Opinion
Absolute rejection of radical athiesm
By Harry Davidson
Daily we are bombarded with media reports of new acts of terror, new plots to kill and destroy, and unimaginable threats to whole cities. The pitch increases with each passing month, and we struggle to understand the deepest meaning of the conflict. And we shall not understand it until we are willing to look at the spiritual foundations of the struggle, without minimizing the significance of the particular acts or denying their existence.
We need to understand that the centuries-long project of the secularization of Western Culture has itself created a crisis that is just now coming to a head. It has expunged the knowledge of the Spirit from Western culture - in science, government, education, economics and virtually every area of human endeavor.
Even without the confrontation of radical fundamentalist global Islam, Western culture would be in a state of crisis. And this can be understood as none other than a crisis of the Spirit.
We intuitively know that the Spirit cannot be exiled. It cannot be removed or set aside and then picked up again at our own convenience without terrible spiritual repercussions. If the life of the Spirit is not central to all of life, then everything loses its ultimate meaning. Everything becomes relative to the immediate need or the desire of the moment. We have lost the capacity as a culture and a people to understand the present moment in its deepest possible spiritual significance. Hence we have lost our spiritual mooring and are adrift on a sea of our own desires.
If even a shred of this analysis of our current situation is true and we are able to recognize it, then it is all the more recognizable to those looking on the West from outside. I believe that this is the view that Islam sees. And not just Islam. It is the view of anyone who would seek the spiritual reasons for today’s crisis. That is why we in the West are in the midst of our own internal cultural war and why there is such a dis-ease at the deep intuitive level among spiritual seekers.
This deep intuition elicits a response, and respond we shall. But that response will be informed by the shape of our own inner life and tradition. As non-Westerners, Muslims will respond in a way that reflects their own tradition. It is a tradition of absolutes. And with our absolute secularization comes their absolute rejection. This should be no surprise. Even within our Western culture, as fragmented as it is, there is still a current flowing from its spiritual headwaters that is also appalled at the absence of Spirit and also rejects the Spiritless and Soul-less secular culture. Any spiritual culture or its remnant that still understands the world fundamentally as a spiritual reality will respond to and judge secularized culture in similar ways. The more intact the spiritual tradition of the culture, the more appalled its sentiments and the more radical its response.
At this moment in the spiritual history of Islam, as it seeks to respond to a growing and aggressive global culture, radical cults have arisen that are not clearly connected to greater Islam. These radical Islamists are torn asunder at the deepest level, living in both the modern and the traditional world. They are ripe for extremism because their incongruence is extreme.
There are extreme responses within Western spiritual tradition as well. That there is relatively little violent radicalism within Christian fundamentalist circles is a reflection of Christianity’s basic teachings. For the Christian, the war with the influences of the desacralized and secular world is first an inner war. For the Islamist, the war is first an outer war that will, when won, reorder all of life to the spiritual reality. The differences may seem subtle, but the working out of these basic beliefs have profound implications.
In the final analysis each spiritual tradition must deal internally with its own radical elements. Christians and Muslims with their own, and radical secularists with their own as well. Radical secularism has all the components of a religion and in fact is one. When each spiritual tradition is self-regulated and the radical fringes are held in check, then the good, the true and the beautiful which inform and enliven the varied traditions will prevail, and the possibility exists that in this global moment we might live together in a measure of mutual harmony, informing and cross-pollinating one another, giving expression to the life of the Spirit in a way the world has never seen. It shall be so…or we will destroy everything.
Harry Davidson was born in Kodiak, raised in Southwest Alaska, and is now a business owner in Anchorage. E-mail: .