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Ijtihad, says Irshad Manji.
For those who think we've lost our minds here, no, we have no interest in any such thing as living under a reformed Islam. Nor is there any sympathy here for ijtihad as a reforming vehicle. What is ijtihad? It is interpretation, the early Persian approach some intellectuals took to Islam during the early Middle Ages. It was a new idea to some Muslims 1,000 years after Aristotle died and left his ideas for the Mutazilites to find. It's now over a thousand years since any Muslim other than Irshad Manji has taken it seriously. Really, it doesn't even sound good in theory unless we all wish to have a world in which we revert to pre-Socratic science. Philosophically it's no better. And in practical terms, well, let's look at it and then forget it.
Below we'll post two short accounts and links for further enquiry for those who wish to be disappointed.
When reading the accounts below, keep in mind that Islam is not a race; that not being a race doesn't men it isn't an Arab tribal code; and that not being a race, Islam is an ethnic supremacy in practice even though it's ostensibly non-racial. We often conflate Islam and Arabism, thinking wrongly that Islam is an Arab religion. In truth, it is. But it is not.
Only 20 per cent of Muslims in the world are Arabs. Of the Arabs in the United States, according to the CIA census, 80 per cent are Christians. The largest population of Muslims on Earth is Indonesians, followed by Pakistanis. Arabs make up, in their 22 shit-hole nations, only 20 percent of the Muslim population. Those numbers mean little to most people who insist that Islam is a race. Anyone can be, in practice, a Muslim. But Islam is not the non-racial multi-culti paradisaical solution to "racism." Muslims adopt Arab names and Arab customs over their traditional names and customs and attempt in all ways to be ersatz Arabs when they become Muslims by conversion. To be a Muslim is to try to be an Arab. To be an Arab doesn't mean to be a Muslim. And to look at the Arab world is not to see a place inherently Muslim but to see one conquered by Arabs, to see people whose ancestors for a thousand years in some cases were Christians. And to look at the Arab world and to see Arabs is a mistake of vocabulary as well, because only a small part of the "Arab" world is Arab at all, the majority being anything but Arabs, that Arabness being a self-appointed religious identity rather than an ethnicity. Yes, "Arabs" speak Arabic. That's where Arabism begins and ends for most so-called Arabs. To be Arab is to live in "Arab" lands and to speak Arabic and to have forgotten or to have never known of ones own history.
This brings us to the Islamic reformers of the 8th century. They were not, for the most part, Arabs or "Arabs" at all but were Persians. They were not only Persians, they were Muslim Shiites. What Shia? What Party of Ali? And where do we find Islamic reform in all of this? We find a group of new converts to Islam who are not, were not, won't ever be Arabs. They, the ruling class of early Islam, were outsiders from the start, rulers due to intelligence and skill, due to a thousand years of high civilization prior to the Islamic conquest. The Persians excelled. Within 200 years, the Arabs had receded from history, never to be heard from again as a force till the West required their oil supplies. But those who claimed Arabness, regardless of themselves, followed not the Persians, not Shia, not the party of Ali, but the Sunna, the traditional, the legitimately Arab Islam. Today only 15-20 per cent of all Muslims are Shi'ites. They are the ones who promoted ijtihad, the hope that some in the West base their optimistic plans on for reform in the Islamic world. Good luck.
But let's look at this plan to reform Islam, this plan we hope to validate from searching for precedent. Yes, over 1,000 years ago there was a very unpopular clique of Muslims from Iran who decided to take up Aristotelian philosophy and who tried to apply it to Islam. Yes, it came to a brutal end. No it has not been heard of since. Yes, it is still an Iranian and heretical form of sectarian Islam from the discredited past. Al bab al-ijtihad, the gates of interpretation, the reform of Islam through reason and rationality, is still disallowed-- for the very reasons it was banned in the first place: to use reason and logic is to question the already set and unalterable word of Allah as it was received by Moahmmed and compiled in the unalterable Qur'an. To question the unquestionable is to defy Islam. It's a non-starter for Muslims. But here is is anyway.
The Mu'tazilites are an offshoot of the Shiite branch of Islam. The Mu'tazilites believe that instead of the Prophet the true arbritrar is reason. The Mu'tazilites believe that no sin can harm a true believer (manzileh bain al-manzilatain). They believe that the wise can only do what is salutory and good, and that God's wisdom always keeps in view what is salutory for his servants. They believe that Gnosis is intellectual and that only a reasonable person can possibly have it.
The Mu'tazilites believe that all objects of knowledge fall under the supervision of reason and receive their obligatory power from rational insight. Consequently, obligatory gratitude for divine bounty precedes the orders given by divine Law; and beauty and ugliness are qualities belonging intrinsically to what is beautiful and ugly.
http://pages.infinit.net
The Mu'tazilite school of theology emerged out of the question raised by the Kharijites whether works are integral to faith or independent of faith. On the question of the relationship between faith and works, the Mu'tazilites adopted the position that someone who commits a grave sin without repenting occupies a middle state between being a Muslim and not being a Muslim.
A second doctrine concerned the nature of God. God is pure Essence and, therefore, without eternal attributes such as hands. Passages in the Qur'an that ascribe human or physical properties to God are to be regarded as metaphorical rather than literal.
The Mu'tazilites also argued that the Qur'an was created and not eternal. The basis of this doctrine was the claim that the eternal coexistence of the Qur'an beside Allah gave the impression of another god beside Allah.
Human acts are free and, therefore, people are entirely responsible for their decisions and actions. Divine predestination is incompatible with God's justice and human responsibility. God, however, must of necessity act justly; it follows from this that the promises of reward that God has made in the Qur'an to righteous people and the punishments he had issued to evildoers must be carried out by him on the day of judgement.
Mu'tazilites are generally seen as responsible for the incorporation of Greek philosophical thought into Islamic theology. This is particularly apparent in their belief that knowledge of God can be acquired through reason as well as revelation.
History The term Mu'tazilah derives from the Arabic al-mu'tazilah, which means the one who separated. It was applied to the school established in Iraq by Wasil b. 'Ata (699-749), a student of the distinguished scholar Hasn al-Basri (642-728).
At the time of the rise of the 'Abbasids in 750 the Mu'tazilites began to become prominent in the Islamic world. In the 9th century the 'Abbasid caliph, al-Ma'mun, raised Mu'tazilah doctrine to the status of the state creed. Openly supported by the caliphate, the Mu'tazilites became increasingly intolerant and began to persecute their opponents. On one occasion the eminent Sunni scholar and founder of one of the four orthodox jurisprudential schools, Ahmad b. Hanbal (d.855), was subjected to flogging and imprisonment for his refusal to subscribe to the Mu'tazilite doctrine that the Qur'an was created in time.
Always unpopular with the ordinary people, the Mu'tazilites' power gradually began to wane. They lost the support of the caliphs and by the 10th century the Traditionist (Sunni majority) opposition to Mu'tazilah found a spokesman in Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari (d.935), who himself had previously been a Mu'tazilite. Al-Ash'ari's new school of theology and the school of Abu Mansur al-Maturidi (d.945) provided the new basis of orthodox Islamic theology, leading to the complete disappearance of the Mu'tazile movement.
http://mb-soft.com/believe/txw
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http://www.muslimphilosophy
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So, over 1000 years ago the "reformists" lost their power, and they haven't had a hope since. What's going to bring them back and give them credibility? Nothing on Earth. They were hated in their time, and they remain unloved by all but a few Western intellectuals today. I conclude that we must look in other directions for any hope of a practical solution to the billion or so savages who today pose the most dire threat to our world and to themselves as well. I am open, of course, to correction. I welcome further input.
11 comments:
Dag -
It seems that Irshad Manji is alone in her "crusade" to restore ijtihad. Even if there are Muslim reformers in Islamic countries today, they are either imprisoned, tortured or killed.
Robert Spencer wrote an excellent analysis of the so-called reform movement in Islam, and explained why such reform would not work:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/005051.php
Have a good day.
Unlike the Bible the Koran is the direct word of God. It hasn't passed through human interpretation. So how come it contains stuff about the sun setting in pond of murky water (see http://islamcomicbook.com/13.htm ), among other absurdities?
The Koran is all or nothing. Either it's God's Final Word or the sickest hoax in human history. Knock just one brick out of the Koran and the whole festering slum of Islam will come falling down. Or it would if you were dealing with rational beings.
Christians website are attracting many from the Muslim world
February 16, 2006
International (MNN/ANS) -- While hard-line Muslim nations make accessing Chrsitians websites difficult, it's not impossible and these websites are making an incredible impact for the kingdom.
Strategic Resource Group (SRG) helps organizations reach out to the lost inside the 10/40 Window. SRG reports Christian websites are receiving nearly 9 million hits per month from the Middle East. One Christian organization hosting chat rooms for Arabic-speaking web users estimates that more than 42,000 people visit those sites daily.
About 2,000 Arabic language Bibles are downloaded from the Internet each month. One organization estimates that 20 people per month are giving their hearts to Christ as a result of learning about the Christian faith on these websites.
Although some Islamic governments try to block these websites, the Internet generally knows no borders. More than half of the population in the Middle East is 25 years old or younger, and many of these young people own computers or have access to them. This technology has connected people together through e-mail groups, networks, blogs and chat rooms.
Christian organizations are seizing the Internet opportunity to create communities of people who can openly talk about faith issues in a safe environment. In the greater Middle East, the Internet represents a crucial growth sector for communicating the Christian message in Arabic, Farsi and regional languages.
In response to Mara,
though not a Christian myself (except culturally) I applaud any attempt to convert them to anything else ( with the possible exception of Satanism - assuming this could be classed as conversion). But in all honesty 20 converts a month is not going to save Western Civilisation when set against an Islamic birthrate in excess of a million a month.
According to the following article at least 15% of Muslims living in the West are secret apostates and are ripe for conversion
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1470584,00.html
May be more needs to be done to subvert Islam in immigrant groups.
But of course converts are also going in the opposite direction. Muslim missionaries are especially active in Western jails, though I don't know whether their intention is character-reform or talent-spotting.
Pax vobiscum
Historically, the only ideology that has been successful against Islam has been Stalinism. Though I suspect that may have been more to do with one-way tickets on the Transiberian Railway than winning hearts and minds.
Somewhere in my travels I read that Christians convert to Islam but Muslims seldom convert to Christianity.
There are obvious reasons for that, such as death for any murtad the Muslims discover and catch. But I think there's more to it than that: I think that Islam is so simple and so cruyde that even the most base and repulsive mind can grasp it immediately, whereas the finer religions require finer minds. To read the Bible, for example, requires some critical ability that no Muslim can accept in the first place. There is no Ecclesiastes in Islam.
and so Stalin, not a sophisticated thinker himself, went to the root of the problem of Islam, by-passing the fine points of citique, and simply deported those he didn't murder. But that's more or less all he did. He didn't try to convert Muslims to Communism. What chance is there of converting primitive minds to an arcane Western European historiographical pseudo-philosophy? He killed 'em.
We face a similar problem with Muslims today. We cannot expect to convert mindless masses to anything sophisticated in any kind of hurry, especially when they are under direct threat of cultural extinction, which they realise at an intuitive level. Islam is either triumphant in the world or it is finished. If it is finished, then they wish to destroy all with it. What is our response? We can take the Stalinist postion that they are too primitive to bother with, and we can wipe them out; or we can try to reason with them and eventually, giving in to reason ourselves, simply pay them to keep quite and leave us alone; or we can steel our own resolve and take active maesures to conquer in turn, dominate them, incorporate them into Modernity, those who survive their own hysteria.
We won't gain anything we'll be proud of if all we do is resort to Stalinist measures. But if we do nothing, then we ourselves are doomed. I argue that we must first determine what we want for ourselves, and then we have to face the Muslim world and either accept them as dominant or force them into Modernity, those who survive. I cannot find any other resolution.
Rther than extermination or deportation, I urge colonization. I urge that we descend upon the Muslim world and marry the women and raise those children as our own till they are us and we are them. Everybody wins except the losers who couldn't figure it out in time to get in on the change for the better.
I don't think we've got time for anything other than a Stalinist solution. Sometime within the next twenty years there is going to be a major intifada in Europe - probably starting in France and involving Holland, Belgium and maybe Sweden, with lesser outbreaks in other European countries such as Britain and Germany.
The nations worst affected will adopt Stalin-type policies to clamp down on their Muslim populations. This will in turn provoke an Islamic oil embargo against Europe and maybe against all of Dhar-al-Harb.
Whatever form the embargo takes, it will be so disruptive to the world economy that someone will have to go in and seize the oilfields. This is not a particularly difficult military undertaking for anyone who is ruthless enough and doesn't mind inflicting a bit of collateral damage. Most of the oilfields are concentrated in small areas and near to the sea. They can be cleansed of hostile civilians who can be driven inland and fenced off.
Europe itself will not have the capability nor the willpower to do the job. NATO might, if it's still in existence, but the US is unlikely to do the job alone.
This leaves the other major oil users which are China and India (Russia being reasonably self-sufficient).
Why is France suddently getting so friendly with India and co-operating on defence? Why is France updating its nuclear deterrent?
What will Iran and Pakistan do if India is part of an alliance to invade Dhar-al-Islam? What concessions will Russia be able to extort from Europe to make good the effects of the embargo?
Why is China expanding its navy beyond any reasonable requirements for self-defence?
Even in the absence of another flare-up betwen Israel and the Arabs, the Jihad will turn into WWIII within 20 years.
Nice analysis. Unfortunately for me, I know first hand what the war will be like, and I have trouble supporting it. If and when such a civil war comes to pass, and I think it'll break out withing weeks in France rather than years, it will have been avoidable. I see the struggle we face as not so much betweeen Muslims and Modernists as between Modernists and reactionary fascists in our own ranks, those Left dhimmi fascists among our own who wish to reinstall the feudal ages of rule by prilivege. Muslims and other primitives are, as I read it, mere proxies.
I don't think there's time for a Stalinist removal of Muslims from Europe. I see the coming few months as the new round of car-burning and rampage by emboldened "yoots" as the beginning of the end of civility in France, likely across Europe. By April I expect to see new riots, and with each one unrestrained I expect to see more brazen contempt and iviolence agaisnt the French people till they come into the hot months of July and August when no one lives indoors, when all are out on the streets, and then there should be total war. But i see it as like Jugoslavia, a war of skirmishing and massacres rather than a full frontal attack on organised enemies.
The embargoes in support of Islam in Europe seems dead-on, and one might well expect a counter-embargo from rational political leaders in the West, if there were such a thing. We can look at the current behavoiur of the French supermarket chain dumping on the Danes in the hope of furthering their own markets in the Middle East. Mightn't we see the same kind of predatory and self-defeating robber baron capitalism in an embargo by the Islamic world?
There might be a Socialist emergence in France if the fools think that the failure of socialism is correctable by further socialism. They seem to think that the failure of capitalism needs the cure of socialism and they see the failure of socialism as a need for more of it rather than less. I have little hope for a sign of a rational socialist in this life-time. However, I think there will again be two versions of France as there was in the late 1930s when Leon Blum's coalition government fell, and shortly therefafter, his socialist and communist supporters defected shamelessly to the Nazis. French Nazi dhimmi socialist elitists, or, as I write of the lot across the board, Left dhimmi fascists. And not restricted to France.
If e can look to historical precedents we see Norway going under fairly quickly with Quisling, the Dutch not putting up much of a stuggle, and really, most of Europe, in spite of our affection for our Western heritage, going bad internally in a very short time.
Nationals from all nations wil claim theres were better and put up the best fight they could, but the truth tells a different story. Today we have the same kind of split between siders with Left dhimmi fascists and Modernists. Maybe some Swedes will fight in the streets, and maybe they'll be divided between the so called Left and Right. Just like it was. This time the Swedes and the Swiss woin't be able to sit it out and make deals on the side. This time they're stuck with an internal enemy they must deal with. The enemy is Islam but it is directed by internal fascists. So say I.
I do beg to differ about the chronology of the embargo: I feel that more likely is the embargo first in reaction to the chaos to come from rioting Muslims in Europe. Then a dictatorship of strong men in Europe. Then an invasion of the oil fields.
I've written here a number of times that our first order of business is to invade Sweden. Most readers assumed I'm joking. Far from it. Sweden is for the taking, and they seem incapable of keeping it from even the most primitve of criminals. We are of a higher order.
Of the Swedish military forces one must admitt to their professionalism. but that's not enough. The nation must be behind them, and I do not see that will to win in the Swedes. If there is an embargo against Europe that requires force, that requires NATO involvement, I think the material is there but not the nations. I argue that if we are to maintain our democractic heritage in the West, and here I might be seen as a dreamer, that we might effectively follow the American example of William Walker, a google search of whom will explain in detail the nature of my argument.
And that, so far as it goes, covers a few paragraphs of comment from Aisha's Lost Doll.
I'll try to add further comments later.
hi, dag,
Here are two things. One is an article by John Piper who points out an essential difference between Christ and Muhammad.
The second is a question. You want to replace the islamo/left dhimmi thinking with modernism. The essence of what that islamo/left dhimmi thinking is: we have decided truth - fall in line or else. The "or else" along the continuum between the leftists and the islamos runs the gamut between reacting out of fear to having your throat sliced open and worse. Now, how is your foisting your definition of modernist thinking on the world different than that, in its essence? You are deciding what is right and now you want everyone else to fall in line. Or else ...?
Now, I will admit I would consider you to be a somewhat charitable dictator - at least at first - but where is the bottom line of what your authority is? Is it your own decision making and thinking? If so, how are you different than the leftist dhimmis/islamofascists? Dag, I wonder this every time you talk like this.
Here is the John Piper article called, "It’s the essence of Christ’s work, not Muhammad’s"
We saw last week in the Islamic demonstrations over Danish cartoons of Muhammad another vivid depiction of the difference between Muhammad and Christ, and what it means to follow each. Not all Muslims approve the violence. But a deep lesson remains: The work of Muhammad is based on being honored and the work of Christ is based on being insulted. This produces two very different reactions to mockery.
If Christ had not been insulted, there would be no salvation. This was His saving work: to be insulted and die to rescue sinners from the wrath of God. Already in the Psalms the path of mockery was promised: "All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads" (Psalm 22:7). "He was despised and rejected by men . . . as one from whom men hide their faces . . . and we esteemed him not" (Isaiah 53:3).
When it actually happened it was worse than expected. "They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. . . . And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, 'Hail, King of the Jews!' And they spit on him" (Matthew 27:28-29). His response to all this was patient endurance. This was the work he came to do. "Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth" (Isaiah 53:7).
This was not true of Muhammad. And Muslims do not believe it is true of Jesus. Most Muslims have been taught that Jesus was not crucified. One Sunni Muslim writes, "Muslims believe that Allah saved the Messiah from the ignominy of crucifixion." Another adds, "We honor [Jesus] more than you [Christians] do. . . . We refuse to believe that God would permit him to suffer death on the cross." An essential Muslim impulse is to avoid the "ignominy" of the cross.
That's the most basic difference between Christ and Muhammad and between a Muslim and a follower of Christ. For Christ, enduring the mockery of the cross was the essence of his mission. For a true follower of Christ, enduring suffering patiently for the glory of Christ is the essence of obedience. "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account" (Matthew 5:11). During his life on earth Jesus was called a bastard (John 8:41), a drunkard (Matthew 11:19), a blasphemer (Matthew 26:65), a devil (Matthew 10:25); and he promised his followers the same: "If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household" (Matthew 10:25).
The caricature and mockery of Christ has continued to this day. Martin Scorsese portrayed Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ as wracked with doubt and beset with sexual lust. Andres Serrano used National Endowment for the Arts funding to portray Jesus on a cross sunk in a bottle of urine. The Da Vinci Code portrays Jesus as a mere mortal who married and fathered children.
How should his followers respond? On the one hand, we are grieved and angered. On the other hand, we identify with Christ, embrace his suffering, rejoice in our afflictions, and say with the apostle Paul that vengeance belongs to the Lord, let us love our enemies and win them with the gospel. If Christ did his work by being insulted, we must do ours likewise.
When Muhammad was portrayed in 12 cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the uproar among Muslims was intense and sometimes violent: They burned flags, torched embassies, and stoned at least one Christian church. The cartoonists went into hiding in fear for their lives, like Salman Rushdie before them. What does this mean?
It means that a religion with no insulted Savior will not endure insults to win the scoffers. It means that Islam is destined to bear the impossible load of upholding the honor of one who did not die and rise again to make that possible. It means that Jesus Christ is still the only hope of peace with God and peace with man. And it means that his followers must be willing to "share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death" (Philippians 3:10).
Yes, Christ said "Turn th e other cheek"
Mahummed also said that except he was referring to the cheeks of his behind.
Religious Differences 101
Earlier I wrote:
"We need to supplant Islam and instead plant Modernity in its place. That means school teachers. It means committed parents. It means people with guns supervising the transformation of people from savages to Humans."
Mara articulates a valid objection many must have when reading that kind of rhetoric. She asks in what way am I different from those others who would at the point of the sword demand conformity to their pet projects.
I argue first that Modernity is of objective benefit on Utilitarian grounds: it provides the greatest good for the greatest number, and it causes less harm in doing so than not.
By Modernity I refer to the progessive and postive aspects of the three revolutions that ended Europe's feudal ages: the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution; each of those revolutions is problematic in some aspect or other, but also each is largely and predominantly contributory and beneficial to life of all men and women objectively; and that each revolution is of potential benefit to all, most of whom in the greater world are deprived of the objective benefits; I argue that we cannot rightly deprive people of benefits they could have of their own volition if not for impediments form their political systems which we allow if only by non-intervention.
I write of objective benefits: by that I mean those advantages only people in the Modernist West can take for granted, such as the right to own ones own life as ones private property; the right to voice private opinions in public without fear of harm; and the right to the pursuit of ones own life's goals, regardless of how good or repulsive such goals might be to others. In short, my first concern is for the rights of the individual to live, and then to live lawfully free of the state in its myriad forms.
Having made that point, I wish to emphasis that each individual has a duty to conduct his affairs in a lawful manner. But the law must be formed by the man and men (meaning women as well), based on a recognition of the primacy of the individual who does no harm. The definiton of harm is problematic. I'll leave it for a doctoral thesis.
If I've made my point at least superficially well here I'll move on to Mara's major objection to my thesis: that I encourage dictatorial conformity at the point of the sword.
Law derives its authority from, in the modern West, the willing consensus of the governed. We live in democratic nations, to varying degrees. We decide to elect representatives to our assemblies to enact laws they have concluded after debate. The legitimacy of the laws derives from the rational debate and the general agreement to abide by them. We base our laws on our dual heritage of Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian laws both civil and moral. We also base our laws on past custom and prudence. We base our laws on enlightened self-interest and the protection of those who do not agree with the majority. For example, we do not allow slavery due to the intuitive feeling that such is evil, on the past examples of Greek and Roman misconduct, on the religous prohibitions from our Judeo-Christian history, and on the idea of the universal right of all to live as private people who own themsleves as their own private property. Our laws are based on the legitimacy of syllogisms, of rationality, on equity, and on prudence. All of which is foundational and to the good, none of which means a thing if there is no authority behind them. And I come now to Mara's objection: that I would impose conformity at the point of the sword.
Indeed I would: As a law is only realistic if it has the backing of legitimate force. If alws are to be enforced, laws must have legitimate policemen with the sole monopoly of the use of force to enforce them. Laws without the guns to back them up are fine in theory but they mean nothing on the streets. Having made that point, one must remember that the laws are not made at the pleasure of the minority for its own sake but are the general consensus of rational men. And further, those laws must be in conformity with objective justice as we have practiced in in the past. Law cannot be arbitrary, it cannot be privileged, it cannot be exceptional, there being one law code for you and another for me: law must be universal, and it must have the power of death behind it. but having the power of death behind it, the law cannot as a first resort deal out death for all and every transgression. Ratonal law has to be based on reason and custom, and then backed by force as a last rather than as a first resort. And then there must be degrees of force, all agreed upon prior to its use.
When I write that we must invade other people's nations and force them at the point of the sword ot conformto our laws, the laws of Modernity, I mean it. I do not mean that we must kill people at random first. I mean that we must bring peace and privacy to those who deny it to the (willing) majority. I argue that though many nations do not wish for peace and privacy, preferring to remain in their traditional modes of social relations, tribalism for example, that they have no right to deprive their children of the benefits of Modernity. To give a quick example, I do not have sympathy for those who allow for female genital mutilation based on the privilege of custom. To a lesser extent I have no sympathy for those who would deprive children of blood transfusions for religious reasons. The state, to the most limited degree must act in loco parentis in extreme circumstances when the lives of children atre at stake regardless of the sensitivies of parents.
To hearken to Kant, if we can do right, then it is morally imperative that we do so. I argue that if we can bring the benefits of Modernity, as dubious as they might seem to many, perhaps even most, then we must, as moral agents, do so.
I argue that not to invade nations that harm their children objectively, by mutilating them for example, or by enslaving them, or by murdering them, not to halt such harm is to be immoral. To invade a nation of hostile and beligerent people to prevent harm and to enforce at the point of the sword the objective good of privacy of ownership of ones body, mind, and life is to do good regardless of the resistence to the law, even if it is the law of Dag.
I argue that the school teachers of modernity must be armed in defence of his/her charges to protect them from harm by their parents. To enforce the laws of Humanness, the universal laws of better as opposed to worse in objective terms, means that we do so rationally and by code.
I argue that because parents will and do murder their children, then it is imperative that we intervene to halt that. I argue further that not to do so is immoral. I argue that to enforce our laws we must do so with the authority of legitimate force.
Might does not make right. Might enforces the rule of right if right is right in the first place. It's my postion that privacy of the individual is paramount, that the person is his own possession and not the possession of another even if he so wishes to sell his personhood in any way as an individual. There cannot be a dispossession of one without there being the possiblity of the dispossession of all; and therefore, there cannot be the dispossession of any. To ensure the right of every man to the ownership of his own life all msut have that right backed by the legitimate use of force.
My point, after all this time, is that children are not their own private property in a meaningful sense until they reach the age of majority. But neither are they the property of another: children are the wards of stewards, their parents, who have a lawful right to raise their children within the bounds of civility. Children also ave a right to protection from their parents if there is a need to enforce that protection. I argue that there is indeed such a need to save children for their parents in many cases, and across the board in nations where the private ownership of ones self is not allowed.
To conclude, I argue that school teachers with guns must stand in readiness to shoot parents who will harm those children who refuse to accept the traditional slavery their parents might demand of them. School teachers with guns, law enforcers of privacy, the death squads of democracy.
My position is not to impose conformity on the unwilling. My position is that we must allow for the choice of free adults to decide if they wish for freedom as individuals or not. I do not argue for conformity to anything other than the right of every person to decide freely based on rationality within his capacity to decide in his own best interests. If people choose to kill themselves with drugs, then it is a private decision. If people decide to mutilate their children, that is a decision I cannot allow. People who claim privilege on traditional grounds to enslave and mutilate their children have no such right to that custody. If they object, then within the bounds of reason I encourage force to prevent further harm.
Evil parents? Shoot them
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