[Dean's World] Dave Price: A Brief Response to Ali Eteraz

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Posted by Dave Price:
A Brief Response to Ali Eteraz
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1192644175.shtml


   I've enjoyed the [1]well-thought-out Islamic Reform series, and kudos
   on the accompanying bio photography. Ali cuts quite a dramatic,
   erudite and photogenic figure, everything one could hope for in the
   spokesman for a liberal Islam -- a Che for our time, sans the bloody
   hands and bloodier ideology.
   But I have to chuckle a bit at his surprise at the opposition that
   forming a secular "Islamic left" has engendered.

     It is as if people cannot conceive of Islams that are other than
     ideological.

   Indeed.
   Here in the West, since the 19th century the left has gradually become
   less concerned with the rationalist, post-Christian-statist
   liberalism, embodied by people like Thomas Paine, that idealized
   individual liberty and fueled suffrage and the end of slavery, and is
   instead increasingly defined by the struggle for social equality,
   through socialist government action both ethnic (affirmative action)
   and economic (welfare). Central to this effort has been the
   establishment of ethnic identity advocacy organizations for
   "disadvantaged" groups, and the enshrining of each ethnicity's
   allegedly intrinsic values as equal or superior to our Western values.
   Consequently, any effort to "secularize" Islam, even originating
   within Islam, smacks of neocolonialism, and is seen by many on the
   left as imposing those dusty old Western classical liberal values
   (which in their eyes, are at best no better than any native values) on
   the sacred Other, which must be preserved at all costs (I like to call
   this last bit of xenophilic narcissism the "academic touristâs
   mentality" -- we need to keep all these lovely cultures around so we
   can study their outlandish ceremonies, rituals, customs, and clothing,
   and fete them as superior at dinner parties and academic conferences,
   thus demonstrating our personal moral superiority through our
   open-minded cultural humility; never mind the practical matter of
   whether said peoples, who usually live in abject poverty with few
   rights, might be far better off under, and indeed sometimes clamoring
   for, liberal democracy).
   Secularism for me, but not for thee; the former is obviously desirable
   as an enhancement of my freedom, the latter is not who you are.
   Finally, Ali is very correct about the âIran problemâ â democracy is,
   as Hayek noted, not an ultimate good in and of itself but rather
   merely one mechanism by which the ultimate desired end â liberty â can
   be preserved. A democracy in which a cabal of any stripe â be they
   Fascist, Communist, Islamist, or Christianist â exercises ultimate
   control is very unlikely to be liberal, as the last 500 years amply
   demonstrates. And as one reflects on Iranâs problems and contemplates
   a âMuslim leftâ to oppose them, one must keep in mind it was the
   American left through Carter that allowed the mullahcrats in Iran to
   seize the country in the first place, and so badly misjudged the
   revolutionaries' intentions that they [2]predicted that in our time
   the Ayatollah would be remembered as a saint.
   I look forward to the final chapter in the series.

References

   1. http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ali_eteraz/index.html
   2. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181813077590&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull