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PDF FormatROGER SCRUTON RESPONDS:
My article set out what I regard as the important distinguishing features of Western civilization, in the world as it now is, and to make some suggestions as to why we should regard those features in a favorable light. Each of these features, I suggested, marks a point of contrast, and possibly of conflict, with the traditional Islamic vision of society. And each has played a vital part in creating the modern world. It is of course true that the nature of the state, law, and political obligation are as much debated by Muslims as they are by us in the secular West. It is also true that, in the past, Christian communities have been far more fierce than they are today in bending the state to their purpose, often refusing to recognize the validity of secular jurisdiction. Nevertheless, nothing in what Oliver Leaman says implies that I was not right to identify the distinguishing features of our civilization as I do, or to imply that it is precisely these features that seem to be targeted by Islamists. Not all Muslims are Islamists, thank heavens. But we still need to defend ourselves from those who are, and the first move in this defense is to know what we are, and why we have a right to be what we are.
Leaman implies that I am “seeking to damn an entire religion” in what I say. However, in seeking to defend Western secular society from Islamism, I am not condemning Islam. In many respects Western secular society seems to me to be inferior to traditional Islamic society: certainly in its sexual excesses; its pursuit of pleasure, excitement, and fun; and its lack of day-to-day piety. If there were a way to overcome those defects while holding on to free citizenship and secular law, I would subscribe to it. Maybe Muslims can point the way.
As for irony, and the part that it has played in Christian thought and culture, there is clearly room here for debate. But the irony that we discern in Hafiz and Rumi, and also in the Thousand and One Nights, is no longer to be discerned in those who speak publicly for Islam. There are no doubt forms of Christianity as humorless as the Islam preached today in our European cities. But on the whole, and give or take a few striking exceptions, Christians are taught to look on the world of human imperfections with something like the spirit that Jesus exemplified when asked to condemn the woman taken in adultery. That spirit is integral to true toleration, which is the ability to live peacefully side by side with those of whom we disapprove. Islamists, I feel, are rather short on this particular virtue.
