Abu Hatem أبو حاتم

So after posting the earlier speech I had read in The American Muslim magazine I googled Robert Crane, Former US Deputy Director (for Planning) of the National Security Council under President Nixon and converted Muslim, and I realized that Crane was a Burkean Kirkian conservative traditionalist! Crane discusses natural law, natural order, traditionalism, conservatism, et. al. Crane tells Islamonline:

The traditionalists among the Whigs, led by Edmund Burke in England, were like the paleo-conservatives of modern America, who want to maintain the principles of good governance and economic justice as the framework for all public policy. They are called principled conservatives, and their movement differs little, if at all, from the classical liberalism of 19th century America and from enlightened Islam.

I use the term “traditionalism” because it has the least baggage in American political parlance. Conservativism is a bad word, because it smacks of reaction. And classical liberalism, nowadays, has come to denote either intrusive governmental control of all life or else libertarian anarchism.

Traditionalism therefore exists only as a movement, and probably should remain in this mode for the foreseeable future. For Muslims, traditionalism could be the name for an Islamist movement in America. But it would be an unusual Islamism because its goal would not be direct political power but rather the transformation of thought and imagination.

Traditionalism really is a vision of the future based on restoration and creative renewal of the wisdom of the past. It is a vision of justice, order, and freedom based on a transcendent source of values. This would contrast with any vision not so based.

My thinking and writing reflect the wisdom accumulated among the giants of traditionalist thought. Perhaps the greatest of the contemporary traditionalists is Russell Kirk, who has written an entire bookshelf of volumes addressing your question. In his epochal work, The Roots of American Order, Russell Kirk writes, “The good society is marked by a high degree of order, justice, and freedom. Among these, order has primacy: for order cannot be enforced until a tolerable civil order is attained, nor can freedom be anything better than violence until order gives us laws.”

Positivism as taught in American law schools is known as “the command theory of law.” It is the epitome of secular fundamentalism, and has destroyed every civilization in which it took root. “Positivism arose in opposition to the classical natural law theory, according to which there are necessary moral constraints on the content of law. The word ‘positivism’ was probably first used to draw attention to the idea that law is ‘positive’ or ‘posited,’ as opposed to being ‘natural’ in the sense of being derived from natural law or morality.”

 

The denial of any transcendent source of law constitutes a denial of the very roots of Western civilization and, indeed, of any true culture. Legal positivism denies the long history that gave rise to the Great American Experiment, and aims to eliminate the very possibility of bringing the wisdom of tradition to public life and public policy.

This is amazing. I always knew that Crane was a conservative, but not that he was a traditionalist. I wish he would discuss economic freedom more in-depth like Dr. Imad ad-Deen Ahmad of Minaret of Freedom. But, yes, you find new things through google everyday.

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Eric Voegelin (d. 1901-85) was a major figure in the history of American conservative intellectualism. While not himself a classical conservative, Voegelin discussed the main theme of classical conservativism which was totalitarian movements and the revolutionary mentality.

Classical conservatives have always noted that the revolutionary mentality has never brought anything except evil. The intentions of revolutionaries to improve society are almost never realized. The French revolution brought Robespierre and Jacobin tyranny followed by the political instability of five French republics and two empires. The Russian revolution brought about the communist Lenin and the worst tyrant in the history of the world in Stalin. There are other countless examples - those who have attempted to establish revolutionary change such as Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s fascist Italy, and others have generally caused great distress.

The opposition to revolution is the bedrock of classical conservatism, nothing more and nothing less. Unlike other political persuasions, conservatism is not an ideology aiming to establish any type of perfect society. Conservatives are marked by their opposition to revolutionary change in favor of gradual and organic evolutionary change shaped by the mechanism of tradition.

Voegelin discussed the origin of totalitarian movements and the origin of such pathological ideologies as had been evident during the second world war. In his studies of totalitarianism, Voegelin found the problems of ideology as spiritually rooted in nature and that the pathologies of modern ideologues and revolutionaries beared great similarities to the Christian heresy of gnosticism. Voegelin’s analysis cannot only be applied to other countries and past and present movements, but also to the modern idea and modern mindset itself. Indeed, many have seen the neoconservative fervent urge at spreading democracy and free markets throughout the world as exactly the type of gnosticism which Voegelin referred to.

A note on Voegelin: Voegelin taught the current Pope Benedict amongst others. However, Voegelin made one major error which the conservative movement has universally condemned him for: he believed that it was impossible for man to know the truth about God (he said each society constructs its own order to make meaning, this is relativist type thinking which was universally rejected!).

Voegelin’s analysis of the gnostic is that the gnostic mentality went through many stages. Because God has created this worldly existence imperfect, and has challenged the believer with upholding the tests of faith, man experiences what Christian theologians such as Blaise Pascal amongst other Western thinkers called “the tensions of existence.” The tensions of existence were a central theme of Voegelin’s. Muslims do not truly have the same concept of the “tensions of existence,” to my knowledge, yet there is a similar concept the hardship of the believer’s living in this world, as the Prophet Muhammad said “this world is the prison of the believer.”

The tensions of existence are described as the hardships of man at enduring in the imperfect world which he lives. Since the world is a mix of both good and bad, and is not a heavenly afterlife, the tensions of existence are felt from time to time by those who experience this world, especially its hardships. We Muslims would say that the hardships and tensions of existence are a manifestation of God’s attribute of jalal or majesty and if patiently endured would be the gateway to Divine Love and Beauty as well as humbleness of the self. Voegelin described the “tensions of existence,” as arising in gnostic pathologies from the difficulty which occurs from enduring in this world.

Unable to be patient through the tensions of existence, the gnostic escapes through self-delusion. He does not blame his own sinful soul for evil and problems but instead blames God or the world. The Christian gnostics were angry for God for creating the world this way. The modern gnostics are angry at the state of the world as well. They attempt to do what Voegelin called immanentizing the eschaton or making real that which is transcendent. They would like to create heaven on earth and achieve their Utopian goals and dreams. The gnostic creates the delusion that one can achieve the “perfect society” the “heaven on earth” which they desire in this world. In the process and quest of creating heaven on earth however they create hell on earth.

The gnostic self-delusion which relieves them from the tensions of existence becomes a force for immense evil in the world. The gnostic constructs his own reality, believes in his own political and secular religions, and attempts to achieve his Utopian dreams. This what we find manifested throughout modernity - Voegelin strongly rebukes the spiritual death of man which results from his gnostic desire to achieve temporary spiritual relief. Perhaps the strongest example of modern gnosticism is in the abhorrent legacy of communism which constructed its own reality and in the quest for achieving what Marx called “communism,” led to the destruction of society, religion, property, and the killing of millions. The sad chapter of history named communism will be forever known as the paramount example of the gnostic delusion.

The Holy Father Pope Benedict has discussed this as well. When still Cardinal Razniger of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict claimed that two pathologies were destroying the world: nihilism and fundamentalism. Nihilism in its rejection of truth itself, while fundamentalism is the arrogance that one has the authority to sin against others in the cause of the truth. Both extremisms are gnostic pathologies. In the modern world today we find soulless modernity believing in no sense of morality except for the efficiency and utility of social engineering in providing others happiness; religion is fought against and rejected because it takes the place of utilitarian social engineering. On the other side we find extremists in religion, so-called “revolutionaries” who in their quest for the perfect Godly state on earth endorse unjust and sinful methods.

The neoconservatives in the quest for a perfect peaceful liberal democratic order fall into the gnostic fantasy. The Christian fundamentalists who urge war on all Muslim states to achieve a Christian world, or as Ann Coulter says killing their leaders and converting them to Christianity, fall into the gnostic fantasy. The Jewish extremists who urge genocide in the quest for a perfect Jewish Israeli state fall into the gnostic fantasy. Muslim extremists who attempt to achieve the perfect Utopian “Islamic state” through suicide bombings, and terrorism, fall into the gnostic fantasy.

It is for this reason that the classical conservatives have always opposed revolution. There may be tyranny in the world, but I will take a tyrant leader any day than one led by a gnostic revolution. It is appropriate here to repeat the counsel of the venerable Joseph De’Maistre, “The Counter-Revolution will not be a reverse revolution, but the reverse of a Revolution.”

To be sure there is much good in the world, and being good and using good means can spread goodness in the world. Conservatives have always understood this. Burke said famously that “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” However good means must be used to achieve righteous goals and the natural rights and inherent dignity of all human beings must be respected. The Islamic maxim states “good means must be used to establish good ends.” Conservatives have long found gradual evolutionary change to be more beneficial than revolutionary change. Specifically if change is established through sinful means than expect it to be unblessed. Muslims would say that such change loses its barakah or Divine blessing which accompanies good. And lastly, peaceful and good change is a different thing altogether than attempting at establishing Utopia. Don’t fall into the gnostic self-delusion!

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Dr. Robert Crane, a Muslim convert and former foreign policy adviser to President Richard Nixon, gave a speech three days ago concerning the “Transcendent Law and a New Paradigm of Civilizations.”  Crane looks favorably at Ibn Khaldun, and discusses his influence on Toynbee and others who studied civilizations and the natural order.  Crane affirms the need of society to conserve the natural order saying:

The balance to be maintained in every civilization as embodied in every world religion is among order, justice, and freedom.  This paradigm of balance teaches that order, justice, and freedom are interdependent.  When freedom is construed to be independent of justice, there can be no justice and the result will be anarchy.  When order is thought to be possible without justice, there will be no order, because injustice is the principal cause of disorder.  When justice is thought to be possible without order and freedom, then the pursuit or order, justice, and freedom are snares of the ignorant.

Without consensus on the proper nature of order, and of justice and freedom as essential parts of a single whole, rather than as independent pursuits, no civilization can continue to exist.  The twin roles of religion in all of its traditionalist manifestations, including the monotheistic and “revealed religions”, and especially Islam, are the spiritual well-being or happiness of every person and the maintenance of consensus on the responsibilities and rights necessary to live in an ordered society.

Crane is good at merging the ecumenic and universal concept of the natural order from all angles, whether in the Muslim mystic Rumi, Ibn Khaldun, or Toynbee.  Since the issue of the natural law, natural order, liberty, and tradition are dear to me, Crane’s exposition within an Islamic context finds in this blogger a highly receptive audience.

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Since Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement defeated Phalangist Amin Gemayl for his murdered son’s parliament seat last summer the Lebanese crisis has percipitated. The day after the fact, disputes arised with Gemayl accusing Aoun of electoral fraud and profiting from Armenian and Shiite votes. The March 14th government majority suffered its first blow.

A few months later, the road to the Presidential elections made clear that there would be no elections. A few March 14th MPs assasinated later, and March 8th’s withdrawal from the government, caused a true political crisis in Lebanon in November. Aoun was determined to be president, no matter what the cost. The realpolitik nature of the March 8th’s alliance - Hezbollah, Amal, and the Free Patriotic Movement - was apparent. Many failed attempts at acheiving an agreement and electing a president, with intervention from Maronite Cardinal Nasrallah Boutrous Sfeir, came of no avail.

For all of us that remember what happened next it was a classic game of who blinks first. Aoun pressured the government to accept an agreement in which he was president and Hariri prime minister, and Hariri refused. Many meetings between the opposition and the government ensued with no success. The U.S. and France attempted to place pressure on the opposition in numerous visits to the region, but the opposition would not blink. After Lebanon’s former pro-opposition president Emile Lahoud’s term was up on November 24th 2007, it became a country without a president.

Lahoud attempted to instate a state of emergency in his last hours of office which was immediately revoked by the interim March 14th government. Hezbollah called the interim government’s calls to elect its own president “a coup.” President Bush had encouraged his allies in March 14th to elect a president switfly without Hezbollah. Hezbollah drew their line firmly in the ground and with a millieu of threats stalemate ensued. The brinkmanship of an international struggle lied squarely in Beirut.

The government’s actions in shutting down Hezbollah’s telecommunications network was the final straw for March 8th. Hezbollah showed its power, and in a four day occupation of Beirut and Tyre, proved that it held the balance of power. Seven months after Lahoud’s term completed, the government finally decided that anarchy, civil war, and instability were too much of a price to pay, and gave Hezbollah veto power in the Doha Agreement two days ago.

Homo economicus, self-interested and rational man, does not enter into agreements or accords unless he sees benefit. The Doha Agreement is a positive-sum game. The opposition achieves veto power and keeps their weapons, while March 14th retains stability and a Sanoira led cabinet. The opposition has proved that it knows how to play its cards right in achieving its objectives . Lebanese politics are clearly not serving the Lebanese - they serve as a battlefield for the world powers.

Hezbollah’s alliance with Christian leader Michele Aoun has served its purpose for both parties. And the broad coalition of former adversaries in the March 14th bloc will probably begin to break up. As history shows, politics, especially Lebanese politics, makes strange bedfellows. While the stability brought about by the Doha agreement is perferable to anarchy for both parties, a new era of internal strife appears inevitable after the next parliamentary elections set for 2009. Lebanon is between a rock and a hardplace.

International relations theorist Kenneth Waltz notes that bipolar international systems are more stable than unipolar ones. The Middle East is currently a bipolar balance-of-power system. Although the Doha agreement gives Hezbollah the advantage, the threat of war has been put off for now. While most see it as a victory for Hezbollah, French President Nicholas Sarkozy called the agreement a “great success.” Even the United States government congratulated Lebanon on the agreement. Lofty rhetoric about democracy is being rejected for more sober talk of stability. As Robin Wright, chief Middle East correspondent for the Washington Post said recently despite American rhetoric about Arab democratization, it is clear that its final realization was the need for stability.

Lebanon is not the first country to be an international battlefield and it certaintly will not be the last. In Taiwan, Burma, North Korea, and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, the west and its allies found that stability was a higher goal than democracy. When democratization and standing for freedom has burdensome consequences, great powers act in their self-interest and cost-benefit analysis. In the height of the second World War, the Allies united with Stalin’s Russia.

Lebanon cannot solve its problems through the political sphere or with war on the streets. Until the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah-Hamas alliance is broken up, there will be a vital interest in Lebanon for Iranian foreign policy. It is the same with the U.S. and France. These countries care for Lebanon as a means to an end. The recently reported Turkish mediated Israeli-Syrian talks are a good start. If Syria meets its security and political objectives, it will find no need in Hezbollah or Iranian protection. Allies and enemies come and go in the self-help world of international politics. Yet as long as the greater diseases of the problems are not cured, the Doha agreement’s attempts at peace, may be unfortunately the temporary and melancholly solution to Lebanon’s problems.

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McCain, the domestically socialist statist and foreign policy warmonger, is the most leftist candidate in this election. He supports big government domestically and abroad. Today, the brother of McCain’s top foreign policy adviser Robert Kagan, Fredrick Kagan (who was one of the founding fathers of the surge strategy) writes in the New York Post that the U.S. military needs one million men. This is probably true considering that McCain has told us there will “be more wars” and that the American people might not even mind “10,000 years in Iraq” because the war was a “good idea.”

Check out the YouTube song:

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Another Republican congressman has decided against reelection according to the Washington Post, thus there are about roughly 27 republican incumbent congressmen stepping down. The democrats congressional chances are higher than ever.

As to the White House, if you put some states in play such as North Carolina and Virginia, then Obama’s chances are looking better than ever in the fall. However, NC and VA are real long-shots. That is not to say they are impossible. Bill Clinton picked up Georgia during his re-election run, a very traditionally republican state, as well as Louisianna twice and Tennessee once. Moreover, George W. Bush picked up very blue West Virginia two times.

If you give the following states as swing states, which are followed by the last time they voted democrat, then Obama has a real shot: Nevada (1996), New Mexico (2000), Iowa (2000), Colorado (1992), Ohio (1996), New Hampshire (2000). This does not include the possible Obama pickups in Virginia (1968), North Carolina (1976), or even possibly Georgia (1996), or a possible McCain pickup in Pennsylvania (1988).

If we include those swing states: Nevada, New Mexico, Iowa, Colorado, Ohio, and New Hampshire then there are 9 possible ways for Obama to win and 9 possible ways for McCain to win. However in an overwhelmingly democratic year, with democratic house seats on fire and a recession and badly managed war, the tie tips in favor of Obama.

270towin.com gives the following possibilities at an Obama victory

1. OH + CO
2. OH + IA
3. OH + NV
4. OH + NM
5. OH + NH
6. CO + IA + NM + NV
7. CO + IA + NV + NH
8. CO + IA + NM + NH
9. CO + NM + NV + NH

Thus it is crucial that Obama win either Ohio or Colorado, and both are semi-difficult for him bearing in mind that Colorado has not gone blue for a while, and he has a hard time with blue collar workers in Ohio. If Obama loses both Colorado and Ohio however, all hope is not lost, because if he wins Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire and Iowa he can tie McCain for 169 and thus win because the election would go into the House of Representatives.

270towin, based on past elections and current polling (which is not the best this early on) gives the chance of an Obama victory using the aforementioned swing states (including Ohio and Colorado as swing states) to be 33%, with a 37% chance of tie, and a 24% chance of a McCain victory. A tie is an Obama victory, thus the map favors him overwhelmingly, with a 76% chance of an Obama victory not even counting Virginia and North Carolina.

Although this is based on extremely early polling, it is clear that this is a democratic year.

And before someone asks how I am a conservative rooting for the democrats, I will just reply that the democratic party is much more conservative than the republican party. War is the biggest of all big government programs. Although inverventionist statists such as Hillary Clinton are worse than McCain and Bush, the fact is that a Barack Obama presidency would be much stronger for individual and civil liberties, and relatively less foreign intervention, than a McCain one. Obama even beats McCain on the economic freedom front.

The smallest government in the past three decades actually was democrat Jimmy Carter (even with his creation of the Department of Education), who was also the most pro-peace non-interventionist president we have had in a long time (although Zbigniew Brzenski’s inciting the communists to invade Afghanistan and enter a quagmire was hardly pro-peace, but international politics is realpolitik), and pro-life.

Carter’s draconian tax rates were ridiculous, and thank God Reagan cut them, but Reagan was no conservative saint either. However the man passed away and I truly believe he was an honest man, so I will not speak ill of the dead.

Compare the government and economic and civil liberties under Clinton and Bush and you find that Clinton was far more conservative.

The democrats are also a horrible party, perhaps worse than the GOP, but the GOP has done absolutely nothing in the cause of conservatism either. The days of Ronald Reagan and Robert Taft are long gone. We always knew it’d be hard to find a non-interventionist pro-peace man in the White House from either party, but at the very least the GOP (or the democrats for that matter) could give us some of our economic freedoms back. The antipathy both parties have towards capitalism and tradition is amazing. Anti-capitalist corpratist interventionism is the model of the day.

UPDATE (05/27/08 2:09 AM): Karl Rove on Fox News has moved Colorado from toss-up to strongly leaning Obama, and thus Obama is leading for the first time in the polls for general election electoral college against McCain.  New Mexico also leans Obama, while New Hampshire polling is a toss-up.  Nevada is leaning to McCain.  This makes a scenario of Obama taking CO, NH, and NM and thus tying up the electoral college more likely.

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Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing neoconservative media empire expanded greatly when he took over the Wall Street Journal earlier this year. However, of all of Murdoch’s outlets (Fox News, Newsday, SKYNews, Fox Radio) the only two which are actually decently run by decent directors are the Times of London (the British can’t go without hard news) and the Wall Street Journal.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism, an excellent media watchdog, did a study on the changing coverage of the WSJ. I have noticed the WSJ’s coverage go more political including commentary by political hack (but genius strategist) Karl Rove biweekly. PEJ discusses how the WSJ is changing the tone of its coverage, cutting down on the business side, to provide a strong alternative to the New York Times and be competitive.

In the free market, especially the dying market of newspapers, this competition may broaden the base and thus give Murdoch’s neocon views more of an outlet as well as make money. Hopefully, WSJ doesn’t do to the Times (which is already far from perfect) what Fox did for CNN. CNN is finally making its comeback and has almost beat Fox without copying the Fox model, yet the Times at least retains some hard news and it would be very sad for them to lessen their standards to compete with the WSJ.

Here is a PEJ found concerning the WSJ’s shift in coverage vis-a-vis The Times:

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There are too many sources of information online and if you don’t know how to swim through it all you will drown. Here are some of the websites I visit daily, that are not blogs:

1. RealClearPolitics.com - this is a must visit for anyone who likes politics. Instead of sifting through the New York Times and Washington Post daily to find if Maureen Dowd or Bob Novak have some new political op-eds ready for you, realclearpolitics gathers the top political articles every morning and evening to give you a full update on what is going on for the day. This is my favorite website on the entire internet.
2. Drudgereport.com - make fun of Matt Drudge all you want, but none can doubt that he gets the scoop before anyone. On the Drudge Report you find out what the New York Times is about to publish tomorrow, before they publish it. It is a top news destination.
3. Antiwar.com - the top non-interventionist anti-war website on the internet. New articles from distinguished anti-war conservatives, and some liberals, daily. It also has some really good news feeds for what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and Lebanon.
4. NOWLebanon.com and YaLibnan.com - the source for Lebanese politics for those of you who just can’t get enough of politics in general.
5. Mises.org - the premier site of Austrian economics, very enlightening economic articles daily of how government intervention starts the business cycle, the benefits of economic freedom, the case for sound money and a gold standard, and defending the free market from its enemies.
6. Opinionjournal.com - the Wall Street Journal is often called the “war street journal,” by anti-war conservatives and traditional conservatives. Its op-ed page is also often corpratist and anti-capitalist, favoring instead socialism for the rich instead of free markets. However none can doubt that of all of the big newspapers, including the NYTimes, the WSJ’s opinion page has some of the most important academics, policymakers, and public intellectuals making insights. Rupert Murdoch’s takeover may be moving them more to the neocon side, however it is important to visit the WSJ’s op-ed page daily.
7. iCasualties.org - the latest news from Iraq daily, including every single attack against American troops, and the number of troops that have been killed.
8. CJR.org - the Columbia Journalism Review, the source for truly intellectual discussions on the media and the state of journalism today.
9. Journalism.org - the Project for Excellence in Journalism, another big source for finding news about the news media with extensive studies concerning bias in the media, this is without doubt a non-partisan website.
10. Mediabistro.com/tvnewser - did you ever want to find out what Wolf Blitzer’s favorite food was, or when John King was getting married (to fellow CNN-er Dana Bash)?  How about who’s show is getting canceled and why, and who is taking over at MSNBC?  This is the website to go, news about the news.

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My blog is about politics, not religion.  I am not a religious scholar, and although I discuss the natural law and natural order, I do so in a mostly political context.  However, often religion has political connotations, and I find it useful to include religion in my bloggings.  As I am not an Islamic scholar who attended seminary for 20, or often 30 years, and have not memorized the Qur’an nor the compilations of hadith, Islamic logic, Islamic philosophy and theology, spirituality, Arabic grammar, et. al. I do not feel it is appropriate that I go too deep into religion lest I fall off the deep end.

However, one issue I have been a strong proponent of has been rectifying Muslim-Christian relations.  Oftentimes Muslims do not understand Christians, their theology, their religion, or their communities.  The same goes for Christians.  I attended Catholic school where we learned the Catholic mass, and studied Catholic social teaching.  Yet I was born, and remain, an orthodox and devoutly believing Sunni Muslim.   I have read such Christian writers as of course the four gospels and their exegesis, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Claire, William of Ockham, Blaise Pascal, Dorothy Day, Oscar Romero, and in the modern era popes Leo, Pius, Benedict, John Paul, and Benedict (I apologize to my Catholic friends, I don’t know their exact numbers!).

On the Muslim side I have read such religious/philosophical writers as Imam al-Ash’ari, Imam al-Baqillani, Imam al-Maturidi, Imam al-Tahawi, Imam al-Taftazani, Al-Ghazali, Averroes, Ibn Tufayl, Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Al-Dawwani, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Abi Diyaf, Imam al-Shatibi, etc.

I am not a syncrenist.   I do not attempt to merge the religions together and their theologies, I know there is way too much disagreement between the two for this to ever happen, and I believe in the truth of my tradition.  However, I do believe there is much more theology, both in our beliefs about God and in our beliefs about man, nature, and social teaching, that is in common.

The Qur’an calls for Muslims to reach a “common word” with Christians and Jews, that both will worship none but God.  The consensus of Muslim scholars around the world have written a new document entitled “A Common Word Between Us and You” to attempt to bridge the gap between the Muslims and the Christians, especially after recent events.  The document notes, if Muslims and Christians are not at peace, the world will not be at peace.

Peace amongst peoples does not mean rejection of either faith tradition or playing the politically correct “thought police,” of neo-Marxism which sees all religions as “equally false” and thus tells us to respect all “equally.”  Of course Muslims will see their faith as the truth, and Christians will see theres as the same thing.  Muslims in fact see their faith as an extension of the true Christian faith, while Christians see Islam as a heresy of the Christian faith.  None will force any other to believe anything, there is no compulsion in religion.

However there are two commandments, in both Islam and Christianity, which if followed will lead to what St. Thomas Aquinas calls “imperfect happiness.”  A secular worldly happiness which will prevent the manifestation of various pathologies.  Both conform to the natural order of God, and we both believe strongly that they are the superior truth.  They are Christ’s first and second commandments, and the first and second commandments of Islam - Love your Lord God with all of your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Loving your neighbor as yourself is a very hard commandment indeed.  Yet its spiritual and societal benefits are self-evident.  Loving your enemies and doing good to those who hurt you are amongst the hardest of spiritual struggles. I have blogged about this before, and I urge you to read my blog entry concerning it.

“A Common Word” aims at urging us both to follow these two commandments.   The Catholic Church attempted at bridging these gaps and beginning an ecumenic dialogue in its historic Nostra Aetate which contained an entire section devoted to Muslims.  Pope Benedict has also urged that churches be allowed to be built in the Islamic world.  Just this week the head of the Council of Islamic Scholars affirmed the right for Christians to build churches in Muslim countries, saying:

“It is completely permissible that they should be allowed to have churches.”

Catholics comprise the majority of Qatar’s estimated 70,000 Christian expatriates.

The Gulf region has in recent years set out an example of religious tolerance as several countries have been allocating pieces of land to Christian minorities to build their own churches.

Bahrain, who has about 1,000 Christian citizens including a woman member of an appointed consultative council, hosts the first church of the Gulf region, founded in 1906 by American Anglican missionaries.

Other Gulf states, like Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, have churches that cater to hundreds of thousands of expats and, in some cases, tiny local communities.

Qaradawi based his view, which goes in line with Abu Hanifa’s, on the Muslim principle of equal treatment.

“Just like they allow Muslims in their countries to build mosques for prayers.”

In many of the cities of Syria there has been peaceful coexistence between Christians and Muslims for centuries.  In fact, it is well known that Christians in the city of Homs protected Muslims from French during its status as a French protectorate.

Let us both, Christians and Muslims, walk hand in hand (at least those of us on both sides who want peace, as we both know there are those on both sides who will absolutely hate the other no matter what) praying the prayer of the venerable St. Francis who said:

Lord make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, make me sow love

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Frank S. Meyer was perhaps the most well known fusionist conservative political theorist in American history. Meyer’s task was to merge both the classical liberal wing of the conservative movement which aimed for economic and civil liberties, low taxes, and opposed the New Deal, with classical conservatism which saw tradition as the highest end.

Murray Rothbard, a prominent figure in the resurgence of American classical liberalism, criticized Frank Meyer’s fusionism for its “muddled logic.” Either reason he said, was the foundation of political society and liberty, or tradition, not both.

The conceptual chaos of conservatism may be traced back to its origins: a reaction against the New Deal. Since modern conservatism emerged in response to the particular leap into statism of the 1930s and 1940s, it necessarily took on the features of any “popular front”: that is, defined more by what it opposed than what it stood for. As a result, conservatism came to include a congeries of opponents of the New Deal, who had little positive in common. If we wish to inquire what all of these groups had in common, beyond sheer hatred of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, I can think of only one theme linking them all: opposition to egalitarianism, to compulsory levelling by use of state power; beyond that, conservatism is Chaos and Old Night. Even negative reaction to the New Deal no longer suffices for anything like a coherent stance, since not only is there a problem of which aspects of the New Deal to focus on, but also whether the post-New Deal system should remain in place and be subject only to marginal adjustment – that is, whether conservatism should be a holding operation – or whether the system should be repealed in toto.

The answer to this question is that fusing tradition and liberty is not fairly difficult whatsoever. The vast majority of the first classical conservatives and traditionalists - including Burke - where Whigs who believed that tradition intrinsically entailed economic freedom. Even non-Western traditionalists, such as Ibn Khaldun (who certainly believed in tradition in society) found transgression against economic freedom as the impetus to societal decline.

Meyer’s contention that tradition in and of itself entails liberty, because liberty is an essential aspect of tradition, solves the holistic problem of modern conservatism. Liberty is fused with tradition because they are two things which must not be rent asunder. As psychologist Abrham Maslow wrote, the third force in psychology is that when one whole is rent asunder pathology results. Maslow was discussing science and religion, and legalism and spirituality, but what he says is true. As Christ says, may God bless him and give him peace, in the New Testament “What therefore God hath joined together, let not men render asunder.” As Muslims we wholly agree with this teaching.

The tension between liberty and tradition however is not the main dividing line between classical liberalism and classical conservatism. The early classical conservatives were a type of classical liberals. Burke in his Notes on Scarcity disapproves of government intervention in the economy, welfare programs, and affirmed religious toleration. And although De’Maistre, the second founding father of classical conservatism, rejected democracy in favor of monarchy, his economic views were market-oriented nonetheless (he surely was no socialist).

As Rothbard recounts the main tension between liberty and tradition is the question of what the paramount guiding principle is - reason, or tradition?

On this question the Burkeans and traditionalists side with tradition over abstract reason. Modern Burkeans such as Jim Kalb note that although reason can achieve objective truth, the bounded rationality of man makes tradition a much better guide. The classical liberals always side with reason, for reason is that which establishes the natural law and natural rights and understands that it is self-evident that man has rights given from God, or nature, or reason.

Meyer attempts to fuse both together. But ultimately, there must be a source that is relied upon, reason or tradition. The American Burkean traditionalists such as Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, and modern “paleoconservatives” such as Pat Buchanan, Samuel Francis, Jim Kalb and others relied upon tradition first and foremost. The classical liberal American conservatives or “The Old Right” (which constitute the overwhelming vast majority) such as Robert Taft, and others, relied upon reason first and foremost.

Conservatism is a big tent. There is the “Old Right” of Grover Cleavland, and Robert Taft which may be called pure classical liberals. There is the “New Right” wherein the isolationism of the past was shunned for interventionism (in some circles, not all) and where Burkean classical conservative ideas were revived.

The central question amongst these varying New Right branches was whether the state should use coercion to enforce morality. Some said no, absolutely not. Some said yes, absolutely. And others said each community should decide at the smallest level (federalism, or the European Union and Catholic teaching of “subsidiarity”).

The antiwar right is right with me wherever their political persuasions lie. However, what is my take on this matter? I am a traditionalist fusionist.

Yet my traditionalism is not as extreme as Jim Kalb who sees it as more important than reason. I lie squarely in the camp of reason, and it is reason as Meyer clarified which is what tells us that tradition should be followed. And tradition, and reason, tell us of the benefits of liberty. Thus I am a Burkean Whig, a conservative with enough of a dose of (natural law) classical liberalism to be a federalist on moral issues (in the spirit of the principle of subsidiarity!).

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