Question: Is it possible for a universe of meaning of tyranny to overwhelm a universe of meaning of democracy by using the latter’s openness, in principle omni-directional and without limitation, to subvert it decisively?
Response: Yes. We’ll not live to see outcome, but I’m optimistic.
Question: Are there demonstrations from “theoria” and/or “praxis” which reliably support an affirmative answer? Are there demonstrations from theoria and/or praxis which do not support an affirmative answer? And if there are, do any decisively subvert the reliability of an affirmative answer?
Response: “Hope is not a strategy”?
Response: My original and follow on questions took into account the truth that hope is not a strategy and the reality that Shariah is an implacable enemy of democracy.
The reality of Shariah as underlying everything we face in the Middle East and now more and less strongly in every liberal democratic nation — because of immigration poliies based on ignorance of the purport of Shariah and therefore dismissal of it as a salient consideration — has been a theme of mine for several years. Regrettably and to my fault as a theologian, it has not been a theme of mine for four decades, as it should have been.
I have had my eye on the resurgence of the Assassin Cults under the pretense of the banner of Islam for three decades at least, but I have been remiss in not focusing vigorously on them.
I have, however, for four decades been mulling the question of toleration of one another by religions in the liberal democratic civil context and the corollary question of anticipating, as best one might, both likely outcomes of religious multiplicity in that context and specific conceptual and legal structures that could be deployed to ensure tolerance in it.
It is not an easy set of questions, either to ask or to answer!
The larger question of whether there exists an unambiguous brake, even destruction, externally or internally imposed, on the deployment of tyrannical structures against open ones, such as liberal democracy, expresses the plenary — I think — theoretical and practical issue to which we are all now applying our best efforts … and with considerable focus, though belatedly.
That larger question sounds perhaps too abstract to be worth attention, and more than vaguely like hand wringing, wishing and hoping for the best in a deteriorating situation.
I will not say that it is not wishing and hoping. The outcome — which I hope will come out soon! — will attest that it is or is not. I will say that every question is important to a theologian — one of the few matters about which theology does not have to discuss its ambiguities! — and especially a question deemed to impinge on the natures of religion and civil society and the relationship between them — something Shariah insists it has locked down thoroughly and with perpetual, unchallengeable validity.
Thanks for the article by David Warren. He is right on all his points, including one I have been stressing for some time, that President Bush has not made clear to the nation the radical, systematic threat that Shariah is, or as I said, has not placed the nation on full war footing. In the President’s amelioration, however, is the point that in not stressing the seriousness of the situation he is in numerous and distinguished company, of all political persuasions.
David does not go far enough, however, in questioning whether Shariah itself faces the potential of arrest and/or destruction from within itself or from outside itself. If the answer to that question is “Yes.” for any demonstrable reason, then an affirmative answer to my original question is not justifiable or, at most, is justifiable only in the midst of caveats. Certainly — if Shariah is internally or externally destructible — an unambiguous affirmative answer is not justifiable.
So that leaves the “if” just mentioned as a significant question.
There are, in my view, besides the essential military/diplomatic activity as on-going, conceptual and legal steps that can and must be realized and taken to ensure that both locally and in its areas of origin Shariah is understood as religious law, meant as a symbolic indicator of man’s essential nature, not as civil law, meant to set and enforce modes of behavior as appropriate in and to the changing circumstances of history.
Furthermore, these conceptual and legal steps would — and I say do and will — fatally crack Shariah and any other structure of tyranny that attempts to defeat liberal democratic structures by infiltrating through their open doors.
A case in point is the effort by the Vatican — Jesuits as point, as they remain today — during the 17th Century to infiltrate its Shariah-like canon law into the liberal democratic structures built during the 16th Century by the Reformation and the Renaissance and their off-shoots, which were numerous and of significant variety
The result was the terrible religious wars (a misnomer, they were civil wars, trying to establish canon law civil law) of the 17th Century that decimated the populations of most European countries. Germany alone lost half her citizens between 1618 and 1648. But the liberal democratic ideal and structures prevailed, as will ours this time, albeit at far more cost of blood and treasure, during the 50 years minimum this problem will take to get solved, than would be believed today.
Religious law, to include Shariah, Ten Commandments, Deuteronomic Code, Sermon on Mount, etc., has no historical — i.e., civil — application. In fact, applying religious law to history is an unambiguously demonic undertaking based on a misunderstanding of the status and intent of religious law. Only civil law, which necessarily changes with circumstances, has historical application.
Demonic means elevating something that is not ultimate to ultimacy.
I have tried, under title Religion Parks, to work toward those realizations and steps. The discussion, like theatre-level military planning, requires a long axis and a wide front of attack. So the thing is going slowly, so as to marshal forces and resources, but it is getting there. The discussion is under construction.
AMDG
