Is Freedom Worth Defending?
By
Robert Spencer
Muslim threats last week led Lady Gaga to cancel
her planned concert in Indonesia. Because of their disapproval of
Lady Gaga, some conservatives in the West have applauded this, noting
that Christians there opposed her as well, and asserting that any
non-Muslim society with a healthy regard for decent values would not
allow to her to perform, either. Society, some argued, should hold
the good, not freedom, as its highest value.
Left unexplained, however, is how a commonly
accepted understanding of "the good" is to be arrived at,
and particularly how such an understanding could be restored in
21st-century America without imposing an authoritarian regime of some
kind. Also, one wonders if proponents of such ideas would object to
the intimidation and particularly to the death threats that
ultimately led to the cancellation of Lady Gaga's Indonesian show.
Sharia states are oriented toward the good, not
freedom, as their highest value. How would the ideal state of these
authoritarian Western "conservatives" be different? A young
Saudi imam said it a few years ago: “Your leaders want to bring
your freedom to Islamic society. We don’t want freedom. The
difference between Muslims and the West is we are controlled by God’s
laws, which don’t change for 1,400 years. Your laws change with
your leaders.” Jihadists routinely deride Western freedom as
libertinism: “In essence,” one explained, “the kufr [unbelief]
of Western society can be summed up in one word which is used over
and over to justify its presence, growth, and its glorification …
Freedom. Yet what such a society fails to comprehend, is that such
‘freedom’ simply represents the worship and enslavement to
desires, opinions, and whims, a disregard for what is (truly) right,
and a disregard for the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth.”
While many of us might deplore the depravity of
today’s pop culture, we should not let Islamic moral critique put
us on the defensive. In reality, the freedom at which the jihadists
sneer is an essential component of any genuine morality. “Australian
law guarantees freedoms up to a crazy level,” remarked the
controversial former Australian mufti Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali—but
without freedom, even “up to a crazy level,” morality is hollow.
The secular West, with all its irreligion and debauchery, provides
the only authentic framework for genuine virtue. Without the freedom
to choose evil, choosing good is not a virtue. It’s nothing more
than submitting to coercion. Islam’s moral critique likewise
founders on the divine sanction given to violence in the Qur’an and
Islamic tradition.
Violent coercion is a fundamental element of
Sharia law, with its stonings and amputations. Ayatollah Khomeini
admitted this without apology: “Whatever good there is exists
thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be
made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to
Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors!” Dinesh
D’Souza wrote eloquently on this point in 2004: “Consider the
woman in Afghanistan or Iran who is required to wear the veil. There
is no real modesty in this, because the woman is being compelled.
Compulsion cannot produce virtue; it can only produce the outward
semblance of virtue.” He mocked those who imagined that a cleanup
of American pop culture would lessen the force of the jihad: “Some
Americans may be tempted to say, ‘The Muslims have a point about
Jerry Springer and Howard Stern. If they will agree to stop bombing
our buildings, in exchange for us sending them Springer and Stern to
do with as they wish, why not make the deal? We could even throw in
some of Springer’s guests.’”
Yet by 2007 D’Souza had joined those he had
earlier derided, claiming that the failure to throw Springer and
Stern to the wolves was creating more jihadists: “When you make
America synonymous with permissiveness, when you dismiss serious
moral offenses with a no-big-deal attitude …you are driving the
traditional Muslims into the arms of the radicals.”
It is true that the jihadists’ presentation of
themselves as holy warriors fighting Western blasphemers and
libertines is a potent recruiting tool. But the proper response to
their critique of the West is to challenge them on their own ground:
to point out that the Judeo-Christian tradition, with its principle
of individual freedom as a prerequisite for virtue, offers a superior
vision of God and the world than that offered by Ayatollah Khomeini
and his sword as the key to paradise. Yet it necessarily involves
tolerating some who exercise their freedom in ways to which some
might object – even Lady Gaga.