Anti-Jihad Manifesto Misses the Point

By Aussiegirl

Paul Belien, writing in the Brussels Journal has some fascinating opinions about the recent manifesto issued by Salman Rushdie and several other authors regarding the "new totalitarianism" of Islamic terror. It's worth reading the entire essay, but here are some pertinent quotes to whet your appetite.

Anti-Jihad Manifesto Misses the Point The Brussels Journal: "Today twelve international authors, most of them (former) Muslims, such as Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but also a couple of French philosophers, published a manifesto in the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. An English version of the manifesto "Together facing the new totalitarianism" was posted yesterday evening on the website of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

The manifesto states that

"After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism. We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats."

The above paragraphs clearly display the manifesto's defects. While Islamism can be considered the perversion of religion, the three scourges of the 20th century -- Fascism, Nazism (National-Socialism) and Stalinism -- were secular ideologies. Neither Adolf Hitler nor Joseph Stalin were theocrats. It takes "French intellectuals" to use mankind's experience with National-Socialism and Stalinism as motivation for a rallying cry to oppose "religious totalitarianism" and a call for "secular values," which they hold to be "universal values."

[...]In our opinion, man is a religious being. Secularism destroyed the Christian roots of Europe and, in doing so, created the religious vacuum that is now being filled by Islam. The manifesto warns against

“battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. […] We must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.”

History in the past century, however, has clearly indicated that those fighting for an “egalitarian” world were the most “liberticidal” of all. Freedom is the right to live “unegalitarianly.” This is why The Brussels Journal defends the right of individuals – though not of the state – to “discriminate” (which, by the way, contrary to what the manifesto implies, is not the same as “oppress”). Indeed, it is no coincidence that the manifesto avoids referring to “Socialism” (and even “Communism”) among the scourges of the past century and prefers to speak of “Nazism” and Stalinism” instead. Half the manifesto’s signatories are probably Socialists, which explains why the manifesto obfuscates the secular, Socialist roots of these scourges.

While in America a cultural war is going on between “blue” (liberal) and “red” (conservative), the cultural war in Europe is a three-way war between the European equivalent of the American “blue” (socialist), the European equivalent of the American “red” (conservative, though Europeans often use the term “liberal”) and Muslims. I prefer to refer to the first group as “secularist” (although I realise this is a generalization and many Christians belong to these “secularists,” including – unfortunately – most of our bishops and priests) and to the second group as “Christian” (although many agnostics belong to it). The reason why I make this distinction is because the second group is prepared to acknowledge the importance of the cultural traditions of the West, rooted in the Judeo-Christian values without which classical-liberalism could never have evolved.

[...]The battle that is being waged today is a battle between those who defend the right of individuals against the right of collectivities.

The Islamists and the secularists (including the priests and bishops among them) have more in common than the Islamists and the Christians (including the agnostics among them), because the latter acknowledge that at the heart of Christianity is the individual with his individual responsibility before God. Without Christianity, individual responsibility would not have become the centre of European civilization. It was the French Revolution that jeopardized this tradition and that became the root of collectivism, with its socialist, fascist, national-socialist and communist excesses. From this perspective even Jihadism is more a child of secularism than of religion.