Why does the President of France still think Islam is compatible with democracy? According to the Wall Street Journal, today “President François Hollande said that Islam is compatible with democracy and Muslims are the main victims of Islamist militants.” This sentiment is held not only by the President of France, but by a majority of Western leaders including President Barack Obama. But why? The answer is bad history. Like most people, they have been inculcated in a historical narrative that says democracy developed in spite of the Christian faith; that ever since the English Civil War and the French Revolution, reason and self-determination have triumphed over religion and the divine right of kings. Yet quite the opposite is true. Modern Western democracy was founded upon three concepts that evolved from Christian theology—the sovereignty of the individual, the social contract, and inalienable rights. Thomas Jefferson made this clear when he summarized more than a century of Enlightenment thought with the following words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” In other words, the Creator gives all the rights and power to each individual who, in turn, loans some of those rights to government in order to secure his or her liberty from the tyranny of other men. It was a revolution. Prior to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Europeans believed God gave monarchs the power to rule over other men, that some were born to rule while others were born to serve. There is no lasting political or military solution to what is essentially a theological problem. If Islam is to join the modern world, then it must come to hold that Allah gives all the rights to each individual; and that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Then, and only then, will there exist within Islam a division between secular law and the freedom of each person to practice his or her religion (or no religion at all). In the meantime, we should at least get history right because the price of getting it wrong is very high indeed. *Leo Behan is an attorney, former Air Force officer, and co-author of the book “The Secret Gospel of Ireland: The Untold Story of How Science and Democracy Descended From a Remarkable Form of Christianity That Developed in Ancient Ireland”
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 05:02:38 +0000
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