By Uzair Saroya
Amidst the multifarious political and social philosophies that are in practice all around the world, secularism and liberalism stand out as the most fiercely advocated ones. They derive their legitimacy mainly from the fact that the nations which have adopted these ideas as their national policy have prospered and progressed, and those which have failed to do so are in ruins. We are here to examine the validity of these claims, and in the process know about the roots of these philosophies. The main purpose of this article is to make sense of these ideas from a perspective of an average man living in the south-east of Asia (where religion still holds sway over masses).
If we start from the beginning, as I mostly like to do, we find that there are two dominant narratives that can help us understand the present socio-political paradigms of our world. One is the narrative of Semitic Religions, and the other is the ‘modern scientific narrative’. These two are opposite and contradictory, but both of them have more or less equal explanatory power (depending on the preconceived notions of the observer/reader).
The three main Semitic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) tell the story of humans to have begun from a single couple. That couple was endowed with an understanding of One God, to Whom they were answerable for everything. They were to obey Him in every matter, without any distinction of ‘religious’ and ‘secular’. Worship of One God not just meant the ritualistic worship, it also meant that the code of life would come from God alone. The law of God reigned supreme over humanity for as long as the offspring of the earliest couple remained near the sources of guidance.
Amidst the multifarious political and social philosophies that are in practice all around the world, secularism and liberalism stand out as the most fiercely advocated ones. They derive their legitimacy mainly from the fact that the nations which have adopted these ideas as their national policy have prospered and progressed, and those which have failed to do so are in ruins. We are here to examine the validity of these claims, and in the process know about the roots of these philosophies. The main purpose of this article is to make sense of these ideas from a perspective of an average man living in the south-east of Asia (where religion still holds sway over masses).
If we start from the beginning, as I mostly like to do, we find that there are two dominant narratives that can help us understand the present socio-political paradigms of our world. One is the narrative of Semitic Religions, and the other is the ‘modern scientific narrative’. These two are opposite and contradictory, but both of them have more or less equal explanatory power (depending on the preconceived notions of the observer/reader).
The three main Semitic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) tell the story of humans to have begun from a single couple. That couple was endowed with an understanding of One God, to Whom they were answerable for everything. They were to obey Him in every matter, without any distinction of ‘religious’ and ‘secular’. Worship of One God not just meant the ritualistic worship, it also meant that the code of life would come from God alone. The law of God reigned supreme over humanity for as long as the offspring of the earliest couple remained near the sources of guidance.
With time, as the population kept increasing, humans dispersed over the planet and misguidance gradually crept in. God was not visible to human beings; but natural sources of harm and benefit were readily visible. Consequently, humans began ascribing the attributes of God to apparent sources of harm and benefit, and Monotheism slowly deteriorated into polytheism. The sun, moon, stars, fire, rain, fellow living beings and everything that harmed or benefited men were exaggerated in status. Circumstances were not the only factor to blame here, involvement of humans themselves acted as a catalyst. That human involvement is our main concern, everything else is a preamble.
Under the rule of One God, the authority of a human being over another is almost non-existent. Everyone enslaves himself/herself to God, and accepts the hierarchy made by God. In that hierarchy, though there are classes of rich & poor, powerful & weak, and a human may seemingly appear to obey other humans, but in reality he is only obeying the One Who has created the hierarchy. The limits of obedience, in other words, are set by God alone and nobody else can dictate them. This rather radical notion of equality in the eyes of God in spite of differences in worldly status is the distinguishing feature of Monotheistic systems. Moreover, because this system clearly states that all human beings have descended from the same parents, it further adds to the perception of equality in the eyes of God. As we know, there have always been people who wanted authority for themselves. Power has an overwhelming ability to corrupt humans. And that was the reason some human beings acted as ‘catalysts’ to deface this pure Monotheism. They wanted a share in the powers God had made exclusive for Himself. Mostly, they were those who had already held high positions in the hierarchy (aristocrats and/or intellectual elite); they relished power and wanted more of it. They simply took advantage of the superstitious mindset of humanity by amplifying and promoting it, making alterations in the “beliefs” in a way that would allow them to enjoy power and influence over the common man. The intellectual elite of the society (referring to priests/scholars) were in a perfectly strong position to distort pure Monotheism in association with aristocracy. It was a natural alliance.
As a result, a new ruling-elite which consisted of aristocrats and intellectual elite came into being. They grabbed their share from the powers of God, and managed to create for themselves a constant source of income and authority. The power-hungry intellectual elite assumed status of middlemen between God and the masses (by introducing the concept of intercession, and severing the direct link of God with His creation). It was an alliance like that of a Pope and a Caesar, but the distinction between secular and religious matters was still not there (which was logical, because it wasn’t needed at the time). The alliance exerted control over all spheres of human life (political, social and economic) by influencing the “beliefs” of the masses. (Numerous examples in history of god-kings, high priests connected to the royal courts and worship of one god/goddess of a whole city as a unit amply illustrate the truth of the point that political authority and religious authority have always been two faces of a same coin—and both rest on some kind of a belief, which is central to the system.)
Under the rule of One God, the authority of a human being over another is almost non-existent. Everyone enslaves himself/herself to God, and accepts the hierarchy made by God. In that hierarchy, though there are classes of rich & poor, powerful & weak, and a human may seemingly appear to obey other humans, but in reality he is only obeying the One Who has created the hierarchy. The limits of obedience, in other words, are set by God alone and nobody else can dictate them. This rather radical notion of equality in the eyes of God in spite of differences in worldly status is the distinguishing feature of Monotheistic systems. Moreover, because this system clearly states that all human beings have descended from the same parents, it further adds to the perception of equality in the eyes of God. As we know, there have always been people who wanted authority for themselves. Power has an overwhelming ability to corrupt humans. And that was the reason some human beings acted as ‘catalysts’ to deface this pure Monotheism. They wanted a share in the powers God had made exclusive for Himself. Mostly, they were those who had already held high positions in the hierarchy (aristocrats and/or intellectual elite); they relished power and wanted more of it. They simply took advantage of the superstitious mindset of humanity by amplifying and promoting it, making alterations in the “beliefs” in a way that would allow them to enjoy power and influence over the common man. The intellectual elite of the society (referring to priests/scholars) were in a perfectly strong position to distort pure Monotheism in association with aristocracy. It was a natural alliance.
As a result, a new ruling-elite which consisted of aristocrats and intellectual elite came into being. They grabbed their share from the powers of God, and managed to create for themselves a constant source of income and authority. The power-hungry intellectual elite assumed status of middlemen between God and the masses (by introducing the concept of intercession, and severing the direct link of God with His creation). It was an alliance like that of a Pope and a Caesar, but the distinction between secular and religious matters was still not there (which was logical, because it wasn’t needed at the time). The alliance exerted control over all spheres of human life (political, social and economic) by influencing the “beliefs” of the masses. (Numerous examples in history of god-kings, high priests connected to the royal courts and worship of one god/goddess of a whole city as a unit amply illustrate the truth of the point that political authority and religious authority have always been two faces of a same coin—and both rest on some kind of a belief, which is central to the system.)
At the point where the society as a whole became critically ill with all kind of depravities, God sent to them a Prophet who could morally uplift them and bring them back towards pure Monotheism. As discussed above, establishing pure Monotheism didn’t just consist of cleansing the places of worship from self-created deities, it also included cleansing of the corridors of power (because the nexus of the aristocrats and the priests had become a deity in itself, dictating laws and customs). The pathologies had to be reversed exactly the way they had set in. The prophets, therefore, had dual responsibility: political and spiritual. This story (narrated in last few paragraphs) cyclically repeats itself over and over again in the historical narrative given by Semitic religions. The example of Moosa (A.S) challenging not just the religion of Egyptians but the authority of Pharaoh, of Yusuf (A.S) assuming the rule of Egypt, and of Shuayb (A.S) imploring people to change their agreed-upon law of dishonest trading are just a few examples out of many that sufficiently prove that Monotheism has always been about complete worship of God that encompasses ALL spheres of human life, and political aspect is a very significant part of this system.
The modern scientific narrative, unlike the Semitic narrative, suggests human origin from non-human species by evolution. It theorizes that it was not Monotheism that changed into polytheism, rather polytheism evolved into Monotheism. It takes into account the same superstitious nature of early humanity and gives the same reasons for concentration of power within clergy and aristocracy of the societies throughout human history; but it excludes the mention of Monotheism as the starting point and hence refuses to accept the existence of Prophets sent by God.
After having summarized the two dominant narratives, one thing should be readily noticeable: the explanation of human history is nothing more than an explanation of struggle for power. The story is invariably about who took power and how he took it. We also conclude that in order to seize power and influence upon men, manipulation of their “beliefs” is instrumental, because it is the belief that makes people submit to any kind of authority (whether political or religious). This conclusion begs that we talk a bit about the nature of “beliefs” as well.
Whatever humans do, they have an underlying ‘motive’ for it. In other words, behavior/actions are an “effect”, while the “cause” lies inside the mind (whatever it may be). Belief is one of the prime motives for human behavior. If someone’s beliefs (provided they are “beliefs” in truest sense) are known, his behavior can be quite accurately predicted. And this, precisely, is what makes the manipulation of beliefs such a powerful weapon—it can be used to control human actions/behaviors. A simple example is of a person who “believes” that Friday the 13th is an ill-omened day; one can easily predict that he will delay/cancel his flights, avoid concluding important business and will prefer to keep a low profile. Now, some might think from this that the influence “beliefs” exercise over human behavior is mostly destructive. Nothing can be far from truth. Beliefs, in fact, put humans at a considerable ‘evolutionary advantage’. They determine how we act in various recurring situations without having us think about those situations every time they occur. What I am saying can be understood by a simple analogy of Pythagoras’ Theorem. Pythagoras mathematically determined that in a right angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Normally, every student doing Trigonometry calculates the length of the unknown side of a right angled triangle using the formula of Pythagoras. Imagine if everyone had to ‘determine’ the truth of the formula all over again every time before attempting any problem of Trigonometry, how dumb and time-consuming would that be? In the same sense, once a belief makes its way inside our brain, it determines how we would act to relevant situations every time they presented themselves. A person who “believes” that fire could hurt him would avoid going near it every time he sees it, as simple as that.
When we review the overall human history in the light of the above paragraph, we notice that people “believed” that God was Almighty and the Sole Lawgiver. They “believed” that He had no partners and all power belonged to Him alone. The only way certain humans could have their share in this power was to change the beliefs of other fellow humans. Hence they went on to inculcate the belief that the common folk needed the intercession of pious men to convey their prayers to God, and that is how the gates of polytheism were opened. All of this happened by altering and manipulating the already held “beliefs”. And the sole duty of Prophets was to fix these beliefs back to their original position—that would be enough to establish pure Monotheism once again. Whether you adopt the religious or scientific narrative to look at it, this explanation holds true for both the approaches.
After having summarized the two dominant narratives, one thing should be readily noticeable: the explanation of human history is nothing more than an explanation of struggle for power. The story is invariably about who took power and how he took it. We also conclude that in order to seize power and influence upon men, manipulation of their “beliefs” is instrumental, because it is the belief that makes people submit to any kind of authority (whether political or religious). This conclusion begs that we talk a bit about the nature of “beliefs” as well.
Whatever humans do, they have an underlying ‘motive’ for it. In other words, behavior/actions are an “effect”, while the “cause” lies inside the mind (whatever it may be). Belief is one of the prime motives for human behavior. If someone’s beliefs (provided they are “beliefs” in truest sense) are known, his behavior can be quite accurately predicted. And this, precisely, is what makes the manipulation of beliefs such a powerful weapon—it can be used to control human actions/behaviors. A simple example is of a person who “believes” that Friday the 13th is an ill-omened day; one can easily predict that he will delay/cancel his flights, avoid concluding important business and will prefer to keep a low profile. Now, some might think from this that the influence “beliefs” exercise over human behavior is mostly destructive. Nothing can be far from truth. Beliefs, in fact, put humans at a considerable ‘evolutionary advantage’. They determine how we act in various recurring situations without having us think about those situations every time they occur. What I am saying can be understood by a simple analogy of Pythagoras’ Theorem. Pythagoras mathematically determined that in a right angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Normally, every student doing Trigonometry calculates the length of the unknown side of a right angled triangle using the formula of Pythagoras. Imagine if everyone had to ‘determine’ the truth of the formula all over again every time before attempting any problem of Trigonometry, how dumb and time-consuming would that be? In the same sense, once a belief makes its way inside our brain, it determines how we would act to relevant situations every time they presented themselves. A person who “believes” that fire could hurt him would avoid going near it every time he sees it, as simple as that.
When we review the overall human history in the light of the above paragraph, we notice that people “believed” that God was Almighty and the Sole Lawgiver. They “believed” that He had no partners and all power belonged to Him alone. The only way certain humans could have their share in this power was to change the beliefs of other fellow humans. Hence they went on to inculcate the belief that the common folk needed the intercession of pious men to convey their prayers to God, and that is how the gates of polytheism were opened. All of this happened by altering and manipulating the already held “beliefs”. And the sole duty of Prophets was to fix these beliefs back to their original position—that would be enough to establish pure Monotheism once again. Whether you adopt the religious or scientific narrative to look at it, this explanation holds true for both the approaches.
Why am I wasting your time with all this? What does this have to do with the topic mentioned in the title? Well, it has a lot to do. Just as religion revolves around beliefs, all the “–isms” too have nothing more to them than that—they are mere beliefs! Secularism, humanism, liberalism, etc are various examples of beliefs; rather they are a complete belief-system aka religion in their own right. Secularism is a belief that religion should not interfere with the matters of state, liberalism is a belief that every human has a right to enjoy complete freedom (limits of ‘complete freedom’ differ from liberal to liberal), and humanism is a belief that human societies should be altogether human-oriented without any involvement of supernatural and irrational entities and concepts.
As we talked earlier, the Monotheistic religious system of humans in the not-too-distant past held this special kind of ‘universal’ outlook encompassing all aspects of their life—they submitted to it politically, socially, and economically etc. This belief possessing ‘universal outlook’ was substantiated by another even stronger belief that there most certainly existed a God, to Whom we must be obedient. If religious belief (which has an in-built code of life for humans) is substantiated by belief in God, what substantiates the beliefs mentioned above (secularism, liberalism, humanism etc; which also claim to give a full code of life)? This is a bugging question; we will try to find the answer to it as we go on. Beliefs can be important even without substantiation, but we are trying to talk sense here.
Another very important reason why I took so much space for summarizing the overall historical narratives is that these narratives can adequately explain the ‘need’ and ‘origins’ of the “–isms” we will be discussing in the article. The need to create a distinction between secular and religious matters (i.e. secularism) was felt for the same reasons as the need to introduce the middlemen between God and the masses was felt. It has always been about power and authority. The need to promote individual-oriented culture (liberalism) was felt because it was the ideology most suited to produce humans who would be happier in a materialistic world (the “economic reasons” are among of the most important for the promotion of liberal ideology). Who felt this need? Same as always: the alliance of men holding wealth & authority, and the intellectual elite (here, the intellectual elite means scientists and philosophers, unlike past where it were priests/clergymen). What was the modus operandi this time? Interestingly, the same as it had always been: altering the already held beliefs to one’s own advantage. The cliched expression of history always repeating itself isn’t too overrated after all. But how can we possibly derive secularism and liberalism from religion itself? And how did this transition from religious to secular take place?
When the church was in the last phase of its heyday, Western intellectual elite were attempting to make a joint front against its authority. The reason was obvious: church was extremely anti-reason, it had closed all avenues of ‘thinking’ and its reaction to any kind of ideology opposing its doctrine was absolutely violent. The church/clergy had grabbed their share of power from the powers of God just by the same pattern as described earlier for all the Monotheistic systems throughout history. Now they were to be replaced because they couldn’t keep up with times (I wouldn’t go into the details of it, article is getting too lengthy). The intelligentsia had become disillusioned with Christianity and hated the God of church (because of church’s persecution of their brethren); they gave rise to new belief-systems to replace the religious setup—that is how the various “–isms” came into being. These systems were independent of the Monotheistic God. But the problem was the masses—they had not yet been disillusioned, they still liked the concept of God. How could they replace religious system with their newly-created belief-systems while the masses were not ready to hate the God like they did?
There were two ways for them to do what they wanted: (i) somehow make the masses hate the God as well, (ii) alter the religious belief itself to make it accommodate the new “–isms” (just as the ancestors used to do throughout human history). The latter was more feasible, so it found better success. The thing was simple: some beliefs within the Christian doctrine were to “amplified” and others to be trivialized/discarded—in accordance with the historical practice of belief alteration and acquiring authority. Liberalism is basically an ideology that each individual must be given certain freedoms—the freedom of expression, religion, and free trade etc. It advocates that individual is the center of human civilization, and not the society as a whole. Furthermore, in light of the Enlightenment ideals, it also advocates shedding of superstitions and adopting a scientific and objective approach to interpret everything (including scripture). It encourages a democratic form of government where the empowered, free individual could exercise his freedom by governing himself through his vote. When we amplify the concept of people being “god’s children”, glorify the life and ethics taught by Jesus, discard the miraculous nature of Christ’s person (and every other supernatural thing present in the scripture) we get the liberal ethics tethered to Christianity! Secularism automatically makes its way into the system when we elaborate the concept of ‘freedom of religion’ inside this mentioned framework of liberalism. Furthermore, when we implement Enlightenment vision to interpret scripture, we can successfully reduce the status of God; God is snatched away and “nature” is put inside people’s heads in His place, without them even realizing it (naturalism is the word for this). This is just like putting milk and bananas in the machine together to get a milkshake. Milk loses itself in the bananas; bananas lose themselves in the milk. Christianity lost its essence (it was just a travesty of Monotheism already) and a new drama called “Liberal Christianity” was born. The church had to cooperate during all this, that was the only way it could survive. It made peace with the intelligentsia and accommodated their secular liberal ideas within its doctrine in exchange for survival.
From this assertion, nobody should conclude that the conceivers of these “–isms” were thinking to implement their visions in this particular way (i.e. side by side with religion). They wanted outright abolishment of religion from all spheres (public and private), but they were unable to do so because God couldn’t be removed from the human minds that easily. This type of implementation, where the bedrock/substantiating principle of religious belief-system (which is God) was not replaced but its exterior was replaced, was nothing more than a temporary expediency. Religion could be taken out from the public/political sphere before it could be taken out from the private lives of citizens, and it happened exactly like that.
One may object to the point I have been trying to raise—my demonstration of the basic difference, or rather incompatibility, of religion with these new “–isms” might look exaggerated to some. If Christianity has assimilated liberalism, it might be a “proof” for some that the two are in fact somehow compatible. I dedicated a major part of this article just to demonstrate this single fact: Monotheistic systems have a universal outlook and they encompass all spheres of human life. Anything that detaches any sphere of human life from the Monotheistic system is incompatible and directly in conflict with it. If assimilation into Monotheistic belief of foreign concepts appears to be a proof of compatibility to some, than they might as well label polytheism compatible with Monotheism. A Christian theologian J.G. Machen, in his famous critique of Liberal Christianity, writes:-
When science trumps religious belief, scientists become prophets; and those who control (I mean “finance”) the scientists to “practice science” become Gods and occupy the vacant slot. When a political system which has basis in anything other than God and His word becomes established, power goes in the hands of those who dictate the policies of that political system. Now, the constant attacks from intellectual elite are slowly “purging” the minds of masses of the concept of a God altogether. If you haven’t noticed, this is the same old story (I have been telling from the outset) repeating itself. Change the external framework of beliefs (Christian beliefs in this case) to seize authority, and then slowly replace the core/substantiating belief (which is God in this case) with the new one!
The discussion up to this level brought us to a few important conclusions:
During the imperialist rule, secular liberalism fine-tuned for the “Slave East” was the basis of governance. After the independence, the Brits handed the authority to their intellectual slaves. That kicked in an era of depolarization of masses at enormous scales. The main problem of these brown advocates of liberalism was that they were trying to use one weapon against two enemies of totally different kind—rather, they were trying to open two different locks with one key! Secular liberalism trumped Christianity and became the norm because Christianity was already too weak to hold ground against such powerful attacks; on the contrary, Islam was not a sitting duck.
The brown sahibs used the same old method to achieve success for these ideas: alter the religious belief and fit own ideas into it—sell secular liberalism in an ‘Islamic packing’—and when people buy it, discard the packing afterwards as well. For this, they found natural allies in modernist/revisionist Mullahs who wanted to ‘reinterpret Islam in the light of modern scientific and social advances’. Sufism was to be promoted (because of its historically apolitical, ‘passive’ nature) and political face of Islam was to be veiled!
With their untiring efforts, brown sahibs successfully divided society into three types of people: (i)those who held the same views as them, (ii) those who were inspired by their ideas but still thought that Islam and those ideas were compatible (we will call this class of people “confused liberals”), (iii) those who were utterly opposed to their ideas. Most liberals in my country belong to the second category at the moment, so our remaining discussion will be mainly about the absurdities that this category spews everywhere.
The Brown sahibs, who can be rightly called bastard children of the white man in the East, are honest at least to themselves in a sense that they are convinced and clear in their mind about the nature of ideology they advocate. They understand it fully well that secular liberalism was born out of contempt for God, and it can tolerate God only when it is a necessity. If the necessity could be eliminated, the first target of an ideologically pure liberal would be to eliminate God from the society. A pure liberal knows that if secular liberalism is implemented in letter and spirit, God automatically disappears from the picture after some time (example of the West illustrates this). The problem with the confused liberals (who are a majority) is precisely this: their ideological hermaphroditism. They think that liberalism can go hand in hand with religion (Islam).
Before I elaborate, the initial part of my article can be re-read where I have quite repetitively asserted that true Monotheistic systems do not stay Monotheistic if you snatch their authority regarding even a single affair of human life. A frequent slogan goes like this, “you can worship any God, and you can follow any religion as long as it does not interfere with the matters of state & the liberty of other individuals of the society”. When a pure God-hating liberal says this, we can understand that he is following the tradition of his daddies by selling liberalism in a religious packing. When a confused liberal says this, he is actually being honest with this claim; that poor guy thinks this is possible! “You can draw as many breaths as you like for the whole of your life, but we are going to control the air and will be cutting the supply in a few seconds”: this offer makes as much sense as the mentioned slogan. It is as if the legislators of certain country banned people from keeping hair on the head but ‘granted’ freedom to wear specialized government-approved ‘wigs’.
Those wigs would not change the fact that there lies a bald head underneath them! Basically, you are being told that you can worship your God; but because your God was apparently not intelligent or capable enough to make as good a political system for you as we have made, so don’t bring your God in this realm. What good is a god who can’t even give a sound political system to govern humanity? Who will call that type of an incapable god Almighty, All-Wise, and All-Knowing?
Even if we accept that this can be possible, and one can “worship” God in a sense in which Monotheistic systems demands even by applying secular liberalism as the law of the land, things get further moronic. Secular liberals also say that secularism is not an argument against religion, in fact it is one wholly independent of it. If a person moves from point A and sits at some other point B and insists on calling that point “nothing”, people would still say he is sitting at a point other than A—point B namely. If you are not implementing religion, you are still implementing “something”! I want you to sit at point A. If you are not sitting at point A, it does not matter whether you sit at point B, C, or D. What matters is that you are not sitting at point A, end of story. This is precisely how Monotheistic system works, it claims that there is only one truth, and that is within it; every other system is automatically false, whether or not it claims to oppose the Monotheistic system.
This brings us to another question: if secular liberalism is a system parallel to and/or in opposition to religion, where does it derive its legitimacy from? If people follow religion because they believe that it is from God, what makes people opt for liberalism? In other words, what substantiates it? We don’t need to substantiate it, it is the system most suited for human progress. Who says so? What if someone disagrees? Well, that does not matter because if majority says it is best suited for human progress, those who disagree definitely have to live under it. If liberalism is a “belief” in freedom of individual, and a majority in a society “believes” that liberalism is the system most suited for human progress; but some person in that society disagrees with this, isn’t it a violation of the freedom of that one person when you impose your belief on him, and in turn a violation of the liberal ideals themselves? No, it is not.
Though liberal ideas allow that one person to disagree with the system, but they don’t allow him to impose his will on the majority of society that disagrees with him. To live in a society, one has to compromise a few freedoms. And liberalism would have us compromise the freedom of that one person instead of compromising the freedom of the whole society with which he disagrees. Okay, so who decides which freedoms are to be allowed and which to be compromised to live in a society? The majority decides it. Have you decided yourself that you would pay taxes to your government? Has the majority decided it? Erm, no. Do majority like to pay taxes? No. Then why has this freedom of yours of keeping all the money you earn been compromised? Who has compromised it? Well, that tax money is spent for the welfare of all the people by the representatives of the people. That is also one compromise we make to live in an advanced society. So you agree that some freedoms of people in a liberal society are compromised without their consents and wishes? Yes, I agree. And if someone didn’t pay taxes, government will punish him. And the punishment will be for violation of that law which no one had consented to, right? Yes. Imagine a scenario where a majority wanted Sharia implementation, and government too decided to impose it (and remember, this is unlike tax which nobody had wanted to pay), and there were a few liberals in that community as well; what would you suggest they should do? Their freedoms are going to be curtailed by Sharia, because it is an outdated system. They should rebel against it. But who decides that it is outdated system that curtails freedoms? Majority, in this case, thinks it is not curtailment of freedoms; it thinks it is the system best suited for human progress. It is common sense.
Purdah, beards, no drinking, no music, etc are all violations of freedom. Isn’t tax collection a violation of freedoms as well? Yes it is, but it is for the betterment of the whole society. If government and majority say that the things you have named are for the betterment of the whole society as well, what then? They are wrong. Who says they are wrong? Who decides? Erm, you are an extremist &%$#@+*&. This is how a conversation goes when you raise such questions with liberals. And this brings us again to the point where we began. What substantiates liberalism? Who says secular liberalism should be the law of the land? Liberals don’t have an answer themselves! Religious people can at least say, “God tells us to implement religion”; we should pity liberals for their misery for not having an answer to such a basic question about their ideas!
Lastly, we would talk about the status of morality in a secular liberal society, and the justifications for ‘authority’ of a state in such a society. We know secular liberalism advocates that we should reject everything in the scripture that contradicts science. It encourages a “rational” outlook of the world. But we still see that liberal societies encourage common virtues and discourage (criminalize) deviance from them (stealing, murdering, lying, etc). This begs a question that “where do we derive this concept of evil and virtue—good and bad?” In simpler words, from where do we get our morality in a secular liberal society? Some liberals say that it is by “nature” that we know good from bad and right from wrong. They say that we haven’t taken it from the scripture, instead we have these qualities present “inherently” inside us. This is called ‘intuitionism’.
This poses some serious questions. If “moral sense” is innate and somewhat “objective”, why is there a wide disagreement about what is right and what is wrong among various communities? What kind of objectivity is this? Some intelligent liberals come up with a better answer when asked about the source of their morality: they say that morality, just like natural laws, is based on objective truths that are scientifically provable. In other words, the statement “it is wrong to murder someone” is a factual statement in scientific sense just as the statement “the entropy of isolated systems never decreases (2nd law of thermodynamics)”. This notion of holding moral truths on an equal footing with that of natural laws of the physical world is called “ethical naturalism”. But how exactly do we prove the morality (e.g. murdering someone is bad) scientifically? By bringing in the concept of ‘instrumentality’ or ‘usefulness’, some liberals try to prove this claim. They say that it is important for the existence of societies that humans must possess a sense of morals (e.g. humans killing each other won’t be good for a society, and without society, survival of species would be endangered).
This usefulness, according to them, proves scientifically that murder is wrong. Even if we accept this (which many won’t do, because that is not exactly how the science works), many questions further arise (which we will see). Some other ethical naturalists prove their claim (that there can be a scientific basis for morality) by saying that “a thing is morally good if it promotes the flourishing of conscious creatures” (e.g. Sam Harris, and many others who propose creation of a new discipline named “science of morality”). When we ask these two varieties of liberals what happens when usefulness of a morally correct deed is lost (e.g. when murder becomes useful from the perspective of survival) and who defines what the “flourishing of conscious beings” means respectively, we get all kinds of absurd answers. The former variety gives a concept of morality which is free floating, with no solid basis, and loses value when usefulness is excluded; the latter gives a concept which is vague and undefined.
There is another approach to the question of source of morality called ‘nihilism’. That, in my opinion, is the most scientific and honest approach any liberal could take. I will summarize it now. Evolution says that every living being fights for its survival. The fittest of all survives and transmits its genes to the next generation and hence the genetic material best for survival gets to stay in the competition while others are left behind in the race of life. Therefore, evolution equates “success” in life to “survival” alone. That means that there is no purpose to life EXCEPT for striving for survival! If a person thinks that lying, murdering, stealing could multiply his chances of “survival” in presence of so many other “competitors”, why would he not do that? So the evolutionary nihilists honestly admit that if we are to follow science in both letter and spirit, we will have to acquiesce in the fact that the scientific evolutionary narrative inevitably leads to a moral-less state. Nothing is intrinsically moral or immoral, and all morality is just an illusion humanity created for itself to survive better as societies. In simple words, morality has no explanation apart from the fact that it is an instrument of survival that humans have built for themselves.
What comes out of all this discussion is a simple fact that the authority possessed by a secular liberal state to ‘enforce’ laws based on ethical principles/morality is absolutely unjustified! Unless there is a rational, scientific explanation for the question “from where do we derive our ethics/morals?”, the authority of the state to enforce these morals in the form of law is in contradiction to the liberal principles of ‘freedom’ themselves! But the authority of the state still exists. What does this suggest? This suggests what I have been repeating from the very beginning: when humans tend to free themselves from the slavery of the Almighty, they become slaves to lesser beings (humans).
The only difference between secular liberals and early humans (who existed a few thousand years before us) is that the secular liberals have given authority over themselves to those who control science and wealth; and the men of old had given the authority to the idols and the custodians of those idols (aristocrats and priests). “Flourishing of conscious creatures”, “usefulness of moral principles”, “welfare of the society” are all subjective concepts and the elite controls and defines all these things while making the poor, common liberal folk “BELIEVE” that it is the common man who actually decides everything! The priests and the aristocrats used to make common men “BELIEVE” thousands of years ago that the offerings and sacrifices should be made to them instead of God; and they will then take them to God and secure some concessions and intercede to get the prayers through. Ah, history brutally and subtly repeating itself!
As we talked earlier, the Monotheistic religious system of humans in the not-too-distant past held this special kind of ‘universal’ outlook encompassing all aspects of their life—they submitted to it politically, socially, and economically etc. This belief possessing ‘universal outlook’ was substantiated by another even stronger belief that there most certainly existed a God, to Whom we must be obedient. If religious belief (which has an in-built code of life for humans) is substantiated by belief in God, what substantiates the beliefs mentioned above (secularism, liberalism, humanism etc; which also claim to give a full code of life)? This is a bugging question; we will try to find the answer to it as we go on. Beliefs can be important even without substantiation, but we are trying to talk sense here.
Another very important reason why I took so much space for summarizing the overall historical narratives is that these narratives can adequately explain the ‘need’ and ‘origins’ of the “–isms” we will be discussing in the article. The need to create a distinction between secular and religious matters (i.e. secularism) was felt for the same reasons as the need to introduce the middlemen between God and the masses was felt. It has always been about power and authority. The need to promote individual-oriented culture (liberalism) was felt because it was the ideology most suited to produce humans who would be happier in a materialistic world (the “economic reasons” are among of the most important for the promotion of liberal ideology). Who felt this need? Same as always: the alliance of men holding wealth & authority, and the intellectual elite (here, the intellectual elite means scientists and philosophers, unlike past where it were priests/clergymen). What was the modus operandi this time? Interestingly, the same as it had always been: altering the already held beliefs to one’s own advantage. The cliched expression of history always repeating itself isn’t too overrated after all. But how can we possibly derive secularism and liberalism from religion itself? And how did this transition from religious to secular take place?
When the church was in the last phase of its heyday, Western intellectual elite were attempting to make a joint front against its authority. The reason was obvious: church was extremely anti-reason, it had closed all avenues of ‘thinking’ and its reaction to any kind of ideology opposing its doctrine was absolutely violent. The church/clergy had grabbed their share of power from the powers of God just by the same pattern as described earlier for all the Monotheistic systems throughout history. Now they were to be replaced because they couldn’t keep up with times (I wouldn’t go into the details of it, article is getting too lengthy). The intelligentsia had become disillusioned with Christianity and hated the God of church (because of church’s persecution of their brethren); they gave rise to new belief-systems to replace the religious setup—that is how the various “–isms” came into being. These systems were independent of the Monotheistic God. But the problem was the masses—they had not yet been disillusioned, they still liked the concept of God. How could they replace religious system with their newly-created belief-systems while the masses were not ready to hate the God like they did?
There were two ways for them to do what they wanted: (i) somehow make the masses hate the God as well, (ii) alter the religious belief itself to make it accommodate the new “–isms” (just as the ancestors used to do throughout human history). The latter was more feasible, so it found better success. The thing was simple: some beliefs within the Christian doctrine were to “amplified” and others to be trivialized/discarded—in accordance with the historical practice of belief alteration and acquiring authority. Liberalism is basically an ideology that each individual must be given certain freedoms—the freedom of expression, religion, and free trade etc. It advocates that individual is the center of human civilization, and not the society as a whole. Furthermore, in light of the Enlightenment ideals, it also advocates shedding of superstitions and adopting a scientific and objective approach to interpret everything (including scripture). It encourages a democratic form of government where the empowered, free individual could exercise his freedom by governing himself through his vote. When we amplify the concept of people being “god’s children”, glorify the life and ethics taught by Jesus, discard the miraculous nature of Christ’s person (and every other supernatural thing present in the scripture) we get the liberal ethics tethered to Christianity! Secularism automatically makes its way into the system when we elaborate the concept of ‘freedom of religion’ inside this mentioned framework of liberalism. Furthermore, when we implement Enlightenment vision to interpret scripture, we can successfully reduce the status of God; God is snatched away and “nature” is put inside people’s heads in His place, without them even realizing it (naturalism is the word for this). This is just like putting milk and bananas in the machine together to get a milkshake. Milk loses itself in the bananas; bananas lose themselves in the milk. Christianity lost its essence (it was just a travesty of Monotheism already) and a new drama called “Liberal Christianity” was born. The church had to cooperate during all this, that was the only way it could survive. It made peace with the intelligentsia and accommodated their secular liberal ideas within its doctrine in exchange for survival.
From this assertion, nobody should conclude that the conceivers of these “–isms” were thinking to implement their visions in this particular way (i.e. side by side with religion). They wanted outright abolishment of religion from all spheres (public and private), but they were unable to do so because God couldn’t be removed from the human minds that easily. This type of implementation, where the bedrock/substantiating principle of religious belief-system (which is God) was not replaced but its exterior was replaced, was nothing more than a temporary expediency. Religion could be taken out from the public/political sphere before it could be taken out from the private lives of citizens, and it happened exactly like that.
One may object to the point I have been trying to raise—my demonstration of the basic difference, or rather incompatibility, of religion with these new “–isms” might look exaggerated to some. If Christianity has assimilated liberalism, it might be a “proof” for some that the two are in fact somehow compatible. I dedicated a major part of this article just to demonstrate this single fact: Monotheistic systems have a universal outlook and they encompass all spheres of human life. Anything that detaches any sphere of human life from the Monotheistic system is incompatible and directly in conflict with it. If assimilation into Monotheistic belief of foreign concepts appears to be a proof of compatibility to some, than they might as well label polytheism compatible with Monotheism. A Christian theologian J.G. Machen, in his famous critique of Liberal Christianity, writes:-
The great redemptive religion which has always been known as Christianity is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology.This modern non-redemptive religion is called “modernism” or “liberalism.” The many varieties of modern liberal religion are rooted in naturalism—that is, in the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God (as distinguished from the ordinary course of nature) in connection with the origin of Christianity. What the liberal Christian theologian has retained after abandoning to the enemy one Christian doctrine after another is not Christianity at all, but a religion which is so entirely different from Christianity as to belong in a distinct category. Our principal concern just now is to show that the liberal attempt at reconciling Christianity with modern science has really relinquished everything distinctive of Christianity, so that what remains is in essentials only that same indefinite type of religious aspiration which was in the world before Christianity came upon the scene. If a condition could be conceived in which all the preaching of the Church should be controlled by the liberalism which in many quarters has already become preponderant, then, we believe, Christianity would at last have perished from the earth and the gospel would have sounded forth for the last time.The masses responded well and accepted replacement of Christian beliefs with liberal values for the reason that it was the most convenient thing to do economically. Firstly, Christianity was already too weak to withstand the attacks from science (owing to its stupid defenders who themselves had altered scripture to gain authority when it was their turn). Science became the custodian of truth; it could label anything true or false because it had occupied the throne of ‘human mind’. Secondly, an average man in the West had become concerned more with material wealth. Thirdly, for the attainment of the economic goals, peacemaking was necessary among different religions and sects of the same religions. Liberalism was the most ready solution to these problems. In the words of a liberal sociologist, Paul Starr, “Liberalism is only a framework—that is, it provides a space for free development where there are deep divisions over the meaning of the good life.” What does all of this amount to? In one line: those who controlled science and those who controlled policy-making now gained total authority at every level.
When science trumps religious belief, scientists become prophets; and those who control (I mean “finance”) the scientists to “practice science” become Gods and occupy the vacant slot. When a political system which has basis in anything other than God and His word becomes established, power goes in the hands of those who dictate the policies of that political system. Now, the constant attacks from intellectual elite are slowly “purging” the minds of masses of the concept of a God altogether. If you haven’t noticed, this is the same old story (I have been telling from the outset) repeating itself. Change the external framework of beliefs (Christian beliefs in this case) to seize authority, and then slowly replace the core/substantiating belief (which is God in this case) with the new one!
The discussion up to this level brought us to a few important conclusions:
- Secular liberalism is purely a western phenomenon; it was born to counter Christianity specifically
- Its very origin is a negation of the concept that all power should belong to God, rather it is completely incompatible with any Monotheistic religious system
- It was injected step-wise into the society; though its transitional stage accommodates people with belief in God, but it is essentially a system which inclines to a godless society.
During the imperialist rule, secular liberalism fine-tuned for the “Slave East” was the basis of governance. After the independence, the Brits handed the authority to their intellectual slaves. That kicked in an era of depolarization of masses at enormous scales. The main problem of these brown advocates of liberalism was that they were trying to use one weapon against two enemies of totally different kind—rather, they were trying to open two different locks with one key! Secular liberalism trumped Christianity and became the norm because Christianity was already too weak to hold ground against such powerful attacks; on the contrary, Islam was not a sitting duck.
The brown sahibs used the same old method to achieve success for these ideas: alter the religious belief and fit own ideas into it—sell secular liberalism in an ‘Islamic packing’—and when people buy it, discard the packing afterwards as well. For this, they found natural allies in modernist/revisionist Mullahs who wanted to ‘reinterpret Islam in the light of modern scientific and social advances’. Sufism was to be promoted (because of its historically apolitical, ‘passive’ nature) and political face of Islam was to be veiled!
With their untiring efforts, brown sahibs successfully divided society into three types of people: (i)those who held the same views as them, (ii) those who were inspired by their ideas but still thought that Islam and those ideas were compatible (we will call this class of people “confused liberals”), (iii) those who were utterly opposed to their ideas. Most liberals in my country belong to the second category at the moment, so our remaining discussion will be mainly about the absurdities that this category spews everywhere.
The Brown sahibs, who can be rightly called bastard children of the white man in the East, are honest at least to themselves in a sense that they are convinced and clear in their mind about the nature of ideology they advocate. They understand it fully well that secular liberalism was born out of contempt for God, and it can tolerate God only when it is a necessity. If the necessity could be eliminated, the first target of an ideologically pure liberal would be to eliminate God from the society. A pure liberal knows that if secular liberalism is implemented in letter and spirit, God automatically disappears from the picture after some time (example of the West illustrates this). The problem with the confused liberals (who are a majority) is precisely this: their ideological hermaphroditism. They think that liberalism can go hand in hand with religion (Islam).
Before I elaborate, the initial part of my article can be re-read where I have quite repetitively asserted that true Monotheistic systems do not stay Monotheistic if you snatch their authority regarding even a single affair of human life. A frequent slogan goes like this, “you can worship any God, and you can follow any religion as long as it does not interfere with the matters of state & the liberty of other individuals of the society”. When a pure God-hating liberal says this, we can understand that he is following the tradition of his daddies by selling liberalism in a religious packing. When a confused liberal says this, he is actually being honest with this claim; that poor guy thinks this is possible! “You can draw as many breaths as you like for the whole of your life, but we are going to control the air and will be cutting the supply in a few seconds”: this offer makes as much sense as the mentioned slogan. It is as if the legislators of certain country banned people from keeping hair on the head but ‘granted’ freedom to wear specialized government-approved ‘wigs’.
Those wigs would not change the fact that there lies a bald head underneath them! Basically, you are being told that you can worship your God; but because your God was apparently not intelligent or capable enough to make as good a political system for you as we have made, so don’t bring your God in this realm. What good is a god who can’t even give a sound political system to govern humanity? Who will call that type of an incapable god Almighty, All-Wise, and All-Knowing?
Even if we accept that this can be possible, and one can “worship” God in a sense in which Monotheistic systems demands even by applying secular liberalism as the law of the land, things get further moronic. Secular liberals also say that secularism is not an argument against religion, in fact it is one wholly independent of it. If a person moves from point A and sits at some other point B and insists on calling that point “nothing”, people would still say he is sitting at a point other than A—point B namely. If you are not implementing religion, you are still implementing “something”! I want you to sit at point A. If you are not sitting at point A, it does not matter whether you sit at point B, C, or D. What matters is that you are not sitting at point A, end of story. This is precisely how Monotheistic system works, it claims that there is only one truth, and that is within it; every other system is automatically false, whether or not it claims to oppose the Monotheistic system.
This brings us to another question: if secular liberalism is a system parallel to and/or in opposition to religion, where does it derive its legitimacy from? If people follow religion because they believe that it is from God, what makes people opt for liberalism? In other words, what substantiates it? We don’t need to substantiate it, it is the system most suited for human progress. Who says so? What if someone disagrees? Well, that does not matter because if majority says it is best suited for human progress, those who disagree definitely have to live under it. If liberalism is a “belief” in freedom of individual, and a majority in a society “believes” that liberalism is the system most suited for human progress; but some person in that society disagrees with this, isn’t it a violation of the freedom of that one person when you impose your belief on him, and in turn a violation of the liberal ideals themselves? No, it is not.
Though liberal ideas allow that one person to disagree with the system, but they don’t allow him to impose his will on the majority of society that disagrees with him. To live in a society, one has to compromise a few freedoms. And liberalism would have us compromise the freedom of that one person instead of compromising the freedom of the whole society with which he disagrees. Okay, so who decides which freedoms are to be allowed and which to be compromised to live in a society? The majority decides it. Have you decided yourself that you would pay taxes to your government? Has the majority decided it? Erm, no. Do majority like to pay taxes? No. Then why has this freedom of yours of keeping all the money you earn been compromised? Who has compromised it? Well, that tax money is spent for the welfare of all the people by the representatives of the people. That is also one compromise we make to live in an advanced society. So you agree that some freedoms of people in a liberal society are compromised without their consents and wishes? Yes, I agree. And if someone didn’t pay taxes, government will punish him. And the punishment will be for violation of that law which no one had consented to, right? Yes. Imagine a scenario where a majority wanted Sharia implementation, and government too decided to impose it (and remember, this is unlike tax which nobody had wanted to pay), and there were a few liberals in that community as well; what would you suggest they should do? Their freedoms are going to be curtailed by Sharia, because it is an outdated system. They should rebel against it. But who decides that it is outdated system that curtails freedoms? Majority, in this case, thinks it is not curtailment of freedoms; it thinks it is the system best suited for human progress. It is common sense.
Purdah, beards, no drinking, no music, etc are all violations of freedom. Isn’t tax collection a violation of freedoms as well? Yes it is, but it is for the betterment of the whole society. If government and majority say that the things you have named are for the betterment of the whole society as well, what then? They are wrong. Who says they are wrong? Who decides? Erm, you are an extremist &%$#@+*&. This is how a conversation goes when you raise such questions with liberals. And this brings us again to the point where we began. What substantiates liberalism? Who says secular liberalism should be the law of the land? Liberals don’t have an answer themselves! Religious people can at least say, “God tells us to implement religion”; we should pity liberals for their misery for not having an answer to such a basic question about their ideas!
Lastly, we would talk about the status of morality in a secular liberal society, and the justifications for ‘authority’ of a state in such a society. We know secular liberalism advocates that we should reject everything in the scripture that contradicts science. It encourages a “rational” outlook of the world. But we still see that liberal societies encourage common virtues and discourage (criminalize) deviance from them (stealing, murdering, lying, etc). This begs a question that “where do we derive this concept of evil and virtue—good and bad?” In simpler words, from where do we get our morality in a secular liberal society? Some liberals say that it is by “nature” that we know good from bad and right from wrong. They say that we haven’t taken it from the scripture, instead we have these qualities present “inherently” inside us. This is called ‘intuitionism’.
This poses some serious questions. If “moral sense” is innate and somewhat “objective”, why is there a wide disagreement about what is right and what is wrong among various communities? What kind of objectivity is this? Some intelligent liberals come up with a better answer when asked about the source of their morality: they say that morality, just like natural laws, is based on objective truths that are scientifically provable. In other words, the statement “it is wrong to murder someone” is a factual statement in scientific sense just as the statement “the entropy of isolated systems never decreases (2nd law of thermodynamics)”. This notion of holding moral truths on an equal footing with that of natural laws of the physical world is called “ethical naturalism”. But how exactly do we prove the morality (e.g. murdering someone is bad) scientifically? By bringing in the concept of ‘instrumentality’ or ‘usefulness’, some liberals try to prove this claim. They say that it is important for the existence of societies that humans must possess a sense of morals (e.g. humans killing each other won’t be good for a society, and without society, survival of species would be endangered).
This usefulness, according to them, proves scientifically that murder is wrong. Even if we accept this (which many won’t do, because that is not exactly how the science works), many questions further arise (which we will see). Some other ethical naturalists prove their claim (that there can be a scientific basis for morality) by saying that “a thing is morally good if it promotes the flourishing of conscious creatures” (e.g. Sam Harris, and many others who propose creation of a new discipline named “science of morality”). When we ask these two varieties of liberals what happens when usefulness of a morally correct deed is lost (e.g. when murder becomes useful from the perspective of survival) and who defines what the “flourishing of conscious beings” means respectively, we get all kinds of absurd answers. The former variety gives a concept of morality which is free floating, with no solid basis, and loses value when usefulness is excluded; the latter gives a concept which is vague and undefined.
There is another approach to the question of source of morality called ‘nihilism’. That, in my opinion, is the most scientific and honest approach any liberal could take. I will summarize it now. Evolution says that every living being fights for its survival. The fittest of all survives and transmits its genes to the next generation and hence the genetic material best for survival gets to stay in the competition while others are left behind in the race of life. Therefore, evolution equates “success” in life to “survival” alone. That means that there is no purpose to life EXCEPT for striving for survival! If a person thinks that lying, murdering, stealing could multiply his chances of “survival” in presence of so many other “competitors”, why would he not do that? So the evolutionary nihilists honestly admit that if we are to follow science in both letter and spirit, we will have to acquiesce in the fact that the scientific evolutionary narrative inevitably leads to a moral-less state. Nothing is intrinsically moral or immoral, and all morality is just an illusion humanity created for itself to survive better as societies. In simple words, morality has no explanation apart from the fact that it is an instrument of survival that humans have built for themselves.
What comes out of all this discussion is a simple fact that the authority possessed by a secular liberal state to ‘enforce’ laws based on ethical principles/morality is absolutely unjustified! Unless there is a rational, scientific explanation for the question “from where do we derive our ethics/morals?”, the authority of the state to enforce these morals in the form of law is in contradiction to the liberal principles of ‘freedom’ themselves! But the authority of the state still exists. What does this suggest? This suggests what I have been repeating from the very beginning: when humans tend to free themselves from the slavery of the Almighty, they become slaves to lesser beings (humans).
The only difference between secular liberals and early humans (who existed a few thousand years before us) is that the secular liberals have given authority over themselves to those who control science and wealth; and the men of old had given the authority to the idols and the custodians of those idols (aristocrats and priests). “Flourishing of conscious creatures”, “usefulness of moral principles”, “welfare of the society” are all subjective concepts and the elite controls and defines all these things while making the poor, common liberal folk “BELIEVE” that it is the common man who actually decides everything! The priests and the aristocrats used to make common men “BELIEVE” thousands of years ago that the offerings and sacrifices should be made to them instead of God; and they will then take them to God and secure some concessions and intercede to get the prayers through. Ah, history brutally and subtly repeating itself!
The was originally posted at http://idlemindmuses.wordpress.com/
beautifully explained
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