WHAT CAN WE DO
WHAT CAN WE DO TO REDUCE THE RISK TO CIVIL SOCIETY BY RADICAL MUSLIMS?
The following is an excerpt of a book written by Sam Harris, a noted author
and philosopher. Some of you probably know that Sam Harris is also an Atheist - but please keep an open mind when reading this.
"In thinking about Islam, and about the risk it now poses to the West, we
should imagine what it would take to live peacefully with the Christians of
the 14th century who were eager to prosecute people for crimes like host
desecration and witchcraft. We are in the presence of the past. It is by
no means a straightforward task to engage such people in constructive
dialogue, to convince them of our common interests, to encourage them on the
path to democracy, and to mutually celebrate the diversity of our cultures.
It is clear that we have arrived at a period in our history where civil
society, on a global scale, is not merely a nice idea; it is essential for
the maintenance of civilization. Given that even failed states now possess
potentially disruptive technology we can no longer afford to live side by
side with malign dictatorships or with the armies of ignorance massing
across the ocean.
What constitutes a civil society? At minimum, it is a place where ideas, of
all kinds, can be criticized without risk of physical violence. If you live
in a land where certain things cannot be said about the king, or about an
imaginary being, or about certain books, because such utterances carry the
penalty of death, torture, or imprisonment, you do not live in a civil
society. It appears that one of the most urgent tasks we now face in the
developed world is to find some way of facilitating the emergence of civil
societies everywhere else. Whether such societies have to be democratic is
not at all clear since it has been persuasively argued that the transition
from tyranny to liberty is unlikely to be accomplished by plebiscite. It
seems all but certain that some form of benign dictatorship will generally
be necessary to bridge the gap. But benignity is the key-and if it cannot
emerge from within a state, it must be imposed from without. The means of
such imposition are necessarily crude; they amount to economic isolation,
military intervention (whether open or covert), or some combination of both.
While this may seem an exceedingly arrogant doctrine to espouse, it appears
we have no alternatives. We cannot wait for weapons of mass destruction to
dribble out of the former Soviet Union and into the hands of fanatics.
Is Islam compatible with a civil society? Is it possible to believe what
you must believe to be a good Muslim, to have military and economic power,
and to not pose an unconscionable threat to the civil societies of others?
The answer to this question is no. If a stable peace is ever to be achieved
between Islam and the West, Islam must undergo a radical transformation and
it must come from Muslims themselves. It does not seem much of an
exaggeration to say that the fate of civilization lies largely in the hands
of "moderate" Muslims. Unless Muslims can reshape their religion into an
ideology that is basically benign, it is difficult to see how Islam and the
West can avoid falling into continual state of war, and on innumerable
fronts. Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons cannot be uninvented and
these weapons will soon be available to anyone who wants them.
Perhaps the West will be able to facilitate a transformation of the Muslim
world by applying outside pressure. It will not be enough, however, for the
United States and a few European countries to take a hard line while the
rest of Europe and Asia sell advanced weaponry and "dual use" nuclear
reactors to all comers. To achieve the necessary economic leverage, so that
we stand a chance of waging this war of ideas by peaceful means, the
development of alternative energy technologies should become the object of a
new Manhattan Project. There are sufficient economic and environmental
justifications for doing this, but there are political ones as well. If oil
were to become worthless, the dysfunction of the most prominent Muslim
societies would suddenly grow as conspicuous as the sun. Muslims might then
come to see the wisdom of moderating their thinking on a wide variety of
subjects. Otherwise, we will be obliged to protect our interests in the
world with force-continually. In this case, it seems all but certain that
our newspapers will begin to read more and more like the book of
Revelation."
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