Commentary
on Charles Taylor’s essay The Meaning of
Secularism
This essay is a set reading in Victoria University's Religion, Law and Politics course that I took to acquaint myself with current teachings in the humanities. The purpose of this is to gain an insight into the cause, course and consequences of the Islamic conquest of the West, but more especially, The West's deliberate strategy to replace its Judeo-Christian Greco-Roman heritage with an Islamic one. The Islamic world view is very easy to grasp; a perspective on the West's defeat, much more difficult. The Religion, Law and Politics lecture series is unlikely to deal with causes, but is illuminating on the course. The first of its recommended readings, this essay of McGill University professor Charles Taylor, shows the strong political drive needed to succeed in defeat. The original essay can be found here - http://iasc-culture.org/THR/archives/Fall2010/Taylor_lo.pdf
In this essay Charles Taylor makes a plea for
a state to diminish its secular credentials and to acknowledge its citizens’
rights to their spiritual beliefs, allowing them to be incorporated into a
state’s use of his own concepts of liberty, equality and fraternity. He sees
this as contributing to a higher level of religious minorities’ involvement in
a state’s affairs and a consequent maintenance of a high level of commitment
and trust.
In doing this, he takes a pejorative view of
‘secular’ in, for example, his use of the word ‘fetishisation’ which I would
suggest, in its most appropriate meaning of “an excessive and irrational
commitment,” is ill-chosen. Even the most
reflexive response of minor political groups to the intrusion of religion into
public life hardly warrants the term.
Secularism’s “fixation on religion” isn’t an issue until religious
promotion raises its head above the parapet.
No doubt Taylor has examples of secularism’s use of ‘timeless
principles’ to resolve societies’ goals but this veers into some form of
doctrinaire secular ideology, hardly applicable to states under consideration
here. I’m not sure that even North Korea
subscribes to this. In saying “We need
to alter the way in which we proceed” he introduces an unjustified imperative. Surely it’s not obligatory on a secular
government to consider minority sects, only to protect them as individual
citizens from abuse. He says, “There is
no reason written into the essence of things why a similar evolution [to
American Catholicism] cannot take place in Muslim communities,” showing his
ignorance or blind disregard of Islam’s essentialism and its concepts of tawhid and fitra.
The most egregious of Taylor’s judgments is
to say of ‘secular’ that “there is perhaps a problem, a certain ethnocentricity,” which sounds suspiciously like accusations of racism
and a shibboleth for solipsistic Marxists.
Ethnocentricity is irrelevant.
Secularism has its root in Christ’s recognition of state authority when
he is quoted as saying, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,” and “My
kingdom is not of this world.” Secularity is a concept that belongs to the
Christian world and was brought into sharper relief following its unique
Renaissance and consequent rise of humanism.
Its rejection by other religions with their more unified world view
makes it incomprehensible to their votaries.
Secular states in the non-Western world are more recent and tend to have
lower levels of diversity, thus their principle religion forms a greater
function in the state’s world view.
However, where diversity is high, such as in India and Sri Lanka, the trend
towards greater religious identity and demonstrativeness will quickly lead to
conflict.
The point about modern secularism is that is
has evolved and grown as religious belief has declined. The surge it received through the adoption of
welfare state principles and its appropriation of religious compensators
brought in a new era of social equality the like of which had never been seen
before. Its manifest success contributed
to the greatest period of peace in history if Steven Pinker’s thesis is to be
accepted. But this was a ‘Western World’
phenomenon and a number of factors brought this brief secular period to an
end.
Rising competition in India and China to
Europe’s production models meant a need for low-cost factory workers in the
1960s, resulting in an influx of Commonwealth and colonial subjects. The religion of these people was not a
problem. The non-religious nature of
public life was accepted, and issues such as Sikh’s headwear were addressed as
they arose. But in the Middle East,
necessarily subjected to Europe’s successful model of Westphalian sovereignty
after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, trouble was fomenting. The incompatibility of borders with the
region’s tribal structure, its inflexible religion, and the necessity of
tyranny to maintain peace has resulted in one of Islam’s periodic spasms of
radical fidelity. Middle East oil
revenues were diverted into promoting Islam’s innate global aspirations which
have been extraordinarily successful, and there was a ready audience for its
revival in Europe.
Meanwhile the Western world’s political left
suffered a string of defeats, principally the adoption of neo-liberal
economics, the influence of the UK Labour Party’s ‘third way’, and the collapse
of the Soviet Empire. Marxism lived on
in cultural hegemony, with, using Rudi Dutschke’s phrase, “Gramsci’s long march
through the institutions” to undermine the culture and values of capitalist
states1. The Left continued
to find its enemies from within its environs, and where they were in short
supply, such as bigots, racists and fascists after the defeat of Nazism, they
created a new constituency out of those who opposed its revolutionary agenda2.
Taylor is complicit in this but takes no
account of the consequences. Why he
ignores Islam’s blatant hegemonic conquest of Europe when it is one of its
essential doctrines needs an examination of his own ideology. But its effects on his arguments are
devastating.
Diversity was not a word used in the context
of culture and religion until recently.
There’s been a noticeable rise in articles and lectures trying to
promote it as an old, even ancient, concept but the dominant flaw in these is
that in the past diversity, such as it was, did not have to deal with
incompatible ideologies or cultures.
This ‘diversity’ (a word that has largely displaced ‘multiculturalism’ in
public discourse – curious, that) is an imposition solely on the West, one of
its own making, one which does not benefit ordinary people, and one the
consequences of which will destroy its culture.
It applies nowhere else, not in Africa, not in the Far East, and most
certainly not in the Middle East. Most
regrettably, diversity does not apply to opinion, theory, and political view.
Humans are by nature homophilic. Like meets like to marry like to beget like. Thus, diversity as practiced in the Western
world is contrary to innate human preferences.
Its imposition on society comes from political forces, the motives and
goals of which are obscure. In order to
impose it on a populace, the concept has to be morally reframed to make its
obligations appear natural, in a process of mandated heterophily. Those disagreeing with the policy are
demeaned and side-lined. Debate is
quashed, objective discourse on Islamic doctrines suppressed.
And this is where Taylor makes his argument with his
emphasis on spiritual needs. If
countries with ‘diversity’ imposed upon them were subject to religions other
than Islam he might not have needed to write his essay. In practice, however, Muslims will dominate
any civic forum in which they are involved, with a religious identity and
intensity (yaqeen) that very few
Westerners understand. Taylor talks of
the importance of mutual commitment and trust, which is unquestionably vital to
my mind. Herein lies the greatest flaw in
Taylor’s thesis. Muslims have callings
much, much higher than the state. There
is the ummah, the brotherhood of
Muslims, to which all Muslims have greater fealty than any other entity. Not to the nation-state and not to its kuffar citizens. Above all, Muslims’ primary allegiance is to
their deterministic god, their exemplary prophet, the inviolable words and
deeds of both, and to a divinely-mandated obligation to ensure the entire world
submits to the will of Allah.
By making civic law conditional on canonical law Islam
changes everything. Taylor’s essay and
agenda facilitates this.
2.
Spectator associate editor Douglas Murray, interviewed by Sam
Harris. https://www.samharris.org/podcast
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