Gordon Mullings, Contributor

Ian Boyne, columnist and veteran interviewer. -file

My attention was drawn to an article by Mr. Boyne in The Gleaner several Sundays past. I found that in his commentary, Mr. Boyne has stated much that is of deepest concern, starting with:

"There are sincere Muslims outside of the Middle East who are visceral and reflexively defensive over criticisms about the totalitarian nature of Islamic fundamentalism.

These Chinese and Muslims, blinded by loyalty borne of ethnicity and ideology, are joined by leftists who, turned off by the failure of bourgeois democracy to meet the social and economic needs of the poor and oppressed, downplay Cuba's suppression of freedom of the press and expression because of its impressive social achievements."

By using "fundamentalism", Boyne and others of that ilk implicate the biblical Christian faith, as that is the origin of what has now become little more than a smear word. In short the in-group readily reads the implications, not that Islam — unfortunately — is unique among major religions in regards to being explicitly instructed in its sources and founding examples to be spread globally by the sword [cf Surah 9:5, 29-31, etc., which are so late that they, sadly, take precedence in light of the principle of abrogation], and the just past posts (here and here) on the Pope's remarks], but that the problem is "fundamentalism": so — biblical Christians are just as bad.

Next, this passage is — sadly — a sweeping piece of sophistry:

Unfortunately, because of the glaring hypocrisy of United States foreign policy, George Bush's rhetoric about liberty and democracy-promotion are given short shrift and the democratic ideal is not given the profound significance which it holds. Because democracy is being promoted in an unbalanced and class-driven way. But, despite the myriad examples of double-standards in the rhetoric of the West about democracy, human rights and freedom, the fact remains that its concept of freedom, though limited in practice, is philosophically superior to its competitors, past and present.

Comments:

1] Is U.S. foreign policy glaringly hypocritical in a way that makes it singularly disreputable, or is it that it faces and we face a world in which the possible trumps the ideal, in the here and now? [In short, are we judging the U.S. by a conveniently selectively hypersceptical standard?

2] It is simply an assertion that democracy is being promoted in an unbalanced, class driven way. In the relevant test cases, Iraq and Lebanon, has the U.S. been acting in an unbalanced way or in a way driven by class interests - whose, where? In short this is the rhetoric of dismissal, not fair comment driven by substantial points.

3] That "might" relative to totalitarianism is telling. For, in both cases, the U.S. and other western powers, imperfect as they are, were plainly the better alternative in an existential struggle against two totalitarian ideologies that were openly declared to be hell-bent on world conquest. [Here Boyne - who is very well-informed indeed - is exploiting both our ignorance of history and our reflexive tendency to view western powers as bad.]

The rhetoric goes on, and soon enough gets around to the real target:

"The world is a much safer place today because the totalitarian ideology of the Christian Crusaders and the Roman Church was decisively routed by the secular state".

You see how biblical Christians in Jamaica are - AGAIN, in The Gleaner's columns- being equated to the Taliban's tyranny, all courtesy that ever so easy smear-word, "fundamentalism"? Nor is he addressing the vast gap between the biblically illiterate, Christianity of the Middle Ages and the world that resulted from having the reformation sola scriptura principle joined to putting the Bible in the hands of the ordinary man: liberation.

Secondly, he has utterly failed to address the fact that the Quran drastically contrasts with the Bible on the matter of liberty, so that in fact it was not secularism that brought us to modern liberty but in large and material measure the REFORMATION as it moved out into the issues of liberty.