Muslim Robert Crane - A Traditionalist Conservative?
Writing by abuhatem on Tuesday, 27 of May , 2008 at 2:15 am
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.
Category: Islam, Political philosophy
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