By: Benjamin Wiker 4/25/2013 10:09 AM
We are now—like it or not—immersed in a real debate about the nature of Islam. The background of deceased Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev is forcing us into it. There is no doubt Tamerlan, the elder brother of the two perpetrators, was transformed by his relatively recent embrace of radical Islam.
And so, we have the very difficult question facing us in regard to Islam: Is the propensity to terror and jihad radical in the deepest sense of word’s origin in Latin, radix, “root”? Is there something at the root of the Quran itself and the essential history of Islam that all too frequently creates the Tsarnaev brothers, Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Mohamed Atta, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas, or is there some other source, quiet accidental to Islam?
That question must be taken seriously, very seriously....As secular, liberalism understood itself as embracing this world as the highest good, advocating a self-conscious return to ancient pagan this-worldliness…… with a deep antagonism toward Christianity, rather than religion in general. It was culturally powerful Christianity that stood in the way of liberal secular progress in the West—not Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Druidism…….., radical Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire rallied his fellow secular soldiers with what would become the battle cry of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment: écrasez l’infâme, “destroy the infamous thing.”…….not against religion in general, but….. “against Christianity itself…..and the Christian view of man.”.....To Read More...
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