++ relapsed catholic ++ religion politics culture blog

UPDATE 2: Mark Steyn writes...

"Paul Belien's response to the declaration by Rushdie, Levy et al is close to my own thinking. So too are Kathy Shaidle's observations on 'secularism' and 'apostasy'. This manifesto is an insufficient banner with which to rally the west.

***
The manifesto reads, in part:

"We reject 'cultural relativism', which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of 'Islamophobia', an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers."

Manifestos are such a bad idea. They normally signal a movement in decline before it's begun, or one too esoteric to gain any popular traction.

I'm also a bit suspicious of repeated appeals to "secularism", of the presence of so many "apostates" and, in one instance, someone from Iran's "Workers-Communist Party". Maybe "suspicious" is the wrong word but I'm still half asleep.

I'm thinking of Mark Shea's repeated observation that Christopher Hitchens is against Islamism, in part, because he just hates all religions and this sect is a particular irritant right now.

As the Brussels Journal above points out (also echoing Shea): it is secularism itself which is part of the problem, not the solution, since secularism is precisely what created the Euro spiritual/moral vacuum into which Islamism has rushed headlong.

And for years, the only voices raising the alarm about this "clash of cultures" were the sort of Enoch Powell variety, "backward right wing religious bigots" that the manifesto's socialist signatories are so fond of loudly denouncing...

Sigh.

Anyway, this is still a stirring call to "arms", and we need all the help we can get.

Here's the Sandmonkey's take.

Deborah Gyapong shares some of my concerns:

I don't think that the kinds of freeoms and institutions and democratic values that the West has just popped up in a vacuum. They are rooted and grounded in our Judeo-Christian heritage, which took the best the Greeks and others had to offer. Successful democracies are also dependent on the development of virtue and character among the people and intervening social institutions like the family and churches. Many secularists think the state is the solution for everything, to hell with the family or any intervening institutions and they are all for social engineering -- and enforced political correctness--in order to achieve their vaunted equality goals.

She adds, "Here is a manifesto I can get behind:

The West is in crisis. Attacked externally by fundamentalism and Islamic terrorism, it is not able to rise to the challenge. Undermined internally by a moral and spiritual crisis, it can't seem to find the courage to react. Our affluence makes us feel guilty and we are ashamed of our traditions. Terrorism is seen as a reaction to our errors, whereas it is nothing less than an act of aggression against our civilization and against all human kind.

(...)

We are committed, in the name of a shared historical and cultural tradition, to reaffirming the value of Western Civilization as a source of universal and inalienable principles, and to opposing any attempt to place Europe as alternative or antagonistic to the United States.

(...)

The West is life. The West is civilization. The West is freedom

Do read the whole thing.