Too Big, Too Close? God in Islam and Christianity
March 08, 2005
For the Claremont Institute, New Pantagruelist Randy Boyagoda reviews Michael Novak’s latest book The Universal Hunger for Democracy. Intriguingly, Novak tells Muslims, “Your God is Too Big!” Rather like the Calvinists of yore, Muslims
…so completely value the supreme greatness of Allah that “in the Islamic view He overpowers human liberty.” Novak highly regards the Islamic emphasis upon the transcendence of God but he accurately bemoans that it too often results in “a kind of determinism” that hamstrings faithful Muslims who seek to enact their inherent freedoms in politics and economics.In an interesting point noted by Boyagoda, Novak contends that theocracy is an Islamic heresy because “the transcendence of Allah precludes identifying him with any one type of political regime.” Emphasizing divine transcendence is good; emphasizing supreme greatness is bad. Translation: have a big god but keep him far away–the more abstract, the better.
I suppose it’s all in how one defines (over-?) identification, but despite InterVarsity Press (the book’s publisher) being all the rage with young Muslims, Muslim readers (if there are any) might be forgiven for suspecting some sleight-of-hand is at work. The liberties of western democracies and the prosperity of their free market economies are indebted to Judaism and Christianity but not divinized? Surely Novak would not say that God is indifferent to these things or that some systems are not more or less righteous, more or less pleasing to God, more or less consistent with his will, more or less worth the support of the faithful. Is it any different with Allah? At any rate, it is an interesting thesis–“Your God is too big to endorse particular political systems.” Wouldn’t it just be simpler and more honest to admit we claim the one True God, denounce the Mohammettans as heretics and call for a crusade?
Concurrently, in a whirlwind of bumpersticker slogans and stereotypes, William Thatcher Dowell, special idiotes to the Los Angeles Times, worries about the prospects for free institutions as he compares the “Christian Right” in America to “the fanatical, ultrareligious Wahhabi movement” in Islam. (Now it is the Christian God that is too big–perhaps the likes of Novak, Dowell, and some Wahhabis could have a pow-wow on the proper sizing and situating of transcendent deities.)
Referring once to English attempts to impose the prayer book on the Scots in the 17th century, Dowell seems to think that something like revolutionary theocratic Calvinism is still at large: modern-day American “puritans,” like the Wahhabis, experience “a deep sense of grievance and an underlying conviction that a return to spiritual purity will restore the lost power they believe once belonged to their forefathers.”
Of course–(a phrase Dowell uses several times, always to bolster an error)–this is all bollocks. The vast majority of conservative protestants (Dowell seems to be forgetting us Catholics, but the story is much the same) are like Novak and de Tocqueville in that they believe that religion (i.e., Christianity) is integral to western institutions, prosperity, and freedom. They are not theocrats; they have an uncomfortable but acceptable peace with pluralist liberalism. They agree with Novak–and Dowell could hardly object–that Islam is too much religion with its super-sized deity. They may want religion in the public square and a seat at the table for religious viewpoints–but this is a very tame, liberal endeavor.
A more enlightened book and review (J. Dudley Woodberry on Meic Pearse’s Why the Rest Hates the West) tries to articulate Islamic discontent on its own terms: Islamic cultures believe the West is “barbaric,” showing lack of respect for the past, religion, family, and honor, while overindulging in sports, entertainment, and sex.” Now that is something you can compare to the American “religious right” (except for the sports and possbily the entertainment bit), but it doesn’t sound so bad now, does it Mr. Dowell? Here we also get at the root of western religious conservatives’ difficult spot–they want to object to barbarism too, but when the enemy starts to look too much like them, then they want to accentuate the positives of democracy, capitalism, and the importance of Christianity to all that good stuff. God goes well with America whether you worship him or not. He isn’t so big that he wrecks the party (so take a chill pill, Dowell), but he’s big enough to make us feel a little bad about our barbarism. Nothing to really get up in arms about though… A real pity, that Terry Schiavo case. Pass the medium-sized Jesus fries!
This is Too Big, Too Close? God in Islam and Christianity in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Allow Me to Retort | Next: Žižek on Authentic Conservatism | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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