Islam and Natural Law

Vincent J. Curtis

31 Dec 2015

Natural law as understood today is an outgrowth of Scholasticism, and in particular in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas.  Natural law undergirds written law, for Natural law is the basis of our understanding of Justice.

The first principle of Natural Law is that “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.”  All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this.  The received understanding of this principle is that it is self-evident that whenever we act, we pursue something that we take to be good in some way, or avoid what we take to be in some way evil.  Aristotle made the same point in his Nichomachean Ethics, and offered it as something self-evident in that thin sense of good being a subjective perception.

The first posit of Natural Law is thus a self-evident truth.  Now things start to get a little philosophical.  In the Aristotelean-Scholastic tradition, human beings have various ends and capabilities the fulfilment of which is good and the frustration of which is evil.  (Which, as we learned in a previous posting, is the privation of good.)  It doesn’t take more than a few common examples to persuade one of the general application of this precept.  Humans need food, water, friendship, the society of others, knowledge, etc.  Hence a rational person will pursue the attainment of these goods, or avoid their frustration as the case may be.  A normal, rational person will thus pursue what the intellect perceives as good, and what the intellect perceives as good in a rational person is what is in fact good.

In one sense, good action is the pursuit of that which is in accord with reason.  Hence, doing good is simply the rational way of fulfilling human nature.  Knowledge of human nature and rationality thus thicken the sense of subjective perception of what is good for human beings.

To give a particular example, consider the human intellect and the unique capacity of human beings (as compared with all other animals on earth) to learn and to reason and the grasp the truth of things.  The human capacity to learn, to reason, and to grasp truth is enormous, starting from infancy.  Thus, learning, reasoning, and grasping truth is a fulfillment of human nature; they are the most human things we do, since rationality is what distinguishes human beings from any other animal on earth.  It follows then that it is good for human beings to pursue truth and to avoid its opposite, error, and rational human beings will do so.

This takes us to the difference between absolute good and relative good.  All human beings need the absolute goods: food, water, shelter, friendships, companionship, love, knowledge, and the like.  Brain surgery is not an absolute good because brain surgery is not in the nature of human beings to require.  However, individual human beings may need brain surgery to save their lives from a cancerous tumor.  In these cases, brain surgery is a relative good, because it is a good relative to them.  What would ordinarily be considered an evil is a good in these cases because undergoing an evil preserves a greater good, namely their lives.

The equivalent precept in Islam to the Aristotlean-Thomistic “do good and avoid evil” is to command the good, and to forbid evil.  Though roughly similar rhetorically, the Islamic formulation of the first principle of natural law leads to radically different conclusions.

In the first place, there is obviously nothing in the Islamic formulation that requires that the person commanding and forbidding actually to do good and avoid evil himself.

A master commanding his servants to work is under no obligation to work himself.  At best, between absolute and relative good, the master can command that absolute good be done because he has knowledge of human nature, but he cannot command that relative good be done when he does not know what is good relative to a particular individual.  The master could easily deny a servant needed brain surgery by requiring the servant instead to tend to the relative goods of the master.

Islam, by commanding rather than doing, makes a complete hash of the relative goods understanding of natural law.  But what about the absolute good understanding?

Islam has a peculiar understanding of what is absolutely good.  Islam is incapable of looking at human beings from outside of its theological ontology.  In Islam, what is absolutely good is for the world and the human beings in it to submit to Islam and to Allah.  Knowledge of the Koran and the Hadiths is all one really requires; all other knowledge not supportive of this is superfluous or dangerous.  Hence the absolute good of knowledge has severe limits in the Islamic understanding.  Trying something new, or innovating, is frowned upon in Islam as being dangerous, and this outlook is crippling of the pursuit of knowledge and the cultivation of the intellect of Muslims.  Knowledge, of any kind, ought to be an absolute good, and in Islam it is not.

Islam also makes a clear and sharp distinction between “believers” and “infidels” in respect of human condition.  There is no equality possible between them, and hence what is good for a believer may need to be denied to an infidel if the Islamic order is to be preserved.  There is no innate equality of human beings in the eyes of “Allah” as there is in Christianity.  There is no sense of reciprocal duties in virtue of the likeness of the specific natures and the identity of the ends of human beings in Islam, as there is in Christianity and secular humanism.  There may be reciprocal duties between two believers, but not between believer and infidel.  Hence, there is nothing in Islam which forbids the injuring of the moral dignity or forbidding the lawful exercise of the free will of an infidel.  And Islamic law is often contrived to deny choice to the free will of the infidel.

Because there is no equivalent in Islam to the precept of loving one’s neighbor, it is perfectly moral in Islam to do violence to the intellects of others by deceit, or of leading others (particularly infidels) into error.

Hence, Islam makes a hash of the concept of absolute good by its arbitrary division of humanity into believers and infidels, and by the precept for Muslims to command rather than to do.

For more evidence of the hash Islam has made of natural law, consider the oft-quoted precept of Islam that to kill one human being is as to kill the entire human race.  Superficially, this may sound like moral condemnation of the act of killing.  Many Muslims act as if it did.  But the merest analysis of the statement shows that it is intellectually empty.

If to kill one person is as to kill all humanity, what then is the evil in killing all humanity?  The only possible answer is that it is equal in evil to killing one person.  The moral inflation of an evil results in a circular argument.  There is nothing but show in the precept that to kill one is as if to kill all humanity.  Therefore, it can offer no rational guidance on the subject of killing, as Aristotlean-Thomistic philosophy can.

The apparent correlation between the western concept “doing good and avoiding evil” and the Islamic concept of “commanding good and forbidding evil” is superficial, and given the different ontological assumptions results in radically different conclusions.

Islam has no “natural law” in the sense understood by the west because Islam cannot look upon human beings as such; it can only look upon them as being either believers or infidels.

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An Advisory about Google Friend

Vincent J. Curtis

29 Dec 2015




We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they’ll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow.

The Temptation of Jesus

Vincent J. Curtis

27 Dec 2015

A discursive analysis of the temptation of Jesus by the devil and of the revelations to Mohammed.

From the Gospel according to Luke, Ch 4:

 ⁵ And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, ⁶ and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. ⁷ If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”

From Pope Benedict XVI’s lecture at Regensburg:

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.[1] It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor.[2]

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”[3] The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".[4]

Let us pull together the premises these passages offer, and combine them later with premises from Natural Theology:

From Luke we learn that the devil offered Jesus all the authority and the glory of all the kingdoms of the world that ever will be if only Jesus worshipped him.  The devil informed Jesus that all the authority and glory of all the kingdoms of the world have been delivered to him, and he could give it to whom he will.

From the passage quoted from Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg lecture, our attention is brought to the observations of Emperor Manuel II Paleologus, who complained that anything original to Mohammed was evil and inhuman, citing in particular the spreading of the Islamic belief by the sword and by threatening people with death if they did not convert to Islam.

From Natural Theology we learn that truth, being and the good are three perspectives of the same thing, and that evil is the privation of good.  Since evil is the privation of good, nothing can be completely evil for if it were completely deprived of good, it would be completely deprived of being, and thus be nothing.  Therefore, since the devil exists, he must have some good about him.  The devil cannot be completely evil.  He was created by God.  Hence it must be possible for there to be some good in the work of the devil.

It also follows from the equivalency of truth, being, and the good that evil is the privation of truth.  Work that is evil is void of truth.  The truth of the devil is in his being.

What was the good in the devil’s temptation of Jesus?  In the case of the temptation of Jesus, the devil’s work proved that Jesus could resist the temptation of the devil even in a time of great physical distress, having just fasted for 40 days and 40 nights in the desert.  He was thus ready for His ministry, which was to culminate with his death on the cross.

We also learn from Natural Theology that God alone can work miracles.  Angels of themselves cannot work true miracles; they can do extraordinary things, but only those that are preternatural, not supernatural.  A miracle is defined as a “sensible” work, because the change which it implies must be perceptible by the senses.  Often, God’s servants are intercessors or instruments.

According to Islamic history, an angel whispered to Mohammed the sentences which ultimately became the Koran.  No sensible apparitions or sounds of this angel were ever seen or heard by others, except preternaturally by Mohammed.  The angel, who called himself Gabriel, said that he was from Allah and that the sentences being imparted to Mohammed were those of Allah himself.  Hence the Koran is held to be a sacred thing in its own right since it contains the sentences of Allah as said by Gabriel to Mohammed.  These sentences are in the high Arabic language of the 7^th century.  (A Koran written in English is not considered to be a sacred book by Islam since high Arabic of the 7^th century is the language in which Gabriel spoke to Mohammed, not English of the 21^st.)

Mohammed and his followers got the idea that it was their mission to bring the world into submission to Allah, the God they worshipped, and jihad was to be the means if verbal persuasion failed.  Famously, and as seeming proof of the favor of Allah, jihad in the first few decades after the death of Mohammed was shockingly successful in bringing territories under the dominion of Islam.

Recall from an earlier posting that Muslims reject the law of non-contradiction, and of Hellenic reasoning in general.  The possibility that “Gabriel” may not have been who he said he was has never been seriously entertained by Muslims.  A believer in philosophic realism would observe that the prima facie evidence is that, at best, the sentences in the Koran were those that Mohammed said Gabriel spoke.  Hence there is no evidence beyond the confidence that Mohammed had in the angel who spoke to him that the sentences imparted by “Gabriel” to him were in fact the sentences of Allah.

Now, the devil is an angel, a fallen angel, but an angel nevertheless; and therefore is capable of preternatural acts.  From earlier postings we know that the Islamic conception of Allah is of a being not capable of being the creator of the universe.  Allah lacks aseity.  Angels lack aseity. The devil offered Jesus all the authority and glory of all the kingdoms of the world, claiming they had been delivered to him and were his to give.  He would give these to Jesus if He but worshipped him.  The Islamic mission is to dominate the world, to cause the world to submit to Allah in the first instance and to worship him.  In the temporal realm, the benefit of this political arrangement is that all the authority and glory of the world belongs to Islam, and Muslims participate in this authority and glory.  And thus there appears a parallel to the devil’s offer to Jesus, as if the devil were attempting to reclaim through Islam that which had been delivered to him and was his to give.  (By his works ye shall know him.)

In the spiritual realm, life after death for a Muslim consists in the satisfaction of carnal desires, the company of the 72 virgins and all that.  The Muslim afterlife is one of eternal orgasm, pleasure of the body.  Carnal desires are those which human beings share with the lower animals, and the satisfaction of illicit carnal desires are often said to be the kind of temptation offered by the devil.  These are worldly temptations.  On the other hand, Christianity offers the beatific vision, the total satisfaction of the intellect, the intellect being that aspect of human beings not in common with the lower animals.  The beatific vision has no equivalence in this world.  The intellect is that part of the human soul that survives after death.

Natural Theology would question the need for Muslims to bring the world under their domination in order to make the world submit to Allah.  If Allah wanted the submission of the world, with his supernatural power to work miracles he could do it himself unaided and without the need for violence and force and the shedding of the blood of his creatures.

All this evidence seems to point to the devil himself doing the whispering as “Gabriel,” and that Allah is in fact the devil.  Muslims worship Allah, and it is their project to seize the authority and glory of all the kingdoms of the world and offer it to Allah.  This is what the Byzantine Emperor was driving at when he observed that whatever Mohammed brought to the world that was new was evil and inhuman, and hence was not the work of God.

Not everything the devil does is evil for complete evil cannot exist.  Thus to find some good in Islam is not conclusive disproof that Islam is ultimately the work of the devil.

A case is thus to be made that Islam is the work of the devil, and the evidence is seen in the evil brought into the world by Islam as well as in its aims.  The aim of Islam is parallel to what the devil offered Jesus, and the promise to Muslims for worshipping Allah and doing his work is participation in the authority and glory of this world.

It must be pointed out that the thesis that Islam is a work of the devil and that Allah is in fact the devil is a minority view, for as recently as 1964 in Lumen Gentium Pope Paul VI held that Islam, being an Abrahamic religion, its conception of God was close enough to the Christian that it could be said that Muslims and Christians adored the one and merciful God.  It is widely held in Protestant theological circles, on the other hand, that Allah is merely an idol.  Idols are evil because idols are void of truth, void of being, and therefore of the good.  If Allah is the devil, Allah is not void of being or of the truth of his being; and being a creature of God, Allah as the devil must possess some good.  The Protestant conception of Allah may have missed something.

Nevertheless, in defense of the thesis offered above, Pope Paul VI had many temporal, ecclesiastical and political reasons for offering the opinion that Christians and Muslims worship the one and merciful God.

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I am indebted to Mr. David French of National Review for his article of Dec 18, 2015, entitled “Christians and Muslims Do Not Worship the Same God.”  That interesting work suggested the study presented above.

Islamophobia and Christophobia

Vincent J. Curtis

25 Dec 2015

Apologists for Islamic radicalism and supremacism often level the charge of Islamophobia.  This charge is employed to discredit the target of the accusation.  So effective these days is the mere accusation, that a person accused of Islamophobia is discredited without any form of due process or investigation into the validity of the charge.  What is practically never observed is the Christophobia inherent in Islam.

Simply put, Muslims are fearful of letting Jesus into their lives.

This ought to be strange, given that Islam regards Jesus as a prophet, and, in their eyes, a Muslim himself.  Muslims deny the divinity of Jesus, and regard the teachings and example of Mohammed as superseding those of Jesus, who preceded him.  They ought to have nothing to fear, yet Muslims do not let Jesus into their lives.

Why should this be so?

It is because they know that if they let Jesus into their lives they will cease to be Muslim.  Muslims have a well-known death-pact with each other.  In Islamic eyes, an apostate of Islam deserves death, and is liable to be killed by any Muslim.  Such a pact is a sign of the weakness of the idea.

In Christian history, heretics were met in the last instance by excommunication, that is, adherents of the heresy were read out of the church.  Heretics and apostates were denied the sacraments and other comforts of the Church, but murder never formed a part of the punishment for leaving the Church or for holding heretical views.

Muslims have a well-founded fear of letting Jesus into their lives.  They fear being murdered by other Muslims if they do so, a means of discipline not regarded as necessary in the Christian tradition.

Islam is inherently Christophobic.  Since it denies the divinity of Jesus, Islam could be said to be the ultimate Christian heresy.   A Muslim who lets Jesus into his life is liable to see through the heresy and thereby cease to be Muslim.  For Islam to sustain itself, it must be Christophobic and enforce a reciprocal death-pact among Muslims.

Next time you hear the charge of Islamophobia being leveled, keep in mind that the accuser might well be a Christophobe.

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Islam and Natural Theology

Vincent J. Curtis

23 Dec 2015

In Pope Benedict XVI’s famous speech at Regensburg, the following passage occurs:

“The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature.[5] The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.[6] Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.[7]”

The thrust of the argument that Pope Benedict made at Regensburg is uncontroversial in the Catholic tradition.  His point was to place religion on the same intellectual basis as science is, and to argue that the nature of God is the logos, that is, the word and reason.  This fact of logos is what makes God comprehensible, however imperfectly, to man.  In the passage above, he contrasted the orthodox Christian position in respect of religion with that of Islam.

Islam, Benedict argues, rejects Hellenic reasoning; that is, it does not accept the Law of Non-Contradiction.  Islam believes that Allah is transcendent, meaning that Allah is capable of contradicting himself and is entirely incomprehensible to man.  In his Regensburg speech, Benedict subtly invites the leading lights of Islam to debate religious matters on the basis of reason.  This they cannot do for by trying to reason with Benedict they would run into the Law of Non-Contradiction, which they must reject or be destroyed by it.  Perhaps Benedict was guilty of taunting the believers in Islam, and the fearsome rioting and violence against Christians around the world that followed the speech was the Islamic reply to that taunt.

Natural theology is that part of philosophy which treats of the traits of God and His attributes, as far as they can be known by reason.  Natural theology is divided into three principal parts: the first treats of the existence and unity of God, the second treats of the attributes of God in Himself; the third treats of the attributes of God in relation to the world or to his creatures.  Natural Theology is distinct from Sacred Theology in that the former is reason based on the sensible, while the latter is reason based on divine revelation.

Islam, as Benedict observed, must reject that a Natural Theology is possible.  On their view, Allah is not susceptible of analysis, and moreover is not bound by the laws of logic, in particular of the law of non-contradiction.  Therefore, if Allah exhibits attributes, there is no reason why these attributes cannot be different at a different time; and lacking any necessary consistency, divine attributes are not deducible by human reason.  (We shall see the consequences of this position below.)

Nevertheless, Muslims claim to know the mind of Allah all the time.  For example, Allah is described as “The Compassionate,” and “The Merciful.”  At various times in history Muslims attributed their military successes and failures to the favor or disfavor in which Allah held the Ummah.  Their early military successes Muslims hold to be proof of the truth of their faith and the favor in which they were held by Allah.  Muslims believe that Allah ought to favor them over all others in the world because they are the bearers of his last word.  As Benedict would point out, these incoherencies are possible because Islam rejects the law of non-contradiction.

Regardless of whether one is atheist or Christian, there is no disputing that Natural Theology is a rational discipline whose findings represent metaphysical demonstrations.  It is from Natural Theology that come the proofs of the existence of a monotheist God, as well as the attributes, both absolute and relative to man, that God must possess, expressed in ways that finite minds can understand.  From Natural Theology we gain an understanding of why the universe possesses the order that it does, and why it persists in existence.  Without these explanations, the order seen in the universe and the persistence of the universe in existence are completely mysterious.  Without the explanations of Natural Theology, the order and persistence of the universe remain brute facts without explanation.

Natural Theology says that the divine attributes are not known by man directly, but man can attain to a knowledge of them from the perfections which he discovers in creatures.  Here are a few of the findings of the necessary characteristics of God as derived by Natural Theology:

Aseity.  Aseity is the attribute by which God is of Himself or from Himself.  It is the primitive attribute from which Natural Theology can deduce all the others.

God is immutable, that is, His perfections can neither be increased nor diminished; He is subject to no alteration or change.  [From this perspective it follows that the Islamic belief that Allah is capable of change must be a projection of the limitations of the human mind upon the attributes of Allah.]

God is immense, that is, He is in His essence present to all things.  Since God is infinite or without limits, he is everywhere infinitely – in Himself, in the world, and even outside the world- in that He can fill all possible space extended ad infinitum, without the least circumspection of His being.

God knows Himself perfectly; He knows all things outside Himself, all future contingent and possible things.  It is this eternal and unchangeable affirmation of Himself that constitutes truth in itself, absolute and essential truth, the prototype and supreme norm of all truth.  God has a perfect knowledge of all real beings, because it is He who created them with their essences and perfections.  Since God by His knowledge is the cause of all things, His knowledge and His power have the same extent; and since He is the cause of all that exists in every individual, it follows that His knowledge embraces all beings also in their individuality.

God has a perfect will; he loves himself necessarily, all else He loves freely.  As it enters into the perfection of the will to communicate the good which one possesses, so it is consonant with the divine goodness to be in some way diffusive of itself to others.  But God does not will this absolutely and necessarily, because, being infinitely perfect, He needs nothing external to himself; since God’s knowledge is infinite, and therefore more perfect knowledge or “a fuller consideration of the matter and circumstances” as motives of repeal, is an utter impossibility.

God is omnipotent, that is, He can do every thing that does not imply a contradiction.

God being infinitely perfect, is eminently sufficient for Himself.  Yet it was fitting His goodness that others, viz, creatures, participate in His perfections; and therefore he created, that is, He drew out of nothing all that exists.

God loves all existing creatures, because they are good and come from Him; and He loves them the more the better they are, for they are better simply because God wills them to have more good.  With God, it is His love that is the cause of their existence and of the measure of goodness that He imparts to them.

(From these it also follows that:

Satan owes his existence to the action of God.)

The act of creation is an essentially free act of the divine will.  As God is eminently sufficient for Himself, he is in this act bound by no necessity, whether external or internal.  To hold that God made the world not by an act of His free will but from an irresistible impulse, is virtually to hold that God does not suffice for Himself, that He is not infinite, that he is not God.

The end which God proposes to Himself in creating the world is the manifestation of his perfections, or His own glory.  God, being infinite wisdom, must have had an end in the act of creation, and this end must be the manifestation of Himself and His perfections, particularly His power, His wisdom, and His goodness.  But since God is infinite, he can acquire nothing further for Himself, and the glory that accrues to Him from creation is purely accidental and extrinsic.

God is the first cause of all the beings of the universe, since He has given them existence by creating them; therefore they cannot cease to depend on Him for their existence; and they continue to exist only so long as he preserve it to them.

Although God can annihilate creatures, yet it is certain that he will never annihilate even one of them.  The gifts of God are without repentance, and having willed to give being to creatures, God, in a sense, owes it to His wisdom, Him immutability, and His glory, to preserve them.

If God does not exist, there is no longer good or evil, man may follow at will his most perverse inclinations, society is without foundation, and the law of might alone prevails.  History, besides, bears witness that all the epochs of atheism have been epochs of intellectual debasement, of moral corruption, and of great social upheavals.

If the above seems to savor of Christian beliefs it is because of the close connection between Hellenic reasoning and Christian revelation that developed in Christianity practically from the beginning of the Church.  (A criticism leveled at the Roman Catholic Church is that it is a religion conditioned by philosophy.)  The first discovery of a rational proof of the existence of a monotheist God was made not made by a Christian, but by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, and the exposition of that discovery forms the last third of his work Metaphysics.  Benedict holds that the early encounter of Christian revelation and Hellenic reasoning was not “by chance.”

On analysis, the Islamic belief of the absolute transcendence of the being they call Allah necessarily implies that Allah is less than the being of absolute perfection, simplicity, power, love, wisdom, knowledge, immensity, and so forth of the God discovered by Natural Theology.  The being that Islam calls Allah lacks “aseity,” and because the being Islam calls Allah lacks aseity it is possible for this being to be self-contradictory, to be inconsistent, to change his mind, to play favorites among his creatures, to love some and to call that others be killed, and so forth.  In short, while undoubtedly powerful, Allah, in the Islamic belief, seems to display some of the weaknesses of man.  The consequence of imputing absolute transcendence to Allah, to make him capable of contradiction, is to render him not more powerful, but less powerful than the God of Christian belief.  Islamic scholars have never had to address this point, nor are they capable of addressing it because they reject the law of self-contradiction in respect of matters of religion.  The Muslim response, as was seen after Benedict’s Regensburg speech, was to react with violence rather than with counter-argument.

The question then arises, if Allah really exists, who could he be?

Natural Theology does not provide an answer to that question.  The answer to that question may lie in another medieval intellectual discipline.

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Values in a Time of Upheaval

Book Review

Author: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)

Published by: Crossroad Publishing, New York, 2005.

ISBN 10: 0-8245-2372-3

Hardcover, 172 pages

$19.95

Reviewed by: Vincent J. Curtis                                              23 November 2006

Before he was elevated Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was a university professor and world-class theologian, and for over twenty years under Pope John Paul II the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  He continued to write learned papers and deliver lectures in philosophical theology even as his responsibilities within the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church grew.  The book Values in a Time of Upheaval is a collection of his essays and lectures that he wrote and delivered between 2001 and 2005.  No one who was familiar with the contents of this book would have been surprised either with the tone or the content of Pope Benedict XVI’s now famous lecture at the University of Regensburg.

Values is divided into three parts.  The first part is entitled, "What Rules Should Guide Our Conduct: Politics and Morality."  The second section is called, "Responsibility for Peace."  The last is concerned with the question, "What is Europe: Foundations and Perspectives."

If one can read the work of Christopher Hitchens for delight, one absorbs the writing of Joseph Ratzinger for profit.  Values is a thoughtful read, and one or two essays at a time of the ten in the book is an adequate pace at which to take in his thinking.

Unlike Hitchens, who writes on religion from the perspective of a committed atheist, Ratzinger writes from the perspective of a person who believes in God and who is open to religion, but is not committed to either proposition on the basis of faith alone.  So pure is his intellectualism that the Pope does not write learned papers on philosophical theology from the perspective of a committed Catholic.  Such an openness to doubt makes Ratzinger’s analysis and conclusions that much more respectable.  One can disagree with his analysis and conclusions, but one cannot dismiss them out of hand as the work of a committed Catholic.

The two most important themes in this book and in the Regensburg address are the diminishing role of reason in the world and the Christian nature of Europe.  The work of Aristotle established that what sets man apart from all other animals is his capacity for reason.  Man is most distinctively man when he employs his faculty of reason.  Ratzinger makes the contrary point that man is diminished as the sphere of reason is diminished.  Religion too, he argues, is subject to reason, and is not and should not be merely an expression of belief or emotion.

 

This leads to his famous point that God is logos, a Greek word meaning both ‘word’ and ‘reason’ and from which the English word logic is derived.  The existence of science shows that the universe is governed by a logos, and if the nature of God is logos then man is able to understand God, as well as the universe, through his faculty of reason.  Conversely, an all-powerful God whose nature was not logos could not be understood at all by man.

The point on the nature of God has a broad and far-reaching application to the conflict between Islam and the West, and was the alleged basis of the rioting that followed the Regensburg lecture.

Of direct and immediate concern is the last section on the identity of Europe, and the prospective role of Turkey in the European Union.

Ratzinger makes the point that the identity of modern Europe is fundamentally Christian.  Modern Europe began after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and following the mass migration of peoples into Europe and the spread of Christianity.  The successes of militant Islam beginning in the Seventh century confined Christendom largely to the geographical area now known as Europe, until the discovery of America.  Today, most Europeans would claim to be humanists, not Christian, yet the humanism of Europe grew upon Christian roots, Ratzinger argues.  Today, Europe is as much a consciousness as it is a loosely defined geographical reference.  And Europe has a mission in the world, a service to which the rest of the world is entitled, Ratzinger believes.

That mission and service is in giving witness to human dignity and human rights, and in upholding monogamous marriage as the basic structure of the relationship between a man and a woman and as the cell for the construction of civic society, Ratzinger says.  Out of these propositions can be founded a non-religious basis for supporting conclusions reached by the Catholic Church on abortion, cloning, artificial insemination, organ donation, cohabitation, divorce, and homosexual partnerships.

Islam is fundamentally at odds with Christianity, and with the humanism that has Christianity as its root, Ratzinger believes.  A Muslim community is not an absorbable minority in a tolerant and pluralistic European society.  Thus it is dangerous to Europe and to the mission Europe has in the world for it to take in large numbers of Muslims, and by extension to admit Turkey to the European Union, with its few restrictions on travel and immigration.  Ratzinger is by no means a social Darwinist, nor can he be given his belief in the “mission of Europe”.

After the Regensburg lecture, it is apparent that Values contains the main themes of Benedict’s papacy.  These themes will have a force in the near future because they are not couched as strictly matters of Christian faith, but resonate with a reason all on their own, and because they are relevant to political matters today.

Committed atheists who delight in their intellectualism, like Christopher Hitchens, should welcome debate with a Pope who is prepared to meet them on their own ground and engage them with their choice of weapons.  They will find scorn alone to be unavailing and insufficient.

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It was no blunder: Analysis of the Regensburg lecture by Pope Benedict XVI

By Vincent J. Curtis                                                                   22 September 2006

Journalists the world over ought to take a bow over the violence in the Muslim world that was sparked by their reporting, or misreporting, of the Pope Benedict’s address at the University of Regensburg.  Oh sure, Benedict was making his points.  But if violence is the appropriate response to a papal observation, then scientists and philosophers in the western world have more cause to burn down churches than Muslims do on the basis of what Benedict said.

The subject of Benedict’s lecture was the reduction of the realm to which reason is acceptably applied.  He believes that man is diminished by denying that reason can be applied to matters of faith, and argues that a theology grounded in biblical faith can make important contributions to the debates of our times.

It would be a mistake to believe that the lecture was some kind of blunder, that had the Pope known that Muslims around the world would riot over his words he would not have said them.  This was not a lecture that would have been better prepared by a politically attuned committee of priestly speech writers.  Given his previous career as a theological philosopher, Benedict delivered the world a statement that could be the intended theme of his papacy.

The irrational and disproportionate response by Muslims around the world to his words confirms his essential point, that man is diminished by failing to act with reason.  And journalists need to learn that the method of the sound bite and the ‘gotcha’ quote is not an appropriate way of covering a papal address.  It is not the Pope who is wet behind the ears; it is journalists who have to raise their intellectual game.

Benedict expressed regret at the outrageous violence his words sparked, but he has not withdrawn what he said.

Benedict spoke at length about the incorporation of Hellenic reasoning and philosophical tradition into the Christian faith very early in the Church’s beginning.  He hints that this was no accident, for God himself is logos.  The Greek word logos means ‘word’ or ‘reason’, and from it comes the English word ‘logic.’  The first sentence of the Gospel of John reads, “In the beginning was the logos,” which is translated into English as the “Word.”  John continues, “and the logos is God.”

From its earliest days the Church employed reason to resolve theological disputes and to better understand the meaning of the beliefs it holds.  Benedict argues that it is only because the nature of God is logos that man is able to understand God, however imperfectly, and follow his will.

By extension, a God that were transcendent would be capable of self-contradiction and would therefore be incapable of being understood by man.  Faith would be reduced to fatalism.

When Benedict spoke of the de-Hellenization of faith, he means that reason is wrongly being taken out of faith as it is wrongly being taken out of a related matter of thought, ethics.  The impulse behind this de-Hellenization comes from false expectations that originated out the development of science, from the false belief that the Hellenic character of the exposition of the faith reflects a cultural bias, and the false belief of Protestant reformers that Christian faith was totally conditioned by philosophy, and the Word was being presented merely as one element in an overarching philosophical system.  Benedict argues that Man is diminished by a reduction in the scope of reason, especially in matters of faith.

What Benedict is talking about – the denial that there can be rational truth in faith - is reflected in similar denials about truth in ethics and philosophy.  Mortimer J. Adler, in his book The Four Conditions of Philosophy, fought a similar battle to the one Benedict is fighting in his lecture.  Rational truth does exist in ethics and philosophy, Adler showed, and Benedict argues that rational truth must in faith also, for God is logos.

Benedict’s point to the Muslims is this.  A belief that God is transcendent is untenable.  Only by reason is man capable of understanding God.  That man is capable of reason is because God wants us to understand him, and reason is God’s nature.  Violence is contrary to reason, and therefore of God’s nature, especially in matters of faith.  For there to be dialog instead of violence in the world, it has to be accepted that God acts with logos.

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Canada Seeks Applause for doing Global Warming Penance

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Dec 2015

The Hamilton Spectator has been more than usually childish of late, since, I guess, the election of Justin Trudeau.  Their enthusiasm for the Global Warming summit in Paris (COP21) has resembled that of a kindergarten teacher towards her students.  A few simple facts pour cold water on the big push for all Canadians to get behind the Global Warming hype.

This newspaper and others have been full of hope and arrant nonsense concerning the upcoming Paris conference on Global Warming.  In particular, a great amount of ink has been spilt in building up Canada’s participation and contributions to that meeting.

A few facts will show what a waste of time it is for Canada to invest itself in the Global Warming solution.

According to readily available sources, the world output of carbon dioxide in 2013 amounted to 35.3 billion metric tons.  Of this, China contributed 10.3 billion, the United States 5.3 billion, the European Union 3.8 billion, and India 2.1 billion metric tons.  Canada’s contribution was 0.55 billion metric tons, a negligible amount.

Since Canada’s contribution to world carbon dioxide emissions is negligible, a 30 percent or 50 percent reduction of negligible is still negligible.  There is no point in beating ourselves up trying to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions when whatever we do is insignificant to the problem.

But what of the moral effect of Canada’s putting on sackcloth and ashes in penance even though our sins are venial?

The biggest contributor by far is China, whose carbon dioxide emissions have gone up since the Kyoto agreement of 1996.  The communist government of China is unmoved by shows of self-sacrifice and moral vanity by western countries like Canada.  That government needs to grow the Chinese economy by 10 percent per year, for their lives and survival of their party depend upon it.  The Chinese government is unconcerned about rising sea levels and the fate of the Maldives.  The Chinese people have a culture that is nearly 7,000 years old, and the Chinese people have survived war and pestilence and disease.  They will survive global warming, even if some others may not.

The solution to the problem of Global Warming, if there is one, lies primarily in decisions made in China and the United States.  The chirpings and chest-thumping of pipsqueaks like Canada are distractions from the real solution because we take attention away from the biggest sinners in the desire to receive the compliments of the world.

Whatever Canada does is Paris and afterwards concerning Global Warming is entirely symbolic.  What we do is negligible.  It is what China does that matters, and we should shut up and allow attention to be focused on the government in Beijing.

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The "readily available facts" referred to above came from the "UN Report on the Aggregate Effect of INDCS; Joint EU Research Center" and published in The Globe and Mail Report on Business section of the Saturday, Nov 28, 2015 edition.  You think Spectator editors would have read it, and recognize the veracity of the information proffered above.

Kevin D. Williamson of National Review has also recognized similarity to religion of Global Warming enthusiasts.  In a piece published on NRO on 1 Dec 15 entitled 'The West's Self-Destructive Global-Warming Penance', Williamson calls the global warming crusade a "strange exercise of Protestant virtue."  He speaks of "a question of virtue masquerading as a question of engineering."

Of course, the Spectator lacked the courage to publish this submission.

Being Pro-Aboriginal outweighs being Pro-science

Vincent J. Curtis

29 Nov 2015

RE:  Mom Regrets daughter’s chemo treatment.  The Hamilton Spectator, Nov 28, 2015, p A1

The story at reference contains a classic example of a clash of liberal pieties.  On the one hand, liberals boast of their progressive views on science, modernity, and of the need to keep up with the times.  Liberals condemn conservatives for being “anti-science” and otherwise backward whenever a conservative expresses skepticism about global warming, points out weaknesses in the theory of evolution, doubts the robustness of “evidence-based” decision making, or is leery of the testimony of alleged “experts.”

On the other hand, the liberal holds that everyone who is not a conservative white male is special.  Such as Aboriginals.

The story is a sympathetic portrayal of the feelings that an Aboriginal mother had about abandoning “traditional” Aboriginal treatments for cancer for chemotherapy in accordance with modern, scientific medicine.

Ontario Family Court Justice Gethin Edward gave the mother the right to treat her daughter’s cancer with “traditional healing”, but she later gave in under pressure from provincial officials.  “They weren’t satisfied with Judge Edward’s decision so I felt kind of coerced and I caved and I really regret the decision,” the mother was quoted as saying.

The result is that Ontario’s Ministry of Health gave Six Nations $75,000 to “find ways…to harmonize traditional healing and Western medicine.”  (How witchcraft was going to be harmonized with modern, scientific medicine was left unsaid, but it costs $75,000.)

Here we see the extreme solicitousness of liberals towards those whom they regard with condescension, without reference to the liberal position on science.  There is no science at all behind “traditional” Aboriginal “medicine” in the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and if the parents were Irish they would have charged with child abuse for preferring medicine men to medical doctors.  But to the liberal mind, Aboriginals are special and the rigors of scientific thinking cannot be expected to apply to them.

To be fair, a perfectly conservative interpretation of Justice Edward’s decision would be to let those whom liberals treat with condescension stew in their own juice.

Liberals think conservatives are evil because conservatives do not agree with the chop-logic of liberal thinking.  Liberals are no friend of the daughter.

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Ripped from the Headlines: What's old is new

Vincent J. Curtis

29 Nov 2015

The following was ripped from this week’s Hamilton Spectator:

“The first minister’s meeting is not expected to produce any new national target for reducing [carbon] emissions or policies for achieving it.  It is aimed more at demonstrating a new tone….”

[Canada an environmental pariah no longer.  The Hamilton Spectator, Nov 24, 2016, p A10]

“The Liberal government revealed Tuesday now it’s approaching resettlement of 25,000 Syrian refugees in the coming months, a process that’s going to take longer and cost more than originally planned.”

[Liberals push back deadline on Syrian Response.  The Hamilton Spectator, Nov 25, 2015, p A1]

“Ontario’s long-term strategy to fight climate change came Tuesday with lofty visions, scant details, and an accusation of a politically motivated release.  The strategy….offers little new information about the Liberal government’s specific goals or how it plans to achieve them….’What we are announcing today is not the chapter and verse and details of the five-year strategy, it’s not the final design features of the cap-and-trade system…’said Premier Kathleen Wynne…Wynne acknowledged Tuesday there will be some cost to consumers…’There will be programs that will support people as they go through this transition…we just haven’t designed exactly what those programs will look like…”

[Ontario roughs out climate change plan.  The Hamilton Spectator, Nov 25, 2015, pA10]

“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attempted to make a virtue of the hottest domestic issue on his plate Wednesday, using the international stage to pitch the Liberal government’s Syrians refugee settlement plan as a shining global example.”

[Trudeau promotes ‘inclusive diversity’ while touting lift of Syrian refugees.  The Hamilton Spectator, Nov 26, 2015, p A9.]

“Ontario’s Liberal government says it is now reconsidering medical marijuana exemptions to e-cigarette rules that are so new they haven’t even technically come into effect...”

[Province reconsidering marijuana exemptions.  The Hamilton Spectator, Nov. 27, 2015, p A11]

“Quebec’s health and justice ministers are saying they will forge ahead with the province’s right-to-die legislation…”

[Province moves of right-to-die legislation.  The Hamilton Spectator, Nov 27, 2015, ]

“LCBO going to pot not a bad idea.”  The Hamilton Spectator lead editorial, Nov 27, 2015, p A14

“It’s not often a politician gets accolades for breaking an election promise, but somehow Justin Trudeau to just that…”

[Sometimes breaking a promise gets is right.  The Hamilton Spectator editorial, Nov 27, 2015.]

It didn’t take long under Trudeau the Younger for the Liberal party’s customs of incompetence and mismanagement to return and overwhelm all levels of government.  Or for a sycophantic press to re-emerge.

The business of medical marijuana will be enacted despite there being no serious scientific evidence of its benefits.  However, those who voted Liberal will be able to self-medicate themselves into oblivion as the pain of Liberal party misrule gets worse.

And those whose pain gets too much to bear shouldn’t don’t worry.  An assisted-suicide law is coming down the pike!

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The Census Long Form: Celebrate Coercion as Pro-Science

Vincent J. Curtis

19 Nov 2015

You have to hand to the Hamilton Spectator, they are unabashedly elitist.  In an editorial of this date, the Spectator offered that the "Long-form census is annoying but necessary."  The editorial proclaimed, "...the long-form census is the best tool we have to make evidence-based, people-centric public policy decisions.  Canada Pension Plan, employment insurance, Old Age Security, public transit, public health investment, education and social service - these are just a few of the areas benefiting from the best possible data.  Lack of information means deteriorating data, and inadequate data means bad decisions....There is really no credible, logical argument against the benefits of better data.  And yet a sizable percentage of us remain adamantly opposed to the mandatory census, which explains why the Harper government's decision was unpopular in the academic, science, and public policy world, but quite the opposite in the land of broader public opinion....the sad result of [Harper's] decision is all the data we would have had for the decade in between is gone. We don't get another chance at it.  That's tragic."

Winston S. Churchill once remarked that, "in a democracy you must occasionally defer to the wishes of other people."

The Spectator is saying that you stupid people who pay for this democracy should shut up and do what your betters tell you to do, because you don't know what's good for you.  The real folly of the piece lies in the assumption that better data leads to better decisions.  This is a dialectical argument, which means that common sense leads us to accept that it is generally true.  But it ain't always so.  The assumption does not conceive that there may be occasions when the democratic majority don't want the government to be making certain kinds of decisions at all, and depriving it of data is a means of preventing it from doing so.  One thing the government can't do is sell the data to private parties for profit, very detailed marketing data that the private parties cannot get cheaply in any other way.

Anyhow, the Spectator sides with those who think the long-form census with the power of government coercion behind it is just dandy and there are no respectable arguments on the other side.

Or maybe there are:

The Spectator can hardly be regarded as a defender of Canadian freedoms.  Its justification of the long form census is the case in point.

Several years ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper got himself condemned as being anti-science over the long form census.  Harper moved to protect Canadians from bureaucrats whom many thought abused the coercive powers granted to them by the government.  These bureaucrats asked too many intrusive questions concerning citizens’ private lives that many people thought the government had no business asking about.  The bureaucrats believed that because Canadians answered the questions under threat of fines and imprisonment, they would get truthful answers.  Supporters of limited government were concerned about the scope of the long form census, and the Conservative government responded in accordance with those beliefs.  It limited the scope, and deprived the bureaucrats of the comfort of believing that coercive power meant truth in answering.  Depriving bureaucrats of their coercive power was condemned as “anti-science.”

I believe in limited government.  I oppose tax increases and new government expenditures because they increase the power of government.  The presumption of the intrusive long form census is that the government will employ power to implement decisions that, in new and creative ways, increase the power and scope of government based upon the results of that census.  The Liberal party believes in a large and powerful government, and so it naturally re-introduced the long form census, and will likely make it punishable not to fully answer it.

One would think that re-imposing coercion would be celebrated as being “pro-science.”   It would be foolish, however, to think so.  While statistics is a science, sociology is not, and the products of the science are going to be fed into a non-science to produce government policy.  As polling firms are now discovering, private citizens no longer feel compelled to tell the truth to pollsters, with the result that polling numbers are skewed and useless.  People may come to realize that the likelihood of their actually being punished by submitted false information on the long-form census is negligible, and might just spoof the census for the joy of being mischievous.

Successful democratic government requires the consent and cooperation of the people.  The new Trudeau government would be wise to consider the decision Stephen Harper made in respect of the census before it gets too presumptuous about its mandate to govern.

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Choose the Christians

Vincent J. Curtis

17 Nov 2015

A couple of months ago I argued among friends that if we are going to take in 25,000 Syrian refugees quickly, we should select Christian families.  First, the Christians are the ones most persecuted, and families are the most in need.  They are also the ones most likely to be peaceable.  What we should not do is take in large numbers of single, young men. That would be asking for trouble, since the ability to vet these people is practically non-existent.

The Hamilton Spectator, in its inimitable way, cares nothing about the opinions of those who want to be careful about this.  In fact, polls show that Quebecers are the most worried about taking in large numbers of Muslim refugees in the wake of the attacks this year in Paris.  The Spectator is in the position of accusing French Quebecers of being racist Islamophobes because of their empathy for their cultural and linguistic kinsmen in France.  For the sake of utter foreigners, The Spectator condemns our French fellow-countrymen: well done Spectator!

I put the case briefly before the Spectator, as below.  Of course, the Spectator launched editorials, some packaged as news stories, condemning the idea that we should be careful about admitting large numbers of young, single Muslim males, or of using selection criteria of any kind.

You would think that given the racism and sexism rampant on university campuses these days, and the condemnation of "white, male privilege," the Spectator might be sensitive to the concern about bringing in large numbers of young, single males from Syria who have extremely sexist attitudes and a high sense of privilege.  Apparently not.  The compartmentalization of Politically Correct thinking is truly a thing to behold.  It keeps modern liberalism from becoming aware of its plentiful self-contractions.

The opinions expressed below have now become practically self-evident truths among right-thinking individuals and political parties south of the border.



Justin Trudeau can save himself and Canada a lot of trouble without having to debunk any “myths” about the dangerous refugee.

All he has to do is select his 25,000 Syrian refugees from among Christian families, and by families I mean Mom and Dad and children.

Why Christian?  There are two simple reasons.  The first is that it is the Christians who are having their heads chopped off by ISIS.  Secondly, and most important, there are no Christians working for ISIS or any other Islamist terror group.

Why families?  Because they are the most in need.

Picking 25,000 “Syrian” “refugees” from among the millions of displaced persons in the Middle East and in Europe should be easy and fast.  Show the Canadian diplomat your Syrian passport, declare that one is a Christian, prove it by making the sign of the cross, and you get your visa issued on the spot.  All 25,000 could be chosen and in Canada by Christmas.  The Canadian diplomats could begin combing the refugee camps immediately.

As they say in Paris these days, “Voila.”
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Whoring Canada for the sake of Moral Vanity

Vincent J. Curtis

18 Nov 2015

The Hamilton Spectator's normally sound editorial cartoonist, Graeme Mackay stepped in it today by drawing a cartoon that shows Canadians like myself trying to frighten away a boatload of Muslim refugees from Canada's shore.  This cartoon follows the Spectator editorial policy of supporting Islam regardless of circumstances and of making ad hominem attacks against those who disagree with them.  In addition to this cartoon, the Spectator republished as a news story an editorial written by Toronto Star reporter Amal Ahmed Aibaz.  In the story, Aibez, who is an Egyptian immigrant to Canada and who wears a hijab, relates a incident in which a woman accosted her in a washroom and told her to remove her hijab.  The story was headlined, "Whoa, because I wear a hijab, I'm a terrorist?  I can't even kill a spider."

My comments are below:

Today’s editorial cartoon by Graeme Mackay illustrates once again the failure of the Spectator to put a cogent argument.  The cartoon shows a life raft full of frightened women and children coming to land on Canada’s shore.  On the shore are raging rednecks frightening these people and demanding that they leave.

If the cartoon were at all accurate, the life raft would be full of young, military-aged men, not women and children.  The shore they would be landing on would be Greek or Italian.  If a life raft full of Muslim women and children were to turn up on Canada’s shore, having crossed the Atlantic Ocean, I would be all for taking them in.

The portrayal of evil rednecks on Canada’s shore depicted in the cartoon is another example of the Spectator making attacks on the character of people who disagree with them.  In logic, this is called an ad hominem attack.

Let me cast the editorial position of the Spectator as I, one of those rednecks, see it:  you are whoring my country to satisfy your moral vanity.

The problems of the Middle East are not our problems, and we should not make them so.  We have too nice a country now to mess it up importing other people’s fights.  Anyone familiar with the 1,400 year conflict between Islam and the Christian West, ought to realize the foolishness of creating an indigestible Muslim community in our midst.  If you want to see the effects of that policy, look at Europe.

Elsewhere in the paper today is an editorial piece by a self-pitying Muslim woman who recounted an event in a woman’s washroom.  A women told her to get rid of her hijab and a shouting match ensued.  This Muslim woman was originally from Egypt but has lived in Canada since she was six years old.  Apparently, we are supposed to accept this symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian cause as though it were part of her culture, that she can’t help it, and that she is not a terrorist.  Well, the hijab forms no part of Egyptian culture, and having lived in Canada since she was a child makes one wonder where she picked up on the idea of wearing it.

The fact is that while she is not a terrorist, she is an Islamic Supremacist.  She is not integrating into Canadian society but deliberately standing apart from it.  Most importantly, she forms a part of the landscape in which terrorists can hide.

That is the fear of bringing in large numbers of Muslims into Canada: not only may there be terrorists among them but the Muslim community imported creates the place in which terrorism can be incubated and can hide here in Canada.  This is not an irrational fear, because it is actually happening in Europe.

I wish the editorial board of the Spectator the best of luck coming up with rational arguments.

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Preserving Western Civilization is more Important than Tolerating a Niqab

Vincent J. Curtis

16 Oct 2015

Today, the Hamilton Spectator ran its sixth article on the "embarrassing" niqab debate because, I guess, the rubes aren't getting the message and continue to be uncomfortable with it.  The article was written by T. David Marshall under the headline, "Which fabric is more vital? - The fabric of society or the debate over the niqab."

Of course, the fabric of society is more important than the fabric of a niqab, but the contrast was made with debate, which is a component of the fabric of society.  The lack of true parallelism throws the comparison into chaos.  Between society and debate, it would be like asking whether the garment or the threads are more important, the form or the matter.  But that is not the point at issue in his failed comparison.

In the course of his argument, Marshall he admits that he is irreligious, calling religion 'incoherent drivel,' and quoting Bertrand Russell, 'something left over from the infancy of our collective intelligence.'  This means that he thinks Christianity is dangerous and Islam to be harmless.  The Spectator would not have published his article had he been opposed to the niqab, and so it proves. He argues that western civilization requires us to be indulgent of the niqab - the very sign of the civilization that would see western civilization destroyed.  Marshall misses the irony.  Totally.

His contempt for, and likely ignorance of, the enormous intellectual content of Christianity gives me an opening for a shot at Marshall's own incoherence.

By my count, the article written by Hamilton Lawyer T. David Marshall, headlined “Which fabric is more vital?” represents the sixth piece on the embarrassing niqab controversy that the Spectator has run.  The Spec just can’t shut up about it; it’s opponents are the ones who are supposed to shut up.

The play by Mr. Marshall on the word fabric is meant to contrast the fabric of a niqab and the fabric of western liberal civilization.  Somehow, the protection of western liberal civilization requires of us to tolerate a show of Islamic Supremacism in the course of swearing the oath of allegiance to Canada, with its Charter of Rights and Freedoms that are expressions of Christian and western values.  The incoherence of Mr. Marshall’s position is immediately obvious.  The niqab represents the most obnoxious and mysogynistic aspects of Islam.  Islam wants nothing to do with western values, tolerance, democracy or Christianity.  Islam means and expects submission.  While it is true that a healthy body might be able to tolerate a small amount of poison, too large a dose is fatal - and that is the problem in prospect in taking in too many people who are inveterately hostile to fundamental Canadian values, western values.

It is clear that Mr. Marshall is unfamiliar with Scholastic or Christian Philosophy.  To understand these requires a sharpness of mind and fineness of distinctions that are absent from Mr. Marshall’s article.

For example, he says that “I don’t get to tell you what you can and can’t express about yourself,” and “I don’t get to tell you what you can and can’t believe.”  In the latter example, of course he cannot.  My believing something is a private act of my mind, not his.  He can ‘tell’ all he wants, but he can never know the contents of private acts of my mind, and so his telling is quite ineffective.

In the first case, it may generally true of an individual (but consider parents and their children), but society can and does rightfully place lawful limits on self-expression.  In clothing, lawyers and judges are expected to wear certain clothing when in court; and priests wear certain vestments when saying Mass.  These are signs that something significant is going on.

In the case of swearing an oath of allegiance, the society to which allegiance is being sworn have a right to expect certain signs of significance occur in the course of the act.  A sign of sincerity may be one; and a clear understanding of what is at stake may be another.  The wearing of a niqab in the course of swearing an oath of allegiance to a liberal, western democracy fails to give me a warm and fuzzy feeling concerning an understanding of what is at stake or of sincerity in taking the oath, because the wearing of niqab in the course of the act is a sign of Islamic Supremacism over the oath.

The essential fallacies of Mr. Marshall’s article are: that what is true of a part is not necessarily true of the whole, and that too much of a good thing can itself be evil.
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