression. This observation applies not only to Iran (under the Shah) but also to Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Iraq (under Saddam), Yemen to a certain extent in Turkey (although Turkey is a unique case) and many other Muslim majority countries in the latter half of the twentieth century. Summarizing this trend, political scientist Vali Nasr

has noted: Secularism in the Muslim world never overcame its colonial origins and never lost its association with the postcolonial state's continuous struggle to dominate society. Its fortunes became tied to those of the state: the more the state's ideology came into question, and the more its actions alienated social forces, the more secularism was rejected in favor of indigenous worldviews and social institutions which were for the most part tied to Islam. As such, the decline of secularism was a reflection of the decline of the postcolonial state in the Muslim world.[26] Conclusion In conclusion, the broader point here is that one way of advancing conceptual clarity with respect to secularism, especially its political variant, is to be sensitive to the different histories of secularism, of which there are many. Prior the recent upsurge in scholarship on secularism, classic theories of modernization as articulated by Marx, Durkheim and Weber, suggested a convergence and homogenizing of industrial societies with respect to the triumph of secularism. This assumed a certain uniform trajectory of political development based on the Western experience which was then deemed to have a universal quality it. This view was widely accepted by social scientists in large part due to the absence, until recently, of a serious investigation of the topic. The other key reason was that social scientists general came from and worked within the most secular parts of society. The empirical reality by the end of the 20th century, however, forced a reexamination of this topic as scholars sought to explain the apparent increase in religiosity around the world. A key discovery and new found realization is that there is more than one way of being modern. According Shmuel Eisenstadt, our contemporary world is characterized by multiple modernities that are fundamentally based on different historical experiences.[27] This applies both to the West, for which there are different models of religion-state relations and different levels of religiosity between the United States and Europe, as it does to the non-Western world. The Muslim experience with modernity, of which there are several, needs to be factored into any serious inquiry on modernity on a global level especially with respect to the topic political secularism and it discontents. As I have sought to argue in this article, history, both in the early modern and late a modern era has bequeathed different lessons to different parts of our planet. In the case of the Muslim societies, historically speaking, state-society relations did not generate an inner dynamic whereby secularism/religion-state separation was posited as a solution to a pressing and existential political crisis that was rooted in the problem of religious toleration. This was because this existential crisis did not exist in the Middle East as it did in Europe. Thus, rather relying on an analytical approach that emphasizes the inner theological doctrine of Islam/Christianity or the early religious history of Christians and Muslims to explain the question of comparative secularism (as Bernard Lewis had done), is fundamentally misleading and misguided. It is the above alternative framework that is sensitive to different historical experiences, especially with respect to state-society relations and the problem of religion during moments of political crisis, which provide a more objective and nuanced account of this emotionally charged and poorly understood topic.

---------------------------------------------------------------------Notes [1] Charles Taylor, Modes of Secularism, in Rajeev Bharghava ed., Secularism and its Critics (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 31. For background see Emmet Kennedy, Secularism and Its Opponents from Augustine to Solzhenitsyn (New York: Palgrave, 2006), 10180; Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 1-44; Steve Bruce ed., Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 1-7; David Martin, A General Theory of Secularization (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), 12-99; Robert Bellah, Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditionalist World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 20-50; Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 3-32 and Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 2166. [2] Harvey Cox, The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective (New York: MacMillan, 1966), 17. [3] Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of A Sociological Theory of Religion (New York, Anchor Books, 1967), 107. [4] I borrow this simple way of thinking about secularism from Lutfhi Assyaukanies unpublished paper Islam and Secularism in Indonesia. [5] Nikki Keddie, Secularism and its Discontents, Daedalus 132 (Summer 2003), 16. [6] Jos Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 211. [7] A discussion of this can be found in the introduction of Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 1-22. [8] Ahmet Kuru refers to passive American secularism and aggressive French secularism as two distinct models of political secularism. See his new study Secularism and State Policy toward Religion: The United States, France and Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). [9] Nikolas Gvosdev, An Examination of Church-State Relations in Byzantine and Russian Empires with an Emphasis on Ideology and Models of Interaction (Lewiston, NY: E. Mullen Press 2001). [10] S. Khan, Towards a Marxist Understanding of Secularism: Some Preliminary Speculations, Economic and Political Weekly, 22 (7 March 1987), 406-409.

[11] Wilson Brisset, Secularism in the Global South: The Case of Ethiopia, The Hedgehog Review 8 (Spring and Summer 2006), 146-151. [12] Rajeev Bhargava ed., Secularism and its Critics (New Dehli: Oxford University Press, 1998). See the debate between Ashis Nandy and Akeel Bilgrami to two contrasting views of Indian secularism. [13] On Turkish secularism see Ahmet Kuru, Secularism and State Policy toward Religion: The United States, France and Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 161-235 and Hakan Yavuz, Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 14-44. On Indonesian secularism see Luthfi Assyaukanie, Islam and the Secular State in Indonesia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009) and Bahtiar Effendy, Islam and the State in Indonesia (Singapore: Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, 2003). [14] Mehran Kamrava, Irans Intellectual Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 173-213. [15] Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong: The Clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East (New York: Perennial, 2003), 103 [16] Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (New York: Routledge, 1992), 5-22. For the text of Gellners last lecture where he reaffirmed these views see Ernest Gellner, Religion and the Profane, Eurozine (28 August 2000). Available on-line at <www.eurozine.com/articles/2000-08-28-gellner-en.html>. For a refutation of the thesis that modernity requires a withering away of religion see Peter Berger, Grace Davie and Effie Fokas eds., Religious America, Secular Europe?: Theme and Variations (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008). [17] (New York: Knopf, 2007). [18](Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). [19] (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). [20] John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, edited by James Tully (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), 26. [21] Charles Taylor, Modes of Secularism, in Rajeev Bhargava ed., Secularism and its Critics (New Dehli: Oxford University Press, 1998), 32. [22] This point was acknowledged by Bertrand Russell in Reading History As It Is Never Written, in Barry Feinberg ed., The Collected Stories of Bertrand Russell (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1972), 293. Also see Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2004), 390-397. [23] Ira Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2002) and Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, three volumes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). [24] (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). [25] Vali Nasr, Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World (New York: Free Press, 2009), 85-115; Nader Hashemi, Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 133-170 and Muhammad Khalid Masud, The Construction and Deconstruction of Secularism as an Ideology of Contemporary Muslim Thought, Asian Journal of Social Science 33 (September 2005), 363-383. [26] Vali Nasr, Secularism: Lessons from the Muslim World, Daedalus 132 (Summer 2003), 69. [27] S.N. Eisenstadt, Multiple Modernities, Daedalus 129 (Winter 2000), 1-29. ----------------------------------------------------------------------The final/definitive version of Nader Hashemis essay was published in Philosophy&Social Criticism, vol 36 nos 3-4 March and May 2010, SAGE Publications Ltd, (LA, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC), all rights reserved, p. 325-338, Special Issue: "Postsecularism and multicultural Jusirdictions", Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations Istanbul Seminars 2008-2009, Edited by: Alessandro Ferrara, Volker Kaul and David Rasmussen. Link to the issue http://psc.sagepub.com/content/36/3-4.toc ---------------------------------------------------------------------*Nader Hashemi is Assistant Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. Visiting Assistant Professor, University of California-Los Angeles and Global Fellow, UCLA International Institute (2007-2008); Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Political Science, Northwestern University (2005-2007); Research Affiliate, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University (20052006); Adjunct Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto (2004-2005); Adjunct Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo (2003-2004). Author of many articles and other publications, including most recently Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (Oxford University Press, 2009) and The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran's Future (Melville House, 2011). Commenta questo articolo Nome * Commento *

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Jewish Secularism and the Campaigns against Political Catholicism and Islam
By Ari Joskowicz Association for Jewish Studies (AJS), Spring 2011 The author argues that the current interest in Jews and secularism appears to be driven by the feeling that secular arrangements in many countries are under pressure. Against the liberal model that treats religion as a private issue, certain religious movements within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are seeking to influence politics in a new way. Rather than demonstrate an increasing separation of religious and political spheres, national religious groups in Israel and certain evangelical communities in the United States, among others, seem rather to be collapsing these spheres. No phenomenon has influenced the recent interest in secularism as much as the idea of political Islam. The very notion of a common tradition of European secularism seems to be reinvented against the foil of an Islamic, non-European tradition said to lack an adequate understanding of secularity. Jewish intellectuals who research and comment upon secularism are by necessity affected by these debates. If we want to understand the competing concepts of secularism that circulate today among Jews and non-Jews alike, we would be well served to look at the way Jews speak about Islam as well as the various other foils that figure in current debates on secularism. A focus on these constellations will also help us understand Jewish secularism in its historical context. Topic: Political Behavior, Jewish-Christian Relations, History, Islam, Christianity, Scholarship, Religion, Jewish-Muslim Relations, Politics, Academic Research, Secularism Name of Publication: AJS Perspectives: The Magazine of the Association for Jewish Studies Editor: Bunzl, Matti , Havrelock, Rachel Volume/Issue: Spring 2011

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Bibliographic Information: Joskowicz, Ari. Jewish Secularism and the Campaigns against Political Catholicism and Islam. AJS Perspectives: The Magazine of the Association for Jewish Studies. Association for Jewish Studies (AJS). Spring 2011: 20-21. http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=12010

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The Vanishing American Jew

In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century

By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
Little, Brown and Company

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Introduction

The "Jewish Question" for the Twenty-first Century: Can We Survive Our Success?
THE GOOD NEWS is that American Jews--as individuals--have never been more secure, more accepted, more affluent, and less victimized by discrimination or anti-Semitism. The bad news is that American Jews--as a people--have never been in greater danger of disappearing through assimilation, intermarriage, and low birthrates. The even worse news is that our very success as individuals contributes to our vulnerability as a people. The even better news is that we can overcome this new threat to the continuity of American Jewish life and emerge with a more positive Judaism for the twenty-first century--a Judaism that is less dependent on our enemies for its continuity, and that rests more securely on the considerable, but largely untapped, strengths of our own heritage.

American Jewish life is in danger of disappearing, just as most American Jews have achieved everything we ever wanted: acceptance, influence, affluence, equality. As the result of skyrocketing rates of intermarriage and assimilation, as well as "the lowest birth rate of any religious or ethnic community in the United States," the era of enormous Jewish influence on American life may soon be coming to an end. Although Jews make up just over 2 percent of the population of the United States--approximately 5.5 million out of 262 million--many Americans mistakenly believe that we constitute a full 20 percent of the American people, because of our disproportionate visibility, influence, and accomplishments. But our numbers may soon be reduced to the point where our impact on American life will necessarily become marginalized. One Harvard study predicts that if current demographic trends continue, the American Jewish community is likely to number less than 1 million and conceivably as few as 10,000 by the time the United States celebrates its tricentennial in 2076. Other projections suggest that early in the next century, American Jewish life as we know it will be a shadow of its current, vibrant self-consisting primarily of isolated pockets of ultra-Orthodox Hasidim. Jews have faced dangers in the past, but this time we may be unprepared to confront the newest threat to our survival as a people, because its principal cause is our own success as individuals. Our long history of victimization has prepared us to defend against those who would destroy us out of hatred; indeed, our history has forged a Jewish identity far too dependent on persecution and victimization by our enemies. But today's most serious threats come not from those who would persecute us, but from those who would, without any malice, kill us with kindness--by assimilating us, marrying us, and merging with us out of respect, admiration, and even love. The continuity of the most influential Jewish community in history is at imminent risk, unless we do something dramatic now to confront the quickly changing dangers. This book is a call to action for all who refuse to accept our demographic demise as inevitable. It is a demand for a new Jewish state of mind capable of challenging the conventional wisdom that Judaism is more adaptive to persecution and discrimination than it is to an open, free, and welcoming society--that Jews paradoxically need enemies in order to survive, that anti-Semitism is what has kept Judaism alive. This age-old perspective on Jewish survival is illustrated by two tragic stories involving respected rabbinical leaders.

The first story takes place in 1812, when Napoleon was battling the czar for control of the Pale of Settlement (the western part of czarist Russia), where millions of Jews were forced to live in crowded poverty and under persecution and discrimination as second-class subjects. A victory for Napoleon held the promise of prosperity, first-class citizenship, freedom of movement, and an end to discrimination and persecution. A victory for the czar would keep the Jews impoverished and miserable. The great Hasidic rabbi Shneur Zalman--the founder of the Lubavitch dynasty--stood up in his synagogue on the first day of Rosh Hashanah to offer a prayer to God asking help for the leader whose victory would be good for the Jews. Everyone expected him to pray for Napoleon. But he prayed for the czar to defeat Napoleon. In explaining his counterintuitive choice, he said: "Should Bonaparte win, the wealth of the Jews will be increased and their [civic] position will be raised. At the same time their hearts will be estranged from our Heavenly Father. Should however our Czar Alexander win, the Jewish hearts will draw nearer to our Heavenly Father, though the poverty of Israel may become greater and his position lower." This remarkable story is all too typical of how so many Jewish leaders throughout our history have reasoned about Jewish survival. Without tsuris--troubles--we will cease to be Jewish. We need to be persecuted, impoverished, discriminated against, hated, and victimized in order for us to retain our Jewishness. The "chosen people" must be denied choices if Judaism is to survive. If Jews are given freedom, opportunity, and choice, they will choose to assimilate and disappear. The story recurs, with even more tragic consequences, on the eve of the Holocaust. Another great Eastern European rabbi, Elchanan Wasserman--the dean of the Rabbinical College in Baranowitz, Poland--was invited to bring his entire student body and faculty to Yeshiva College in New York or to the Beis Medrish Letorah in Chicago, both distinguished Orthodox rabbinical colleges. He declined the invitations because "they are both places of spiritual danger, for they are run in a spirit of freethinking." The great rabbi reasoned, "What would one gain to escape physical danger in order to then confront spiritual danger?" Rabbi Wasserman, his family, his students, and their teachers remained in Poland, where they were murdered by the Nazis. I call the approach taken by these rabbis the Tsuris Theory of Jewish Survival. Under this theory, the Jews need external troubles to stay Jewish. Nor has this fearful, negative perspective on Jewish survival been limited to ultra-Orthodox rabbis. Many Jewish leaders, both religious and secular, have argued that Jews need enemies--that without anti-Semitism, Judaism cannot survive. Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism and a secular Jew, believed that "our enemies have made us one ... It is only pressure that forces us back to the parent stem." In a prediction that reflects an approach to the survival of Judaism strikingly similar to that of the founder of the Lubavitch Hasidim, Herzl warned that if our "Christian hosts were to leave us in peace ... for two generations," the Jewish people would "merge entirely into surrounding races." Albert Einstein agreed: "It may be thanks to anti-Semitism that we are able to preserve our existence as a race; that at any rate is my belief." Jean-Paul Sartre, a non-Jew, went even further, arguing that the "sole tie that binds [the Jewish people together] is the hostility and disdain of the societies which surround them." He believed that "it is the anti-Semite who makes the Jew." If the Tsuris Theory of Jewish identity, survival, and unity is true, then Jews are doomed to live precariously on a pendulum perennially swinging in a wide arc between the extremes of

persecution and assimilation. As the pendulum swings away from the Scylla of persecution, it inevitably moves toward the Charybdis of assimilation. In this reactive view, Jews have little power over their ultimate destiny. Our enemies always call the shots, either by persecuting us, in which case we fight back and remain Jewish, or by leaving us alone, in which case we assimilate. The only other alternative--the one proposed by Herzl--is for all Jews to move to Israel, where they control their own destiny. But most Jews will continue to ignore that option, certainly if our "hosts" continue to leave us in peace in our adopted homelands. In this respect, aliyah (emigration) to Israel has also been largely determined by our external enemies, since most Jews who have moved to the Jewish homeland have done so in reaction to anti-Semitism and persecution in their native countries. Historically, therefore, there has been some descriptive truth to this pendulum view of persecution alternating with assimilation. Jews have retained their Jewish identity, at least in part, because of tsuris. Our enemies herded us into ghettos, created pales of settlement, discriminated against us, excluded us from certain livelihoods while pressing us into others. We stuck together and remained Jews, resisting as best we could the persecution by our enemies. But there is more--much more--to Jewish identity than collective self-defense. There is something important that is worth defending. After all, until anti-Semitism changed from religious bigotry to "racial" bigotry--roughly near the end of the nineteenth century--persecuted Jews generally had the option of conversion. Unlike Hitler, our religiously inspired persecutors-the Crusaders, the Inquisitors, Martin Luther, and the pogromists--did distinguish between Jews who converted to Christianity and Jews who did not. Indeed, it was precisely their religious mission to convert the Jews, by whatever methods it took. Many Jews did convert--some at knifepoint, others to advance themselves. The story about Professor Daniel Chwolson illustrates the latter phenomenon. Chwolson, a Russian intellectual of the nineteenth century, had converted from Judaism to Russian Orthodoxy as a young man, but he continued to fight against anti-Semitism. This led a Jewish friend to ask him why he had converted: "Out of conviction," the great man said. "What conviction?" his Jewish friend inquired. Chwolson responded: "Out of a firm conviction that it would be far better to be a professor in St. Petersburg than a Hebrew school teacher in Shklop." Yet despite the material advantages of conversion, most Jews resisted it. Clearly, those Jews--who sacrificed so much-remained Jewish not only in reaction to their enemies. More than our fabled "stiff-neckedness" was involved. There are substantive principles that Jews have been so stubborn about--that we have been willing to fight and even die for. For Jews who define their Jewishness in theological terms, it is easy to find that principle: It is God's will. For the large number of Jews who are skeptical about being God's "chosen people," the principle is more elusive, but it is palpable to most of us, though difficult to articulate. It is a disturbing reality, however, that for a great many Jews, their Jewish identity has been forged and nurtured by our external enemies who have defined us as victims of their persecution. Now, after two millennia of persecution and victimization, we may well be moving into a new era of Jewish life during which we will not be persecuted or victimized. If this comes to pass, we will need to refocus our attention on defining the positive qualities of Jewish" life that ought to

make us want to remain Jews without "help" from our enemies. We must become positively Jewish instead of merely reacting to our enemies. If Herzl's and Sartre's entirely negative view of the reason for Jewish survival were to persist even as we enter this new era of equality and acceptance, then Judaism would not deserve to endure. If Jewish life cannot thrive in an open environment of opportunity, choice, freethinking, affluence, success, and first-class status--if we really do need tsuris, czars, pogroms, poverty, insularity, closed minds, and anti-Semitism to keep us Jewish--then Jewish life as we know it will not, and should not, survive the first half of the twenty-first century. We have been persecuted long enough. The time has come to welcome the end of our victimization without fear that it will mean the end of our existence as a people. We must no longer pray for the czar's victory out of fear that the end of our collective tsuris and the success of individual Jews will mean the failure of Judaism. I believe that Jewish life can thrive in the next century, not despite the end of institutional antiSemitism, the end of Jewish persecution, and the end of Jewish victimization, but because of these positive developments. The ultimate good news may be that the denouement of negative Judaism--Jewish identification based largely on circling the wagons to fend off our enemies-compels us to refocus on a more positive and enduring Jewish identification, which will be more suitable to our current situation and the one we will likely be facing in the twenty-first century, when Jews will have the unconstrained choice whether to remain Jewish or to assimilate. We may be entering a true Jewish golden age, during which we will prove, once and for all, that Jews do not need enemies to survive. To the contrary: We can thrive best in an open society where we freely choose to be Jews because of the positive virtues of our 3,500-year-old civilization. I say we may be entering this golden age; there are no guarantees. Many Jews believe that the end is near, because increasing rates of assimilation and intermarriage are propelling us toward a demographic Armageddon. A recent apocalyptic article in a Jewish journal concluded that "Kaddish time" is fast approaching for the American Jewish community. (Kaddish is the prayer for the dead.) But reports of the death of Judaism may be premature--if we can change the way we think, and act, about Jewish survival. If we refuse to change, if we accept the current demographic trends as intractable, then Jewish life in America may indeed be doomed. The challenge is to move the Jewish state of mind beyond its past obsession with victimization, pain, and problems and point it in a new, more positive direction, capable of thriving in an open society. For unless we do, we may become the generation that witnesses the beginning of the end of one of the most influential civilizations in the history of our planet--a unique source of so much goodness, compassion, morality, creativity, and intelligence over the past several millennia. The demise of Jewish life as we have come to know it would be a tragedy not only for the Jewish people collectively, but also for most of us individually--and for the world at large. The thesis of this book is that the long epoch of Jewish persecution is finally coming to an end and that a new age of internal dangers to the Jewish people is on the horizon. Institutional antiSemitism is on its last legs as governments, churches, universities, and businesses embrace Jews. No Jew today needs to convert in order to become a professor, a banker, or a corporate CEO.

Although anti-Semitism persists in many quarters, today's overt anti-Semites--the skinheads, militias, Holocaust deniers, and Farrakhan followers--have become marginalized. They continue to constitute a nuisance and pose a potential threat, but they do not have a significant day-to-day impact on the lives of most Jews, as anti-Semites in previous generations did. Today's marginalized anti-Semites do not decide which jobs we can hold, which universities we can attend, which neighborhoods we can live in, which clubs we can join, or even whom we can date and marry. We no longer look up to anti-Semites as the elites in our society who determine our fate. We look down on anti-Semites as the dregs of our society who make lots of noise but little difference. As Jews and Israel become more secure against external threats, the internal threats are beginning to grow, as graphically illustrated by the recent assassination of an Israeli prime minister by a Jew, the growing conflict between fundamentalist Jews and more acculturated Jews, the increasing trends toward intermarriage and assimilation, and the decline of Jewish literacy. For thousands of years, Jews have been embattled. Surrounded by enemies seeking to convert us, remove us, even exterminate us, we have developed collective defense mechanisms highly adaptive to combating persecution by anti-Semites. But we have not developed effective means of defending the Jewish future against our own actions and inactions. This is our urgent new challenge--to defend the Jewish future against voluntary self-destruction--and we must face it squarely, if we are to prevent the fulfillment of Isaiah's dire prophecy "Your destroyers will come from your own ranks." We must take control of our own destiny by changing the nature of Jewish life in fundamental ways. The survival of the Jewish people is too important--to us and to the world at large--to be left in the hands of those ultra-Orthodox rabbis who would rather face Armageddon than change the religious status quo. Just as Jews of the past changed the nature of Jewish life in order to adapt to external necessities and to survive the ravages of their external enemies, so, too, must today's Jews change the nature of Jewish life to adapt to new internal necessities and to survive the demographic challenges of intermarriage, assimilation, low birthrates, and the breakdown of neighborhoods and communities. A hundred years ago, Theodor Herzl identified the "Jewish question" of the twentieth century as the literal survival of Jews in the face of external enemies committed to our physical annihilation--Jew-haters in every nation where Jews lived as a minority. His solution--the creation of a secular Jewish state--was to change the nature of Jewish life in dramatic and unanticipated ways. A hundred years later, the "Jewish question" of the twenty-first century is survival in the face of our internal challenges. Herzl also anticipated that this new "Jewish question" might arise if and when our Christian hosts were to leave us in peace. This is now coming to pass. The solution to this Jewish question also requires the creation of yet another Jewish state: a new Jewish state of mind! This book continues where Chutzpah (1991) left off, in exploring the larger issue of being Jewish today. In the concluding paragraphs of that book I issued the following challenge:

We have learned--painfully and with difficulty--how to fight others. Can we develop Jewish techniques for defending against our own success? Pogo once said: "We have [met] the enemy and he is us!" As Jews, we have not yet been given the luxury of seeing ourselves as the enemy. There are still too many external enemies who challenge the very physical survival of the Jewish people in Israel and throughout the world. But as we become stronger in the face of our external enemies, we must prepare to confront ourselves. In confronting ourselves, we must face the reality that the generation of Jews I wrote about in Chutzpah--those of us who remember the Holocaust, the creation of Israel and the mortal threats to its survival, the movements to save Soviet, Syrian, and Ethiopian Jewry, the struggle against institutional anti-Semitism--is aging. Our children, who have no actual memory of embattled Judaism fighting for the life, liberty, and equality of endangered Jews, are now the crossroads generation that will determine what Jewish life in America and around the world will be in the coming century. It is to that younger generation of Jews, as well as to their parents, that I address this volume. The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed the end of state-sponsored and churchsupported anti-Semitism. The fall of the Soviet Union, a nation that, since the time of Stalin, had been a major source of international anti-Semitism, had a domino effect on ending the state sponsorship of this oldest of bigotries. Other nations within the Soviet sphere of influence stopped espousing anti-Semitism as a matter of government policy. Even most Arab and Islamic countries dropped their overtly anti-Semitic policies. As a result, the United Nations has changed its tone, condemning anti-Semitism and reducing somewhat its pro-Arab and anti-Israel bias. Equally important, the Catholic church--the single institution most responsible for the persecution of Jews over the past two millennia--approved diplomatic relations with Israel, thus annulling its entrenched view that Jewish "homelessness ... was the Divine judgment against Jews" for rejecting Jesus. The American Lutheran Church explicitly rejected Martin Luther's anti-Semitic teachings. Bill Clinton's presidency marked the end of discrimination against Jews in the upper echelons of government. For the first time in American history, the fact that an aspirant for high appointive office was a Jew became irrelevant in his or her selection. President Clinton--our first president who grew up in an age when anti-Semitism was unacceptable--selected several Jewish cabinet members, two Jewish Supreme Court justices, numerous Jewish ambassadors and other highlevel executive and judicial officials. Nor, apparently, was Jewishness a bar to election to the United States Congress, which has ten Jewish senators and more than two dozen Jewish representatives, several from states with tiny Jewish populations. Though we have still not had a Jew at the top of either party's ticket, it is fair to say that in today's America, a Jew can aspire to any office, any job, and any social status. The wealth of individual Jews grew perceptibly during this decade, with 25 percent of America's richest people being of Jewish background. (If only earned, as distinguished from inherited, wealth is counted, the percentage would be even higher.) An American Leadership study in 1971-72 found that Jews represented more than 10 percent of America's top "movers and shakers

in business," a higher percentage than any other ethnic group. Jews' per capita income is nearly double that of non-Jews. Twice the percentage of Jews as non-Jews earn more than $50,000 a year. And twice the percentage of non-Jews as Jews earn less than $20,000. Jewish charitable giving has increased along with Jewish wealth. Jews are now among the largest contributors to universities, museums, hospitals, symphonies, opera, and other charities. "In 1991, the United Jewish Appeal raised more money than any other charity in America, including the Salvation Army, American Red Cross, Catholic Charities and the American Cancer Society." Yet only one-tenth of Jewish philanthropists limit their giving to Jewish charities alone, while one-fourth give only to non-Jewish causes. A Jew today can live in any neighborhood, even those that were formerly "restricted." Jews live alongside white Anglo-Saxon Protestants in the most "exclusive" neighborhoods throughout the country--Grosse Pointe, Greenwich, Fifth Avenue, Beacon Hill. And they have been welcomed into the "best" families, including the Roosevelts, Kennedys, Cuomos, and Rockefellers. Economically, socially, and politically, we have become the new WASPs, as a perusal of the sponsor list of any major charitable or cultural event will show. Indeed, terms such as "J.A.S.P." (Jewish Anglo-Saxon Protestant) and "W.A.S.H." (White Anglo-Saxon Hebrew) have become current in some circles to denote the full social acceptance that Jews increasingly enjoy. Of America's Nobel Prize winners in science and economics, nearly 40 percent have been Jews. Of America's 200 most influential intellectuals, half are full Jews, and 76 percent have at least one Jewish parent. Jews attend Ivy League colleges at ten times their presence in the general population. It is no wonder that so many non-Jews believe that we constitute so much higher a percentage of the American population than we actually do. Jews today are equal in virtually every way that matters. What could not have been said even at the end of the 1980s can be said today: American Jews are part of the American mainstream; we are truly victims no more. Yet despite these enormous gains, many older Jews do not seem to be able to give up their anachronistic status as victims. A recent book on the American Jewish community notes: "[A]bout a third [of affiliated Jews in San Francisco said] that Jewish candidates could not be elected to Congress from San Francisco. Yet three out of four Congressional representatives ... were, in fact, well identified Jews at the time the poll was conducted. And they had been elected by a population that was about 95 percent non-Jewish." Nor is this misperception limited to California. According to journalist J.J. Goldberg, "[T]he percentage of Jews who tell pollsters that anti-Semitism is a `serious problem' in America nearly doubled during the course of the 1980s, from 45 percent in 1983 to almost 85 percent in 1990." Yet by every objective assessment, the problem was less serious in 1990 than it was in 1983, and the trend has clearly been in the direction of improvement. When I speak to older Jewish audiences, I am often accused, sometimes stridently, of minimizing anti-Semitism and am told that it is worse than ever. Social scientists call this dramatic disparity between the reality of declining anti-Semitism and the widespread belief that it is increasing a "perception gap" between what is actually happening and Jewish "sensibilities." Some of the Jews who believe this are similar in this respect to some feminists and black activists I know, who insist that the plight of women and blacks is worse than it ever was. These

good and decent people, whose identities are so tied up with their victimization, are incapable of accepting the good news that their situation is improving. It is not even a matter of perceiving the glass as half full or half empty. They see the glass as broken, even though it is intact and quickly filling up. As the sociologist Marshall Sklare puts it: "American Jews respond more readily to bad news than to good news." I am reminded of the story of the two Jews reading their newspapers over a cup of coffee in a late-nineteenth-century Viennese cafe. Kurt is reading the liberal Yiddish-language newspaper and shaking his head from side to side, uttering soft moans of "Oy vey" and "Vey is meir." Shmulie is reading the right-wing, anti-Semitic German-language tabloid and smiling. Kurt, noticing what Shmulie is reading, shouts at his friend, "Why are you reading that garbage?" Shmulie responds, "When I used to take your newspaper, all I would ever read about was Dreyfus being falsely accused, the Jews of Russia being subjected to pogroms, anti-Semitic laws being enacted all over Europe, and the grinding poverty of the Jews in the Holy Land. Now, ever since I take this paper, I read about how the Jews control the banks, the press, the arts; how Jews hold all political power behind the scenes; and how we will soon take over the world. Wouldn't you rather read such good news than such bad news?" With some of today's older Jews, it is exactly the opposite: they refuse to read the good news, even when it is demonstrably true. They insist on focusing on the "oys" rather than the joys of Judaism, as Rabbi Moshe Waldoks put it. This is understandable, in light of the long history of persecution. Like an individual victim of a violent crime who sees his assailant around every corner, the Jewish people have been traumatized by our unrelenting victimization at the hands of Jew-haters. It is impossible for anyone who did not personally experience the Holocaust, or the other repeated assaults on Jewish life throughout our history, to comprehend what it must have been like to be victimized by unrelenting persecution based on primitive Jew-hating. We continue to see anti-Semitism even where it has ceased to exist, or we exaggerate it where it continues to exist in marginalized form. Indeed, some Jewish newspapers refuse to print, and some Jewish organizations refuse to acknowledge, the good news, lest they risk alienating their readerships or losing their membership. For example, in November of 1996 I saw a fundraising letter from a Jewish organization which claimed that "anti-Semitism ... appears to be growing more robust, more strident, more vicious--and more `respectable.'" Well-intentioned as this organization is, it seeks support by exaggerating the threats we currently face and by comparing them to those we faced during the Holocaust. My students, my children, my friends' children--our next generation--understand our new status: they do not want to be regarded as victims. They do not feel persecuted, discriminated against, or powerless. They want to read the new good news, not the old bad news. A 1988 poll of Jewish students at Dartmouth College made the point compellingly: When asked whether they believed that their Jewishness would in any way hamper their future success, not a single student answered in the affirmative. That is the current reality, and it is different from the reality my parents faced--and even from the reality many of my generation perceived when we were in college or beginning our careers. The coming generation of Jewish adults will not remain Jews because of our enemies or because of our perceived status as victims. They crave a more positive, affirmative, contemporary, and relevant Jewish identity. Unless we move beyond

victimization and toward a new Jewish state of mind, many of them will abandon Judaism as not relevant to their current concerns. If we are to counteract this trend, we must understand the dynamics of contemporary assimilation and not confuse them with past episodes of assimilation, which were based largely on the perceived need to escape from the "burdens" of Jewish identification. Today, there are no burdens from which to escape. Being Jewish is easy, at least in relation to external burdens. Jews today assimilate not because Christianity or Islam is "better" or "easier," but because Jewish life does not have a strong enough positive appeal to offset the inertial drift toward the common denominator. Jews do not convert to Christianity; they "convert" to mainstream Americanism, which is the American "religion" closest to Judaism. They see no reason not to follow their heart in marriage, their convenience in neighborhoods, their economic opportunities in jobs, their educational advantages in schools, their conscience in philosophy, and their preferences in lifestyle. Most Jews who assimilate do not feel that they are giving up anything by abandoning a Jewishness they know little about. They associate the Judaism they are abandoning with inconvenient rituals and rules that have no meaning to them. As one young woman remembers her Jewishness: "An old man saying no." We must recognize that many of the factors which have fueled current assimilation and intermarriage are positive developments for individual Jews: acceptance, wealth, opportunity. Most Jews do not want to impede these developments. Indeed, they want to encourage them. For that reason, we must accept the reality that many Jews will continue to marry non-Jews, but we should not regard it as inevitable that these marriages will necessarily lead to total assimilation. We can take positive steps to stem that tide--but it will take a change in attitude toward mixed marriages, and indeed toward the tribalism that has understandably characterized Jewish attitudes toward outsiders for so much of our history. Why is this book different from other books about the Jewish future? Because its author does not have a religious or political agenda. This book is not a commercial for any particular brand of Judaism or Zionism. It does not begin with a priori assumptions about God, the survival of the Jewish people, the superiority of Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or Reconstructionist Judaism, or the essential conservativism or liberalism of Judaism. I am neither a rabbi, a Jewish fundraiser, a member of a Jewish studies faculty, an officer of any Jewish organization, nor an advocate for any particular Israeli party. Though I am essentially a secular Jew, I do belong to Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist congregations. Most of my family members are modern Orthodox, and a few are ultra-Orthodox. Some are completely secular. I have generally positive feelings about all Jewish denominations, as I do about the numerous Jewish political, educational, and philanthropic organizations to which I belong and contribute. I have no personal stake in any particular solution to the problem of Jewish survival. I just want American Jewish life to move from strength to strength. I love my Judaism and I feel passionately about its survival, but I do not believe in survival merely for survival's sake. Judaism should not be seen as a patient about to die a natural death, who is kept alive artificially on a respirator for as long as possible without regard to the quality of life. Our goal should be a self-sustaining Judaism that can thrive in the kind of open society in which most Jews want to spend their lives. I strongly believe that it is essential--both for Jews and for America--that the mainstream American Jewish community flourish. It would be a tragedy if the only forms of

Judaism the made it past the twenty-first century were insular, ultra-Orthodox Judaism and Israeli Zionism. I hope that they, too, will continue to prosper, but I believe that a more diverse Jewish life has even more to contribute. If I have a bias, it is in favor of an eclectic, tolerant many-branched menorah that is inclusive of all who wish to safeguard and share the future of the Jewish people. I also bring to this book a unique perspective informed by my experiences growing out of the publication of Chutzpah five years ago. Since that time, I have spoken to well over 100,000 Jews in nearly every city with a significant Jewish population, not only in this country but throughout the world. The talk is usually preceded by a social hour and followed by a question period. I estimate that I have been asked more than a thousand questions by concerned Jews. I have received more than ten thousand letters and phone calls from Jewish men, women, and children. I have also been teaching young students, many of them Jewish, for a third of a century. I have served as faculty adviser to the Harvard Jewish Law Students Association, have been an active participant in Hillel, and have spoken to Jewish student groups at many colleges and universities around the world. Over these years, I have discussed virtually every Jewish issue--from God to intermarriage to Israel to anti-Semitism to Jewish feminism--with thousands of students. These questions, letters, calls, and discussions have given me an extraordinary window into the fears, hopes, and beliefs of a wide assortment of Jews. It has been quite an education. I think I understand what is on the minds and in the souls of many Jews, of all ages, and I try to address myself to these concerns in this book. I also have a unique window into the mind of the antiSemite, since I continue to receive hundreds of anti-Semitic letters and calls each year, some quite lengthy and revealing. Though I care deeply about the survival of the Jewish people, I do not believe that survival is assured by any biblical imperative or divine promise. I approach the issue of Jewish survival as I would any other important empirical challenge: with an open mind ready and willing to accept any pragmatic solution, or combination of solutions, that will work. I am committed to doing whatever is in my power to help ensure the Jewish future. I know that many Jews feel the same way. I agree neither with those theologians who believe that Jewish survival is assured because God promised it nor with those demographers who believe that Jewish disappearance is inevitable because of forces beyond our control. I believe that our future as a people is largely in our own hands, and I want to help define and defend the new Jewish state of mind. In the first chapter of this book, I focus on what is probably the most whispered-about subject among American Jews today: intermarriage and how to cope with this growing reality. I try to bring this controversial subject out of the closet in all its dimensions. I do not moan and groan and wring my hands. I do not present a religious agenda. I explore the issue from both a demographic and a personal perspective, in an effort to understand it and deal with it instructively and realistically. My analysis and conclusions will be controversial and will, I hope, stimulate a debate within the Jewish community and beyond. My goal is to ask all the hard questions, and to provide a wide variety of responses in addition to my own. I know that many readers will disagree with me, but I hope they will not be able to ignore the challenges I pose.

In chapters 2, 3, and 4, I develop my thesis that the nature of anti-Semitism is changing in fundamental and important ways: Mainstream anti-Semitism--as traditionally practiced by churches, states, corporations, universities, and other elite institutions--is coming to an end; today's Jew-haters are largely marginalized and powerless. This change means that although antiSemitism persists and must continue to be monitored, it has far less daily impact on the lives of American Jews than in the past. Thus we must define our Jewish identity in different and more positive ways than we did the past. In chapters 5, 6, and 7, I explore the most frequently proposed solutions to the problem of assimilation. To those who are sure that return to religion is Judaism's only salvation, I say, Get as many to return as you can. Maybe you are right. But we cannot rely exclusively on your solution, because maybe you are wrong. Maybe not enough Jews will become religious. Maybe religion--at least as currently defined and practiced--is not the wave of the future for most young intellectuals. Maybe there is a strand of Judaism that can survive and thrive without exclusive dependence on theology and ritual. After all, the Yiddish secularism that flourished between the beginning of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) and the Second World War was an authentic Jewish culture, which was destroyed by external forces. Political Zionism, which grew largely out of that culture, remains an authentic Jewish civilization of enormous importance to the survival of Judaism. Today's influential American Jewish community is largely secular. To those who look to Israel as Judaism's sole salvation, I say, Keep trying to get Jews from throughout the Diaspora to make aliyah. Maybe you are right. But we cannot count on Zionism and aliyah alone, because maybe you are wrong. Maybe most Jews will want to remain where they and their families have established a comfortable home. Maybe they will not come to Israel. Maybe Israel will not endure forever as a Jewish state. Maybe it will "normalize"--as Theodor Herzl put it--and become like most other states, which began as religious but became secular and multicultural over time. To those who believe that an emphasis on Jewish ethics will be enough to transmit the essence of Judaism to our children, I say, Maybe you are right. Certainly many Jews, especially secular Jews, agree with you and hope you are right. But beyond broad generalities, it is difficult to distill from the highly diverse Jewish sources a few programmatic essences that are easily transmittable from generation to generation, without living the kind of Jewish lives that our grandparents lived. To those who say that Jewish fund-raising, charity, and defense organizations are the answer, I say, Work on, raise money, build buildings, elect officers, bestow honors, monitor antiSemitism, support Israel. But do not count on it to ensure the Jewish future, because maybe the next generation will not be as attracted to these institutions as the post-Holocaust generation was. To those who say that Jewish education is the key to Jewish survival, I say, You are undoubtedly right. Whatever the essence or essences of Judaism may be, they are in large part, at least, to be discovered and rediscovered in our books, in our history, and in our approach to learning. But we cannot count on all Jews, so many of whom are busy with their successful careers, to become Jewishly educated, especially since Jewish education today is controlled almost entirely by the

religious component of Jewish life and has been one of the great failures of the American Jewish community. In the final chapter, I propose a series of steps that I believe we must take in order to safeguard the Jewish future. We must change the nature of American Jewish life in fundamental ways if we are to survive the new threats to our continuity as a people. These changes must make us more adaptive to the reality that we can no longer define ourselves--and our children--by reference to our past victimization and persecution. We must adopt a new, more positive, Jewish identity based on a 3,500-year-old tradition of education, scholarship, learning, creativity, justice, and compassion. But first we must figure out a way to make this diverse library of Jewish knowledge accessible and useful to generations of Jews who are abysmally ignorant of their remarkable tradition. The famed "Yiddisher cup" (khop)---Jewish head--is only half full: the typical Jewish college graduate is extraordinarily well educated about general subjects, but goes through life with a kindergarten understanding of Judaism. We must begin to fill the Yiddisher cup with the kind of useful Jewish knowledge that will assure both our success and our survival. To do this, we will have to loosen the monopolistic hold that rabbis now have over Jewish education, so that we can begin to compete effectively in the marketplace of ideas for the minds and hearts of our Jewish youth. Unless we begin to make use of our competitive advantage--as teachers, communicators, scholars, advocates, and strategists--we will lose our children and grandchildren to the seductive drift toward assimilation and away from Jewishness. The fundamental changes we must make will require a reordering of our priorities away from an almost exclusive focus on defending Jews against external enemies and toward new ways of defending ourselves and our children against self-destruction through assimilation. We will have to educate our children differently, allocate our charitable giving differently, select our leaders differently--even define our very Jewishness differently. Jewish life will have to become less tribal, more open, more accepting of outsiders, and less defensive. When I describe some of the multiple roads we must take if we are to maximize our chances for survival, I think of a variation of the old story of the rabbinical judge who, after hearing a wife's complaints about her husband, says, "My daughter, you are right," and, after hearing the husband's complaints, says, "My son, you are right." When his student observes, "Rabbi, they can't both be right," he replies, "My son, you are right." Under my variation, the rabbi responds to his student, "No, you are wrong. They can both be right." To the differing and sometimes inconsistent approaches to Jewish survival, I would say, "You may all be right. Don't you dare tell each other that you are wrong. Nobody has a monopoly on the truth about the Jewish future. Everything that may work must be tried." At the end of the last century, Theodor Herzl called for a new Jewish state. As we approach the close of this cataclysmic century, I believe we need a new Jewish state of mind if we are to define and ensure the Jewish future, not only for our sake but for the sake of all humankind.
(C) 1997 Alan M. Dershowitz All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-316-18133-1

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Jews Thriving in Iran US Intelligence: No Evidence Iran Building Nukes US Aiding Terror Groups Milk From Industrial Dairies Linked to Cancer
February 27, 2012

AG Holder Could Be Jailed for Ongoing Fast & Furious Cover-up Harvard study: Pasteurized milk from industrial dairies linked to cancer U.S. Intelligence: No Evidence Iran Building Nukes Deportations Plummet Under Obamas New Immigration Policy
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Jews Living in Iran

U.S. Fighting On the Same Side as Three Terrorist Groups In Syria

Washingtons Blog February 26, 2012 Al Qaeda is supporting the Syrian opposition. So is the Muslim Brotherhood. And Hamas. This is curious, given that the U.S. is supporting the Syrian opposition (and see this), considering military options for ousting the Syrian government, American allies Britain and Qatar allegedly already have foreign troops inside Syria, and the U.S. has been planning regime change in Syria for over 50 years. I thought Al Qaeda, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood were Americas mortal enemies. Why are we backing terrorists? If Hezbollah joins the opposition, it will be a clean sweep.

5 Reasons Iran is NOT a Threat to the U.S.

Michael Edwards Infowrs.com February 27, 2012 The Obama Administration, by Executive Order, has moved another step closer to preemptive war with Iran by declaring a National Emergency to deal with this supposed threat. A National Emergency, which gives the president extraordinary power to subvert the Constitution, is legally defined as A situation beyond the ordinary which threatens the health or safety of citizens and which cannot be properly addressed by the use of other law. Given the immense power the executive receives during such emergencies, one would think the U.S. must face a clear and present danger in order to justify such actions. Yet, all recent wars

fought by America and paid for by U.S. tax dollars were preceded by little more than an Executive Order declaring a national emergency. And, notably, the president makes these declarations without the need for a vote by the Congress as stipulated by the U.S. Constitution. So what has changed with Iran that now requires a National Emergency? It seems the U.S. is just itching for another fight, because its clear that Iran poses no threat to the health and safety of U.S. citizens that cannot be dealt with by other laws. Here are 5 reasons why a National Emergency should not be declared to deal with Iran: Never Attacked US: Iran has never attacked the United States, or even any of her interests overseas. In fact, they have not attacked or invaded anyone in at least 270 years. And they havent even threatened to harm the U.S. unless of course they are attacked first. Do we want to continue to be a nation that attacks others without provocation, or one that defends our country against genuine aggressors? Iran is not an aggressor and certainly not a national emergency threat. No Nuclear Weapon: Claims that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon seems to be the only argument warmongers have to suggest a preemptive strike. Yet, all U.S. intelligence agencies universally agree that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. Even if they did, why is that a reason to attack them? Just having a weapon doesnt make a country a threat. Plenty of countries have nuclear weapons and we dont consider them a threat. Self Preservation: Iran will not attack the West militarily with a nuclear weapon, or even conventionally, because they know they would be inviting their immediate destruction. Iran is a sophisticated secular society, much like Iraq was before America invaded. In fact, Iran has the third largest Jewish population in the world who live in harmony with Muslims and others. In other words, they have a lot to lose to invite war with anyone, and they know that any move viewed as aggression would be met with swift and overwhelming force. The West wants the world to believe their leadership is primitive and stupid, but they arent. Surrounded By U.S. Bases: Over 45 U.S. bases surround Iran. These bases are in addition to the fleets of U.S. warships parked in waters near Iran. A picture is worth a thousand words. Whos the real threat here?

Stars represent U.S. bases

Conventional War is Obsolete: Iran actually has a modern armed forces that could fight back conventionally. However, conventional war is completely obsolete. It should be likened to sticks and stones compared to the known advanced technology the world powers possess. Besides nuclear weapons and other WMDs, there are secret weather weapons, space-based weapons, microwave weapons etc. Russia admits to having a weather weapon that can destroy the U.S. in 15 minutes. Surely America and Europe have the same technology, and probably China, too. These make conventional warfare nothing more than manufactured violence for economic control and managed population reduction. Again, Iran represents nothing resembling a threat to America in the face of such technology.

America was never attacked or even threatened with attack by Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, or Somalia. Yet by executive decree, taxpayers continue to fund the U.S. war machine to murder and maim innocent civilians in those countries. Conveniently, the war on terror has given America the excuse to preemptively strike any nation who is said to oppose them. And it seems Iran is next unless the American people stop living in fear of manufactured threats. This post first appeared on the Activist Post website.
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