Radical Islam and Cultural Relativism

Jason Kuznicki's Positive Liberty has rapidly become one of the must-read blogs on the web. Jason is in the process of finishing his PhD in history at Johns Hopkins, and is probably the only person any of us is likely to know to have turned down a Fulbright scholarship. His writing is clear and lucid, informed by a wealth of knowledge in a wide range of subjects, and he seems entirely unconstrained by our expectations of what he should think or say on a subject.

His latest post is a review of Carmen bin Laden's book Inside the Kingdom, a book I look forward to reading myself. Carmen was the sister in law of Osama bin Laden and her book is an expose` not just on Osama, but on the Islamic culture of Saudi Arabia that created him. Jason's review touches not only on Carmen's experiences, but on our own reaction to the culture that she lived under:

I suspect that for many academics, moral relativism now prohibits speaking out against the abuses of Saudi Arabia. It is fashionable, and perhaps in many areas downright necessary, to allow the Saudis their oppression in the name of cultural diversity. After all, who are we to dictate their values? How dare we try to impose our culture upon another? The moral clarity that academics once had when faced with racial apartheid in South Africa has often quite simply disappeared; in its place are genteel, sanitized discussions about female circumcision and the cultural meaning of the burkha.

We worry so much about the conservative eagerness to turn the present struggle into a clash of enormous civilizations--Islam versus Christianity--that we miss the genuine clash of cultures: Fundamentalist militarism versus modern, tolerant liberalism. The real conflict is not between Islam and Christianity, but between a culture of openness and a culture of oppression.

And, I might add, we should draw that line within our own culture as well. The reactionary forces of religious fundamentalism within our own culture differ from the Saudi or Taliban theocracies only insofar as they are limited by our simultaneous tradition of freedom based upon the Enlightenment philosophy that rejected their repressive ideas 2 or 3 centuries ago. We are not so far removed in this country from a time when people were jailed for such "crimes" as blasphemy, heresy and witchcraft, and there are many in America who long for a return to those days. For those who advocate theocracy, it matters not whether they draw their set of laws from the Bible or the Quran, the result is the same - the destruction of human freedom and the end of decency. There is nothing moral about theocracy, despite their rhetorical justifications. Theocracy must be opposed, whether in Saudi Arabia or here at home.