Sunday, July 16, 2006
MARX, MUHAMMED and ME
With the rocket-powered hit increase from my first Instalanche in a while comes some good comments from readers flung my way by Glenn's gravity well. I long ago disabled comments because I don't have enough time to monitor them daily the way I would need to to make them a good addition to my blog. So these comments come via email. Among the best was this one from Steve Grimaud:
Interesting thoughts expressed in your post. One comment I'd make is that Marxism, by depending on the scientific method, built its own internal visible inconsistencies. It could not develop without a strong hand (dictator) to force it along.
Islam on the other hand avoided those visible inconsistencies by basing itself on faith. You can't argue with faith, so there's no argument. That doesn't make the religion right, just not "provably" so. Faith as a basis for a government sets that government in an unasailable (and indfensibe) position. Either you believe or you
don't.
Thanks for the good read.
Grimaud points to another important distinction between Marxism and Islam as totalitarian world-views: The latter has, thoughout most of its history, tended toward a kind of polycentric, centrifugal power structure, whereas Marxism seems to inevitably lead to centralization of political and cultural authority. This presents one of the primary challenges of the long struggle the West now faces: There's no "head" to strike at and Islam as a meme has a very robust ability to adapt to local conditions because of its lack of central ideological authority. The latter point is especially ironic. While the core orthodoxy is deeply infelxible, the ideology's ability to mutate its exterior face is very high. This is a phenomenon I have yet to fully understand, despite reading thousands of pages on the subject over the last nearly five years.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:55 AM
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