To: The Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development
Fm: Suzanne Taylor
RE: Response to Special Forum #43

I was grateful to read Muslims and the West After September 11, and to discover your Nautilus Institute, which looks like it has enough support from funders for it to become a sense-maker at a time when we need more nuanced intelligence than the black and white thinking that so predominates in our government, and thus, inevitably, in our people. Although I am a tiny little entity by comparison to you, you will see – at my 9/11 Website, dedicated to Making Sense of These Times – that we share the same proclivity "to engage experts in a variety of fields in debate and dialogue about how to mobilize an effective, collective response to the recent events in New York and Washington in ways that point towards closer global cooperation and increase prospects for global peace, personal security, and sustainable development." (Incidentally, I have a quote from a previous Pervez Hoodbhoy piece, "The View from Islamabad," on my Quotes Page.)

Muslims and the West After September 11 should be required reading. We must understand, beyond both right wing prejudice and left wing moralizing, how complex the situation is. As we liberals are quick to proclaim the need to educate the masses about the fundamental peacefulness of the Muslim religion, I saw beyond this from Pervez Hoodbhoy's challenge to this deeply moral perspective. I got from him the distinction between the benign abstraction of Islam and what has become an unfortunate interpretation of what was its "brilliant past," where, "between the 9th and the 13th centuries - the Golden Age of Islam - the only people doing decent science, philosophy, or medicine were Muslims." He clearly explains how the intolerant and violent proclivities of Islam's "orthodoxy reawakened," which has predominated since then and has "championed revelation over reason, predestination over free will," has supplanted the "strong rationalist tradition" of the earlier era, with Muslim hostility extending far further than the relatively few terrorists whom, from our liberal point of view, it is politically correct to point to as holders of problematic perspectives. As Pervez Hoodbhoy tells us, re what occurred after that Golden Age, "Held in the vice-like grip of orthodoxy, Islam choked."

I read the Pervez Hoodbhoy piece in a mailing from a liberal list I am on, where the introduction by the listkeeper caught my attention. Here's what it said:

"The following article provides a uniquely informed, balanced, and even-handed overview of the rift between the Muslimic world and the West. The author's main error, in my opinion, is thinking that humankind can sever its connection with spirit and still find viable ways to solve our problems. The hope of the world, writes Pervez Hoodbhoy, lies in 'secular humanism, based upon the principles of logic and reason.' There's no question that humankind's dogmatic, self-righteous, and tiny-minded religious traditions have inflicted untold harm on humanity – on both believers and non-believers alike – but rejecting their underlying tenant – that unseen spiritual forces sustain and overshadow all aspects of our earthly experience – is also counterproductive."

Until recently, I would have shared the point of view about the author's "error." However, in evolving my 9/11 site a revolutionary point of view that caused me to rethink came from Joe Simonetta. He has an eloquently developed argument that would find him agreeing with Pervez Hoodbhoy – see my conversation with Simonetta, which includes links to his work. In fact, with my site (and over the last decade with my non-profit, Mighty Companions) devoted to an interchange in which good minds can come to new understandings, I am starting to use Simonetta's work as a focalizing ideation. His proposal – that the stories of all our religions are old vestiges that have come to be impossibly divisive – has given cause for pause to people who have read his slim book, Seven Words That Can Change the World. Thanks to Simonetta, I now agree with Pervez Hoodbhoy: "We have but one choice: the path of secular humanism, based upon the principles of logic and reason." (I think the listkeeper does not read Pervez Hoodbhoy right in presuming he rejects the idea "that unseen spiritual forces sustain and overshadow all aspects of our earthly experience." The piece is speaking of the ills of religions, and does not reject an underlying spirituality.) Were everyone to subscribe to the need for secular humanism to supplant religion as our moral compass, we could have that vitally needed new story in which we would find ourselves as one humanity that no longer would provide the seedbed for the destructive groups and individuals who, in defending their faiths, threaten our survival as a species.

[Click here to read comments from Joe Simonetta about this piece.]


Use your browser's BACK button to return to your previous page.