Modernism, Secularism and Naivete
Reader comment on item: [The RAND Corporation and] Fixing Islam

Submitted by Kevin James Bywater (United States), Jul 28, 2004 at 23:33

Proposing that secularism is the ideal route may be ideological itself. To suppose that a bare-boned and rock-bottom secularism is the solution is to implies that theistic faiths (and even non-theistic faiths such as in Buddhism and Confucianism) somehow retain a fundamental flaw that naturally (and necessarily?) undermines social peace and political freedom. Not only is such a perspective objectionable, it is historically untenable (except on selective grounds) and philosophically mistaken. Secular movements have seen the slaughter of millions upon millions in the last century. And while we may attribute such massacres to the ideologies of those states, the truth is that they were nonetheless secular ideologies. And many who hold sincerely and tenaciously to their religious convictions are also civil and just and caring, even toward those who do not share their convictions.

I can agree that Bernard's proposal to align with Islamic Modernists may be naive. Nevertheless, I think it politically savvy as well. Modernist Muslims are intellectuals on the move, on the move toward civility. And while their efforts may have come to naught thus far, this may simply be due to the nature of their plight. After all, our efforts have fared little better and possibly worse at times. At least the Modernist Muslims work from within Islam, making their case (in part) from their own traditions. We, on the other hand, are outsiders, investing our efforts with outsider ideologies and strategies--not a bad thing in itself, indeed simply a reality.

Yet the naïveté of Bernard may be in muting the significance both of the resident Islamism within Islamic tradition--something the Modernists attempt to downplay and mute themselves--as well as hoping against hope that Modernists will not revert to those very elements themselves--especially given the Modernists allegiance to the Islamic creed, as well as his or her cultural, familial and historical ties to more radical (though traditional) expressions of Islam.

In the end, the secular proposal, while possibly pragmatically appropriate with regards to Muslim secularists, seems to retain its own naive elements, as well as its own objectionable ideology.

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