Islam's Culture War - Christianity Today Magazine

We have here a review of a new book, Why the Rest Hates the West by Meic Pearse. Pearse's thesis is that the real reason why Muslims hate the West has to do with Western cultural excesses, not Western foreign policy. Reviewer J. Dudley Woodberry correctly notes, however, that Western foreign policy, and the very nature of Islam itself, are "central [in] importance" to explaining why Islam and the West are in conflict.

I haven't read Pearse's work, but if Woodberry's description of it is accurate, Pearse is actually describing the secularistic influences on Western culture--the very things with which I myself quarrel. "[L]ack of respect for the past, religion, family, and honor, while overindulging in sports, entertainment, and sex": I couldn't have said it better myself. Now I hasten to add that "honor", to me, does not permit killing your daughter or sister because she has somehow "stained the family honor" by having an affair with someone or even by being the victim of rape. That said, I think the secularistic culture mavens of today do deliberately pour contempt upon history, religion, family, and honor--and by honor I mean "as in 'word of.'"

On my honor, I will do my best

• To do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law,
• To help other people at all times,
• To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

(Source: The Boy Scouts of America.)

So Pearse says that the West must reform itself to be more like "the rest."

He says this renewed moral vision should be based not on a culture of rights but of duty. Religious faith and life, he argues, must be brought back into the public square.

I would agree with the above, up to a point. Duty as a concept is a thing that the West has forgotten, at its peril. Attention to duty made the Romans great, and once made America great. If you don't believe that, I invite you to visit Valley Forge. (I have, and I can probably point to the place where General George Washington knelt down in prayer, as portrayed in the famous painting.) I further maintain that a proper acknowledgement of God and His Christ should be brought back into the public square. But I cannot countenance the bringing of Allah into the public square. Pearse ignores the verses in the Koran itself that exhort its readers to commit treason against any society that does not govern itself according to Muslim law--not to mention the Muslim version of the Apocalypse, which says that the very trees shall betray the enemies of Allah to Allah's instruments, the Muslims. (Or rather, the Arabs, because Islam is and always has been nothing more nor less than pan-Arab nationalism in religious dress.)

Does the West have a serious cultural problem? Yes, indeed. A society that treats sports figures and actors and actresses as Very Important Persons when they clearly don't deserve it, while permitting an abusive husband to starve his wife to death, is not a God-fearing society. But is that the only quarrel that Islam has with us, or we with it? No, no, and a thousand times, no.