by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
City Journal<\/em><\/p>\n Review of\u00a0Why the West is Best: A Muslim Apostate\u2019s Defense of Liberal Democracy<\/em>, by Ibn Warraq, (Encounter, 2011, 286 pp.)<\/strong><\/p>\n Occasionally, the mainstream media will let slip something that reveals the incoherence of multiculturalist orthodoxy. Not long ago, the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>reported on an Indian casino in California that had begun purging its rolls of members deemed insufficiently Indian. At the end of the story, an official from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, himself an Indian, remarked: \u201cThe tribe has historically had the ability to remove people. Tolerance is a European thing brought to the country. We never tolerated things. We turned our back on people.\u201d<\/p>\n Such honesty about the Western origins of goods like tolerance is rare these days among the media, academic, and popular-culture purveyors of multicultural \u201cdiversity.\u201d For them, other cultures are just as good as, if not better than, the West\u2019s \u2014 but at the same time, these cultures allegedly endorse Western ideals such as tolerance, gender equality, human rights, political freedom, and the other universal boons to which people everywhere aspire. They deem it Eurocentric or racist to assert the superiority of the West because it originated those goods, even as they castigate the West for its racist, sexist, imperialist, and colonialist crimes. But as Ibn Warraq shows in his thoughtful and compelling new book, the ideals that even multicultural relativists profess have their origin and highest development in the West.<\/p>\n Ibn Warraq is the pen name of a Muslim apostate who left his native Pakistan and now lives in the United States. His first book,\u00a0Why I Am Not a Muslim<\/em>, earned him death threats and a pseudonym. Over the years he has published frequently on the unique goods of Western civilization, particularly \u201cliberty and individual dignity,\u201d contrasting these with the intolerance and close-mindedness of traditional Islamic culture.\u00a0Why the West is Best<\/em>\u00a0continues the argument, laying out the defining ideals and virtues that have propelled Western civilization to global dominance.<\/p>\n Warraq\u2019s prologue summarizes, in his view, the values that make the West superior: \u201crationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, equality before the law, freedom of conscience and expression, human rights, [and] liberal democracy.\u201d These principles, Warraq continues, are not restricted to Westerners but have universal application. They are \u201cthe best and perhaps the only means for all people, no matter what race or creed, to live in freedom and reach their full potential.\u201d<\/p>\n The bulk of\u00a0Why the West is Best<\/em>\u00a0further defines these core principles, frequently in contrast with Islamic cultures. Rejecting fashionable materialist explanations for Western success \u2014 geography, species distribution, climate, natural resources, or disease immunity \u2014 Warraq reminds us that \u201cthe economic and technological success of the West began with culture, and with principles embodied in its characteristic institutions.\u201d That culture arose from the melding of Greek, Roman, Hebraic, and Christian influences. The Greeks invented democratic political participation and the rule of impersonal laws and institutions, rather than force. The Romans provided the foundations of our modern codes of law, establishing \u201ca flexible legal framework that combined tested formulas with ongoing innovation,\u201d Warraq writes, eventually broadening the notion of law to include the natural law that transcends tribe, time, or place. Hebraism added the ethical ideals of compassion and responsibility for our fellows that gave divine sanction to alleviating suffering and working for improvement\u2014even in the face of oppressive secular power. And Christianity sanctified the separation of church and state, institutionalizing a moral force to counterbalance the tendency of state power to encroach upon private activity and personal conscience. Insofar as non-Western cultures embrace these ideals, they progress and improve; those that don\u2019t find themselves mired in political oppression, inequality, poverty, intellectual stagnation, and economic failure.<\/p>\n Warraq also rebuts the charge that the West has been uniquely evil, that its record of slavery, racism, colonialism, and imperialism has made it history\u2019s arch-villain. As Warraq notes, racism and slavery are universal human evils, but \u201cit was the West that first took steps to abolish slavery; that took legal measures to end institutionalized racism; and that voluntarily withdrew from its colonial possessions and abandoned any imperial ambitions.\u201d He dispatches the widespread lie that the West is responsible for the African slave trade. Africans themselves kept slaves and provided the unfortunate people purchased by Europeans. Indeed, in 2000, the president of Benin apologized for his country\u2019s participation in the slave trade. And Warraq reminds us that Muslim Arabs \u201cengaged in the slave trade for thirteen centuries and shipped far more black slaves across the Sahara and the Red Sea than were sent across the Atlantic\u201d during the four centuries of European slave trading.<\/p>\n As for racism, Warraq quotes a thirteenth-century Persian Muslim\u2019s view that \u201cthe ape is more reasonable and more intelligent than the Zanji\u201d\u2014meaning black Africans, still called \u201cslaves\u201d in Arabic today. And anti-Semitism, Warraq writes, \u201cis widespread in the Islamic world, often encouraged by the state\u201d through government-controlled newspapers and other media. He shows how Muslim anti-Semitism has its roots in the Koran and the life and teachings of Mohammed, who deemed Jews \u201ccursed for their unbelief\u201d and who commanded, \u201cKill any Jew that falls into your power.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, no people have been as successful at conquering, occupying, and exploiting territory as Muslims, eradicating the cultures they conquered and impelling their victims to believe, as Warraq puts it, \u201cthat their whole prior cultural heritage was worthless.\u201d Compare this imperialistic cultural cleansing with European colonizers, who, for all their exploitation, nonetheless often studied and protected the cultural heritage of the peoples they colonized. Europeans established the formal academic study of these cultures, which even today serves as the basis for learning about them.<\/p>\n Such curiosity about the \u201cother,\u201d Warraq writes, is unique to the West. In contrast, Muslim cultures display little interest in learning from other cultures, with the notable exception of technical expertise. This close-mindedness \u2014 reinforced by Islam\u2019s claim to provide a complete guide to existence \u2014 is a major factor in the political and economic dysfunctions afflicting many Muslim nations. It stands in stark contrast to \u201cthe way that Western intellectuals, writers, historians, and politicians have themselves chronicled the follies of the West, challenging Westerners to rethink their ideas and alter their policies and social behavior.\u201d Out of such self-reflection has come the material and moral progress that abolished slavery and institutionalized respect for human liberty. For the Muslim Middle East to improve, as Warraq says, it needs an \u201cenlightenment\u201d that would introduce \u201ccritical thinking about the Islamic religion and culture.\u201d<\/p>\n Warraq recognizes that Western civilization is threatened not just by external rivals, but also by self-loathing Western ideologies such as multiculturalism and the \u201cpromiscuous pluralism that ends in moral relativism.\u201d These ideas go beyond self-reflection to justify \u201cspecial accommodations\u201d for minorities (like Muslim immigrants) that contradict values such as personal freedom and equality before the law. Warraq advises us to stop appeasing our enemies, do a better job of translating into Arabic and other Muslim tongues Western books that define our core values, and return to teaching our children an accurate history of the West.<\/p>\n We should not be surprised that it takes an immigrant from a country sorely lacking in the social, intellectual, and political goods Warraq discusses to document the glories of the West.\u00a0Why the West is Best<\/em>\u00a0is a timely, passionate reminder of how fortunate we are, and how fragile is our good fortune.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce S. Thornton City Journal Review of\u00a0Why the West is Best: A Muslim Apostate\u2019s Defense of Liberal Democracy, by Ibn Warraq, (Encounter, 2011, 286 pp.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[87,22],"tags":[461,366,1014,192,84,1015,107,1028,231,1017,336,30,93,58,298],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-fY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6606,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bruce-thornton-on-secure-freedom-radio-with-frank-gaffney\/","url_meta":{"origin":990,"position":0},"title":"Bruce Thornton on Secure Freedom Radio with Frank Gaffney","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Seth Jones, Bruce Thornton, Peter Pham, Diana West October 9th, 2013\u00a0\u00b7\u00a0Comments SETH JONES, Associate Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation, joins guest host DAN BONGINO, to help explain the terror threat from and historical background of the terrorist organization al-Shabaab. BRUCE THORNTON, a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5197,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-time-for-real-indians\/","url_meta":{"origin":990,"position":1},"title":"A Time for Real Indians","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 22, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"This Thanksgiving shake off false notions of the nobel savage. by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers Thanksgiving Day is perhaps our favorite time to indulge our collective idealizations of the past. Who does not warm to that iconic scene memorialized in thousands of grammar-school decorations \u2014 doughty Puritans and noble\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2043,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-other-california\/","url_meta":{"origin":990,"position":2},"title":"The Other California","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton City Journal In 1973, as I was going through customs in New York after spending the summer bumming around Italy and Greece, the customs agent looked at my passport and said with a Bronx sneer, \u201cBruce Thornton, huh? Is that one of them Hollywood names?\u201d Hearing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3052,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/corrupt-language-breeds-bad-history-and-bad-policy\/","url_meta":{"origin":990,"position":3},"title":"Corrupt Language Breeds Bad History and Bad Policy","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society As the history of communism and fascism both illustrate, modern political tyranny has relied on fabricated history to legitimize its claims and actions, and such history in turn relies on the debasement of language. Nowhere is this axiom more evident than in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Israel"","block_context":{"text":"Israel","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/israel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5148,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/new-world-old-myths\/","url_meta":{"origin":990,"position":4},"title":"New World, Old Myths","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 2, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A review of Charles C. Mann's\u00a01941: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Bruce S. Thornton Claremont Review of Books From the first moment of contact, Europeans viewed the American Indians through various mythic lenses. The most famous of these, applied indiscriminately to the vast variety of peoples inhabiting\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7258,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/one-cheer-for-the-schuette-decision\/","url_meta":{"origin":990,"position":5},"title":"One Cheer for the Schuette Decision","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0Front Page Magazine\u00a0 Many conservatives are applauding the recent Supreme Court\u00a0Schuette\u00a0decision upholding the right of the citizens of Michigan to ban racial preferences. As Charles Krauthammer\u00a0writes, the 2003\u00a0Grutter\u00a0decision, which like\u00a0Schuette\u00a0did not ban racial preferences altogether, was correct: \u201cThe people should decide.\u00a0The people responded accordingly. Three years\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":991,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions\/991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}