I am all for the revival of the humanities in our universities, but The Globe and Mail‘s John Allemang may be expecting too much: Can the liberal arts cure jihadists? If not, they might at least persuade moderate terrorists to settle for incremental jihad.
Sunday, September 5, 2010, 1:42 PM
September 7th, 2010 | 12:28 pm | #1
Hm. I, too, favor a revival of Christocentric humanism and classical learning in the universities, but I am not so sure the article makes a good suggestion.
Teaching jihadists to replace their religion with a bland humanism (derived from Islam) may help some become less violent, but it may lead to Islamic versions of secular humanism with even worse mass violence akin to the 20th century post-Christendom humanism of European states. Maybe jihadists are already getting to that level, but I think the wisest “solution” is evangelism because humanism apart from Jesus, i.e. “neutral” humanism, is an idol with attendant consequences.
The temptation some well-meaning folks have to tactically turn Muslims into secularized democratic capitalists in order to try to convert them to Christianity is, in my opinion, misguided.
September 7th, 2010 | 1:12 pm | #2
Agreed, Albert. The post-christian ideologies had horrible consequences in Europe and elsewhere in the 20th century. Like you, I am most reluctant to find out what a post-islamic counterpart would look like.
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