Suicide is Haram in Islam, those who kill themselves are destined for hell, those who kill an innocent civilian are “as if they have killed the whole of humanity”. Amir discusses the point here:

Post modern epistemology is something that annoys us greatly, it is essentially nothing, nihilistic and fashionable.

In the only country which does not have a multicultural policy, has the strongest and most energetic Muslim community, the United States

and here:

As for Islamism’s links with Marxist methodologies, we have previously discussed it here:

Regards

Why is cultural essentialism any better than teleological liberalism? (I’m not suggesting that you think it’s better, but rather more realistic, I point I agree with).

I think both are unrealistic. I don’t think cultural essentialism can be a reality even within a culturally homogenous society because there are many forces other than internal ones which shape a society and dictate its cultural evolution. In the case of a multicultural and multiconfessional society, it is even less realistic to subscribe to cultural essentialism because, like it or not, cultures will change and will be influenced by others and by their environment. And this applies as equally to the dominant culture as it does to minorities.

Furthermore, whilst Gray’s analysis is certainly more thoughtful than the Steynian strawman, it sweeps the various faultlines (the meat and potatoes of your Steyns, Bolts, et al) under the rug, by assuming that the present state of play is how things will remain, and that shifting demographics and the inevitable tension that will follow economic stagnation won’t make the situation any worse.

I agree to some extent; in that the promotion of tolerance alone is not a universal panacea for all circumstances and situations. There are other issues, particularly economic, that need to be addressed in many of these societies in order for such calls to have a chance of delivering its promised peaceful coexistence. There is, to give an example, no point telling French and French Muslims to be tolerant of one another’s cultural foibles if you are going to keep one of the groups unemployed and disenfranchised through your policies.

As someone who is obviously quite sympathetic to classical liberalism, would you advocate a near complete division of cultural spheres of influence? For example, the whole kerfuffle about the MCB school report could be avoided with an increase to private, religious schooling.

In a nutshell, I suppose I advocate that people should have as much freedom to pursue their own interests as possible whilst not impeding the right of others to pursue their own interests. In a cultural context, this would mean that everyone has a right to practice their religion, enjoy their culture and act according to their own moral codes; on the proviso, of course, that by doing so they don’t interfere with the freedom of others to do the same. This means, for example, that I oppose FGM of children, using violence in response to Papal speeches one doesn’t like, or attempting to stop women wearing veils in the street.

As for the MCB report, then I agree that one of the primary reasons why people took issue with it was because it could be cast by some people with an axe to grind as being an attempt to dictate to the British people (i.e. non-Muslims) how they can run their (i.e. state) schools. If the same report had been written about private schools, I doubt people would have been able to get as much mileage out of it.

…and if a muslim society were established “

It isn’t, so why do Western Muslims spend a great deal of time worrying about what might or might not be? It is a low reward intellectual exercise worrying about a future Islamic state, and the actions of people within it and their punishment or not.

BTW I do believe that the fullest expression of Islam is as a society, but I cannot go about my daily life in a western country continually analysing what would happen if so and so did this or that in a Islamic state. That would drive one insane.

I also get the feeling that those who concern themselves with the future Islamic state, miss an opportunity to think about how they conduct themselves in the present.

I am of course not referring to you, but to those HT people, many of whom do not even fulfil the basic sunnah of dress and Adab and salat, whist they are consumed by their longing for an Islamic state where they can punish people energetically.

Why is cultural essentialism any better than teleological liberalism? (I’m not suggesting that you think it’s better, but rather more realistic, I point I agree with).

Furthermore, whilst Gray’s analysis is certainly more thoughtful than the Steynian strawman, it sweeps the various faultlines (the meat and potatoes of your Steyns, Bolts, et al) under the rug, by assuming that the present state of play is how things will remain, and that shifting demographics and the inevitable tension that will follow economic stagnation won’t make the situation any worse.

As someone who is obviously quite sympathetic to classical liberalism, would you advocate a near complete division of cultural spheres of influence? For example, the whole kerfuffle about the MCB school report could be avoided with an increase to private, religious schooling.

Beybers: many muslims do see islam as ‘ a system of government’ as well as a religion and do think that sins should be punished as crimes. Even of those that don’t, I think it’s because it isn’t practical at the moment to punish them as crimes, not because they don’t think they should be punished as crimes, and that when and if a muslim society were established they would kill ’sinners’ as happily as their more out-spoken brethren. The Millean liberal definition of crime and the muslim definition are completely opposed. I suspect that- apart from convenience and susceptibility to the temptation, of course- the reason muslims acquiesce in ‘riba’ and disapprove of homosexual behaviour is because not accepting the consequences of usury is very difficult in a nonmuslim society- it’s the ‘default mode’ and you’ve got to work and think hard and risk unpleasant consequences to avoid it. However, as Butler said, it’s very easy to ‘
compound the sins that they’re inclined to
By damning those that they’ve no mind to.’

Amir and EM: the two varieties of liberalism you refer to do present problems. To take the example of forbidding FGM in chilhood; what about male genital mutilation- circumcision? It isn’t as harmful as FGM, but it is just as unnecessary and just as imposed. The question of where and if society has the right to interfere with other people is debatable, but the difference between islam (and many other religions) and an open society’s attitude is that the first assume they automatically have that right in a proper society, while the liberals assume they do not unless they can show good reason why they should.

(2) The fundamental difference though is that a Millian liberal believes in the evolution of ideas without necessarily holding any views as to what the summation of this evolution looks like other than that it is somehow ‘better’. A neo-Hegelian, on the other hand, such as Fukuyama-type or a neo-conservative, believes in this evolution only up to a point and they believe that this point has arrived and that it takes a particular form. Whereas the former cannot, with good conscience, coerce others to adopt his point of view because he recognises that even this view may be incomplete or to be proven false with the passage of time, the latter can, with good conscience, feel far more comfortably trying to coerce others to adopt this view.

With regards to (3), the possiiblity of ritual torture or FGM being ‘tolerated’ in the name of some sort of high-minded liberalism, then I think this is tempered by what Mills himself mentioned in On Liberty:

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

I have seen Millian arguments against abortion, for example, on the grounds that it is an aggression of the mother against an unborn child, so I believe that cruelty to children could still be addressed by the state within a liberal or libertarian framework.

As an aside, a more interesting (and problematic) question arises in the situation where the adult who is being harmed actually agrees with that harm. For example, a grown woman who wants to endure the practice of FGM because she believes it is necessary for her to maintain her status within her particular cultural group or is necessary for her to have hope of marrying within that group. The case could be made (though naturally I find it repulsive) that this is allowed. As Mill said:

In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

However, at the same time, Mill’s utilitarianism would deem that actions are right if they promote happiness with happiness being described, in part, as the absence of pain. In the case of the woman described above, she has traded some pain for what she may, for whatever reason, see as a lasting benefit of sorts.

I disagree that Gray has exploded the “myth of liberalism” in this piece. Rather, he has just clarified that there is an alternative to what he terms ‘teleological liberalism’ (the view that the natural progression of society is towards some sort of ideal or, to borrow from Fukuyama, The End of History) and that is a liberalism which emphasises peaceful coexistence over agreement (whether forced or evolved). This view of archepelagos of culture engaged with one another in an atmosphere of tolerance is entirely consistent with liberal ideas on the nature of society.

A few comments:

1. Yes, the distinction between classical liberalism and ‘teleological liberalism’ (which seems to be me to be a very recent and not well thought-out set of ideas) is worth making clear, and is indeed evident in Gray’s piece. Gray’s piece is most definitely, on my reading, a plea for a kind of Millian-inspired liberalism (see On Liberty, for example).

2. That said, even classical liberalism has, I think, a trace of the teleological about it (which is seemingly over-inflated into some kind of Anglocised Hegelian Force of History by Fukuyama-types). One sees it in Mill’s justification for (what amounts to) tolerance of the religious, the irreligious, the true and the false: it is the allowance of their co-existence, side-by-side, as well as their mingling, that moves societies – at a minimum, hopefully, and at a maximum, certainly, in Mill’s mind – closer to the discovery of truth and protection from error, and thereby inexorably toward a happier social state.

3. One could still argue that even allowing for “archepelagos of culture engaged with one another in an atmosphere of tolerance,” this is not necessarily the best of all feasible worlds. For example, should one archepelago be tolerant of another’s self-contained practices of, say, female genital mutilation, ritualistic torture of children, the teaching of racial superiority and hate-speech? One may personally believe that tolerance should extend this far as long as, on a cultural-liberalist basis, it is not imposed, and does not harm, other archepelagos. However, I think it would not be too difficult to acknowledge that it is not a matter that is settled simply and easily on a priori grounds arising merely out of a high-minded political philosophy. This is what concerns me about Gray’s apparent dismissal of any appeal to a rights-based discourse. Throwing out the discussion of certain basic rights for individuals that ‘trump’ certain cultural sensibilities of a self-contained archepelago could perhaps entail (at least theoretically) the ‘toleration’ of all sorts of horrors.

I am not talking about the feelings some groups have towards each other in society, no doubt the BNP cant even manage tolerance when it comes to Muslims.

I’m talking about setting the standard amongst policy-makers, community leaders, politicians, writers etc to associate our ideal society with the correct terminology.

To me, it is nothing short of defeatism to aim for tolerance, that would be like going for Bronze in the Olympics.

Thus homosexuality or adultery is seen purely as a crime rather than as also a sin. Homosexuality is not a crime in Australia, and even if it were you are not a judge, there has been no trial or due process, indeed unless you have actually seen them in the act, your belief that a person is a homosexual is purely conjecture. Thus when you see someone who appears to you to be a homosexual and think that therefore they should be killed that betrays an incorrect understanding of ones own role in a non Muslim society. If offending ones private beliefs was enough to warrant execution, there would be few people left alive.

Homosexuality is a grave sin in Islam, as is adultery, but so is charging or paying usury (Indeed it is a graver sin). So if you think that someone who you believe to be a homosexual is worthy of execution, what do you say of the Muslim who knowingly signs a riba contract?

The classical piety of the Salaf was to concentrate on ones own actions and to leave governing of others to those in charge.