[lit-ideas] Human nature and the Islamic intrusion into the West
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2006 09:51:48 -0700
Is human nature fixed or is it variable and therefore barely deserving of
the term? Fukuyama on page 63 of The End of History and the Last man,
writes, "Thus the nature of human desire, according to Hegel, is not given
for all time, but changes between historical periods and cultures. . . Our
present desires are conditioned by our social milieu, which in turn is the
product of the entirety of our historical past."
To prove that there is a fixed human nature is much harder than it used to
be. Not everyone engages in every one of the seven deadly sins;
nevertheless, these sins do tempt a portion of humanity. There are people
given to gluttony and greed for example, but at the same time the Church
expected that most people would avoid these sins. If we think of humanity
as a gene pool, some will be gluttons, some murderers, etc, but not all.
And for Hegel, and Fukuyama's, purpose it is enough to say that insofar as
politics are concerned, human nature isn't fixed. We can adapt to a variety
of social situations and do.
Now I'm going to abandon Fukuyama's thesis for the time being and consider a
modern phenomenon that is presenting Westerners a problem: the fact that a
lot of Muslims can't take criticism. David Selbourne on pages 130-132 of
The Losing Battle with Islam writes, "Too serious for satire, as well as for
the simplicities of counter-assault, are modern Islam's refusal of
criticism. So, too, its harshness with 'apostates' and 'blasphemers'; so,
also with its use of threat (and worse) against its own intellectuals when
they are of independent cast of mind, and its widening abandonment of the
principles of balance and compassion, proclaimed by other Muslims to be
'central features' of Islam. . . The writers who in the last decades have
earned the disapproval of Islam have included, among man, Salman Rushdie in
February 1989 (with his Japanese translator murdered, and his Norwegian
publisher and Italian translator wounded in attempted assassinations); the
Egyptian novelist Alaa Hamid sentenced to eight years' imprisonment in
December 1991 for a satire on the lives of the prophets; ten Indians
condemned to six years' jail in the United Arab Emirates in October 1992 for
participating in a theatrical production deemed blasphemous; the Cairo
scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid, charged with apostasy in 1993 for his writings
on early Islamic jurisprudence; and the Bangladeshi novelist Taslima Nasrin,
ordered to be arrested in June 1994 for 'offending religious feelings' in a
fictional work which described a Muslim's rape of a Hindu girl."
Such occurrences are too well known to require much more than a few
examples. The Diana West article I posted earlier, "Speak no evil: the New
EU lexicon on terrorism," is indicative of the perplexity felt in both
Europe and the U.S. Both regions are going to extremes to avoid offending
Muslims. Is this good? Is there a principle we can invoke to determine how
far we should go in this regard?
We can borrow from Hegel and say that the desires of Muslims were
conditioned by their social milieu in the course of their historical past.
But then we can say the same thing about the West. Our desires were also
conditioned by our social milieu in the course of our historical past.
Since we humans are adaptable, some of us adapted to the Muslim approach and
some to the Western approach. There is no principle agreeable to all that
demands one approach over the other. Consequently there is no principle
that demands that we in the West give up our approach and accept the Muslim
approach, which in many cases would be necessary if we are to avoid
criticizing or offending Muslims. Muslims as we know have gone on rampages
when cartoons were considered offensive. They have also gone on rampages
for other reasons less well known. Some "one hundred Muslim youths sacked a
local butcher's shop after a dispute over the presence of pork in a pizza,
and set cares alight. In 1992 . . . similar offence was found in the design
of an imported Japanese car-tire, whose tread was said to 'resemble a verse
in the Koran'; gunmen fired three shots into the Tokyo home of the
tire-company chairman. . ." [Selbourne p 127-128] We could go on, but there
is no point. We are all familiar with such examples.
The principle that comes most readily to mind is that Muslims should
function in accordance with European or American wishes when they live in
Europe or America, and Europeans and Americans should function in accordance
with Muslim wishes when they live in the Middle East. The alternative is
for Europe and America to continue to give in until (as Oriana Fallaci
fears) both regions are taken over by Muslims. I don't believe there is
any serious fear of that, but what is a decided possibility is that
legislators and leaders will wait too long to take remedial action and
different sorts of riots will occur. Americans Red Necks and their European
equivalent will attempt violently to remove the Muslims who offend them.
Lawrence
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