Wednesday, October 27, 2010

"[I]mplicit in Cragg's recommendation of secular statehood

 in an unjustifiably optimistic estimate of the amenability of secular solidarities to moral constraints. The view that secular postures of power lead to humility in matters of statecraft is certainly questionable in an age that has witnessed the arrogant brutality of two 'world' (or rather 'European') wars, Hiroshima, and the shadow of nuclear holocaust. Virtually all the major tragedies of the twentieth century - possibly mankind's worst century so far - have been caused by secular and nationalist ambitions. The hubris of secularity when it rejects any liability to forces greater than itself is not he more pardonable because its source is not religious. It is well to remember that Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four is a critique of totalitarianism in secular dress. Big Brother was not the Pope or an Ayatollah. Inquisitions are not the monopoly of religious enthusiasms.

-The Final Imperative: An Islamic Theology of Liberation, pg. 76

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