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Separationism and universal morality
People who are concerned about a universal moral code, especially with regard to human rights, may think that the policy of Separationism which I have proposed tolerates Islam (so long as it remains in its own lands) rather than condemning it and seeking to reform or destroy it. Such tolerance, they believe, would have the result of leaving individual Muslims, especially girls and women, suffering hopelessly forever under Islamic oppression. I would say that the opposite is the case. First, Separationism is uncompromisingly intolerant and disapproving of Islam. Second, such disapproval may hold out the only practical hope of actual change within Islam, releasing individual Muslims from its horrors. The separationist policy amounts to saying to the Islamic peoples:
Your religion is so dangerous and disgusting that we will have nothing to do with you. Therefore we are cutting you off—all 1.25 billion of you—from our societies. We have no ambition to interfere with, change, or destroy your religion, because as a practical matter we know that that is impossible. We have no desire to wage war against you, as that is not in our interests. But we non-Muslims so utterly oppose and condemn your religion that we henceforth and forever will regard you, the entire Muslim community, as personae non gratae everywhere outside the historic Muslim lands.What could be a stronger expression of disapproval and disrespect to the Muslims than for the rest of mankind to quarantine them? Such quarantine of course serves the main and essential purpose of Separationism, which is to save us, the non-Muslims, from Islam. However, humane Westerners also have a secondary and non-essential but still very worthwhile purpose, which is to save Muslims from Islam. But how can that be done? To repeat, we do not have the power to reform or destroy Islam. Such reform or destruction can only be brought about by the Muslims themselves. And what would have a better chance of bringing Muslims to the point of making such a fundamental change than the unyielding rejection and ostracism of the Islamic world by all of non-Muslim humanity? So, if we care about the terrible cruelties done to girls and women under Islam, if we care about freeing Muslims from the threat of death for apostasy, Separationism offers the best and perhaps the only possible way to help them. Just as President Reagan, by calling Communism evil, took away the Communist world’s sense of its own superiority and rightness and helped initiate the process that led to the downfall of Communism from within, we non-Muslims, by declaring that Islam and its followers are totally unacceptable to us, will shake the Muslims’ sense of their own superiority and rightness, and the experience of finding themselves increasingly and permanently rejected by the rest of the world may perhaps ultimately lead them to abandon Islam as the Communists abandoned Communism.
I am not at all suggesting that Separationism guarantees such a result. I am saying that the world’s permanent rejection and isolation of Islam offers the best chance of bringing Islam to an end. Email entry |