What happens to a civilization when it fails to give reason its due?

I've mentioned Robert R. Reilly's excellent book,  The Closing of the Muslim Mind (ISI, 2010) a couple of times on this blog. Here is more about it, from a review by Matthew Kenefick for The American Spectator:

Robert R. Reilly has written a book that may offer the key to both understanding and perhaps defeating the ongoing war of terror against the West. The book is entitled The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis. As Angelo Codevilla's jacket blurb puts it: "Reilly shows what happens to a civilization when it fails to give reason its due. This book teaches and warns. Read it." Paul Eidelberg describes it as "a book surpassing in depth even the best efforts of Bernard Lewis. You will not only be enlightened, but you may also see how the West might prevent a new Dark Ages." ...

Are we merely trying to exterminate al Qaeda, the Taliban, and all forms of jihadist Islam, or are we, in the tradition of an eye for an eye, seeking payback for the almost 3,000 Americans who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?

Although the answers to questions such as these do not lie in Reilly's work, he marshals convincing historical evidence of the likelihood that the Christian West and the Muslim countries will remain incompatible, because we believe in man's power to reason -- and they don't. And barring some sort of Islamic Reformation (which theologians such as Michael Novak do not rule out as impossible), jihadist Islam and the Christian West will remain in mortal conflict, as we have intermittently in the past. The difference now, however, is that Islamic nationalists may already be capable of using nuclear weapons, or else are on the verge of that capability, whether in war or as instruments of terror. Most worrisome, they have the will and the irrational theology to use them. In short, dialogue is not possible with those who are incapable of religious tolerance.

At the heart of Reilly's book is his argument that the

denigration of dialogue is due to the demotion of reason that took place in the ninth-century struggle between the rationalist theologians, the Mu'tazilites and their anti-rationalist theologians, the Ash'arites. Unfortunately, for those who prefer dialogue, the Ash'arites won.

The Ash'arites' position was that reason is so infected by men's self-interest that it cannot be relied upon to know things objectively. What is more, there is really nothing to be known because all created things have no nature or order intrinsic to themselves, but are only the momentary manifestations of God's direct will. Since God acts without reason, the products of his will are not intelligible to men. Therefore, in this double disparagement, reason cannot know, and there is nothing to be known.

Read the entire review.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Links/Articles:

• Christians and Muslims, Living Together | Preface to English Edition of 111 Questions on Islam | Samir Khali Samir, S.J. on Islam and the West | Interviews conducted by Giorgio Paolucci and Camille Eid
• The Regensburg Lecture: Thinking Rightly About God and Man | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Is Dialogue with Islam Possible? Some Reflections on Pope Benedict XVI's Address at the University of Regensburg | Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.
• Benedict Takes the Next Step with Islam | Mark Brumley
• Spartans, Traitors, and Terrorists | Dr. Jose Yulo
• Martyrs and Suicide Bombers | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• On the Term "Islamo-Fascism" | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Plato's Ring in the Sudan: How Freedom Begets Isolation of the Soul | Dr. Jose Yulo
• The Echo of Melos: How Ancient Honor Unmasks Islamic Terror | Dr. Jose Yulo

Comments

[Sharon]

I am reading this as a E-book - it is an excellent explication of militant Islam today.