Engaging the War of Ideas (Part 4: What of Pluralism?)

My last post produced meaningful and detailed conversation on many fronts in the “war of ideas” and has prompted Jesurgislac’s new post articulating why pro-choice is the only moral option.  Please read that and stay tuned for ongoing discussion here and at Jes’s blog.

This is a good example of the kind of productive dialogue that can take place between peace-loving people from various worldviews, even those that are fundamentally divergent from one another.  Returning to the question of how to engage the war of ideas with radical Islam, I am curious how Muslims, particularly in America, use the Koran to embrace the vision of pluralistic, religious freedom in a liberal democracy.

Pluralism is not secularism.  Secularism is a replacement for religion.  Pluralism allows all worldviews to compete freely and openly.  Secularism says religion is dangerous, for any form of it can easily produce “terrorism.”  Pluralism says secularism is dangerous when it attempts to essentially outlaw religious truth claims in the public square.

The conscience is the crux of this conflict of ideas, from my perspective.  I favor pluralism because it recognizes that freedom of conscience is required to make a truly meaningful choice about what one ultimately believes about life, death, God, creation, evolution, sin, salvation, and the like.  Once one makes choices about these transcendent realities, they will find their way into one’s views on public matters.

How does secularism view the conscience?  My first thought is that it seeks to deny the inherent authority and validity of conscience-based arguments in the public square.  I plan on inquiring into this with more hard data, but that’s my initial sense.  I look forward to reading Jes’s post, which I believe gets at this, and I welcome all other counterarguments.

Radical Islam certainly denies this freedom of choice, but under absolutist religious claims instead of secular ones.  But without the freedom of conscious choice, how can one really own one’s faith by carefully determining whether the truth claims of Islam are really true?

The most systematic elaboration of how this has impacted the West is found in Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. A personal but equally engaging memoire on the path into radical Islam is Daveed Gartenstein-Ross’s My Year Inside Radical Islam. But these are written from a Western perspective.  What do we see in the Muslim sources?

For your consideration, please compare the following source ideas that drove two national revolutions, and consider whether an absolutist or a pluralistic, conscience-elevating society will better serve its members.

Islamic Government was written by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini shortly before the Shi’ite cleric in exile returned to Iran to on February 1, 1979 to lead a fundamentalist Islamic Revolution that persists in that country to the present day and leadership.  In this short book, he expressed his distinctive core views that would form the basis of his government.  Some of these ideas are expressed in the following quotes:

The difference between the Islamic government and the constitutional governments, both monarchic and republican, lies in the fact that the people’s representatives or the king’s representatives are the ones who codify and legislate, whereas [in Islam] the power of legislation is confined to God…This is why Islam replaces the legislative council.

We believe in government and we believe in the need for the prophet [Muhammed] to appoint a caliph (successor) after him, and he did…The appointment of a successor after him to implement and uphold the laws, and to spread justice among the people was an element complementing and completing the prophet’s message.

We believe in the need for forming government: and we seek to implement God’s order and rule to manage people, run their affairs, and care for them.

In the prophet’s time, was there separation of church and state?

Now look at these lines from the Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.