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| Pâ•qidꞋ Yi•rᵊmᵊyâhꞋ u |
2003.07.15 – Shutting down terrorist camps in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world, even stemming the funds to terrorist organizations, can, at best, only hamper terrorist attacks against Israel and the West. The NY Post yesterday (07.14) reported that 75,000 to 100,000 trained terrorists are standing by, already situated in the U.S., waiting for orders. "We must also stop the ‘Ji•hâdꞋ factories,' the ma•sâ•jidꞋ and [ma•drassꞋas] that are turning out tens of thousands of aspiring [Fi•da•yinꞋ Shu•had•âꞋ] bombers," (Dinesh d'Sousa, Jerusalem Post, 2003.07.13, p. 6)
"The problem is that we have not effectively answered the strongest version of the Islamic critique of the U.S. Usually, Americans seek to defend their society by appealing to its shared principles. Thus, they say that America is a free society, or a prosperous society, or a diverse and pluralistic culture, or a nation that gives women the same rights as men. The most intelligent Islamic critics acknowledge all this, but they dismiss it as worthless triviality.
"One of the leading theoreticians of Islamic fundamentalism is the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb. Called ‘the brains behind bin Laden,' Qutb argues that the West is a society based on freedom while the Islamic world is based on virtue. In his books, Qutb says: Look at how badly freedom is used in the West. Look at the pervasive materialism, triviality, vulgarity and sexual promiscuity. Islamic societies may be poor, Qutb says, but we are trying to implement the will of G-o-d. Qutb argues that Islamic laws are based on divine law, and G-o-d's law is necessarily higher than any human law. Virtue, Qutb insists, is a higher principle than freedom…
"How, then, can the Islamic argument against America be answered on its own terms?
"Let us concede at the outset that in a free society freedom will often be used badly…
"By contrast, the authoritarian society that Islamic fundamentalists advocate undermines the possibility of virtue… Coerced virtues are not virtues at all… Compulsion cannot produce virtue; it can only produce the outward semblance of virtue." (d'Sousa, ibid.)
This is the same argument that RibꞋi Yᵊho•shuꞋa made: love of é‑‑ä must come from the heart – i.e., free will – not from externally imposed constraint of a Beit Din. Ergo, the jurisdiction of the Beit Din must be limited: first to basic law and order in society and, religiously, limited to the bare essence and logical interpretations of Ta•na"khꞋ, leaving maximum room for adaptation to the advances in science and the dynamics of world events as well as personal choice and preference. As the war on terrorism manifests and clarifies, the Nᵊtzâr•imꞋ fight for morality, ethics, anti-crime, anti-drugs, anti-homosexuality, anti-triviality, etc. isn't merely "goody goody." It carries very real consequences relative to combating the societal degeneracy that drives the encroachment of Islam with its very real spilling of blood by Islamic "religious warrior" terrorists. Morality and moral relevance is a real fight, spilling real blood of hundreds of thousands.
"This is the argument that Americans should make to people in the Islamic world. It is a mistake to presume that Muslims would be unreceptive to it. Islam, which has common roots with Judaism and Christianity, respects the autonomy of the individual soul. Salvation for Muslims, no less than for Jews and Christians, is based on the soul's choosing freely to follow [the Creator]… And because freedom is the necessary precondition for virtue, we can feel confident in asserting that our free society is not simply richer, more varied and more tolerant, it is also morally superior to the fundamentalists' version of Islamic society [and the only context in which a free will choice to serve the Creator can possibly be made]." (d'Sousa, loc. sit.).
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