Perez Zagorin’s new book How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West is excellent. I recommend it highly. I learned a good deal from it, especially concerning the context for various debates over religious toleration and freedom, and was introduced to elements of the story with which I was previously unfamiliar. Now, when the issue of toleration is on the front pages of most newspapers around the world, a knowledge of how religious toleration emerged in previously intolerant societies is of the greatest importance. (One helpful element was his treatment of the relationship between “toleration” and “freedom.”)
A weakness of the book, in my humble opinion, was the lack of any discussion of the role of the Spanish Scholastics (most especially Francisco de Vitoria, who, in his 1539 book De Indis defended the rights of the inhabitants of the “new world” not to be baptized against their wills. (That, however, is easily corrected — by reading Vitoria.)
I recommend reading this book along with R. I. Moore’s The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250, which gives a good picture of how persecution worked in Europe.
I just started reading Bruce Bawer’s very chilling work While Europe Slept : How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within. Don’t read it if you hope to be able to fall asleep after you set it down.
While Europe Slept looks very interesting. I just now requested it from the library.
Is there a general overview of the Scholastics that you recommend?
I searched the San Jaoquin Valley Library System for the keyword “scholastics” and found an interesting book: “Aristotle’s Children: how Christians, Muslims, and Jews rediscovered ancient wisdom and illuminated the Dark Ages.” Looks promising!
This doesn’t mean that I don’t want a recommendation or two from you 🙂
Ryan,
I have that book, but …. haven’t yet read it. It has been recommended to me, however.
I would recommend a nice little book by Alejandro Chafuen, “Faith and Liberty: The Economic Thought of the Late Scholastics” ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0739105418/sr=8-2/qid=1140911780/ref=sr_1_2/103-7791572-2859017?%5Fencoding=UTF8 ). Also, it’s worth getting the Political Writings of Francisco de Vitoria. And I’d also read the sections on the Spanish Scholastics (notably Juan de Mariana) in Joseph Schumpeter’s History of Economic Analysis.
I hope that that helps!
Cheers,
Tom
Bruce Bawer seems to be an ignorant bigot, in the line of Robert Spencer. Its funny before 9/11 no such thing was mentioned, now every western ‘Islamic scholar’ is writing a book about the muslim communities in western nations. It seems to be the latest fashion nowadays.
What do these people want from the muslims communities in western nations?
These books remember me of the tsarist forgery “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” at the turn of the 20th century and many other books written to defile the jewish communities in europe.
An enlightened jewish writer lately wrote about ominous parallels between the muslim communities now and the jewish communities in the 19th and the early 20th centurie.
I wonder when will the pogroms start? The sooner I know it the sooner I can run away.
Well, I’m reserving judgement until I finish the book. When I wrote the above, I had just started it. So far, however, it doesn’t read like the work of a bigot. For example, he decries the segregation at work in much of Europe and the discrimination against immigrants who seek work at a professional level or entry into university.
P. 70: “Europeans, as I gradually came to understand, will allow immigrants into their country; they’ll pay high taxes so that their government can dole out (forever, if necessary) rent support, child benefits, and so forth; and they’ll refer to these newcomers piously as ‘our fellow countrymen.’ But they won’t *really* think of them as being Norwegian or Dutch. And something deep inside of them rebels mightily against the idea of immigrants living among them as respected, fully equal professionals.”
He tells of a doctor in Norway, after having completed 8 years of medical school, being told by the social services department (which in Norway is responsible for job finding services, since private employment agencies are frowned upon) (pp. 71-2) “that they couldn’t help him find a medical position–but that if he wanted to be a trainee at a grocery store, they’d be glad to be of service. And if he insisted on being a doctor? ‘Go to your country and work as a doctor there, but not here!’ he was told.* Norwegians pride themselves on their humanitarian aid to wide-eyed children in Africa — but something in them rebels against the idea of one of those children growing up to become a Norwegian doctor. Across Europe, that’s the attitude: millions in aid, but not a penny in salary.” “*Hirsi Ali, now a member of the Dutch parliament, had a similar experience when she first arrived in the Netherlands as a Somali refugee. As Alexander Linklater wrote in the *Guardian*, ‘ponderous well-meaning labour officers…kept directing her to work she didn’t want. The idea that she might go to university was dismissed.'”
That doesn’t sound like the work of a bigot, but of someone who is concerned about ingrained European bigotry. If a Turk, an Italian, a Korean, a Kenyan, a Norwegian, or a Jordanian comes to the U.S. and becomes a citizen after five years, he or she is understood to be “an American,” without being an immigrant, and his or her grandchildren will not be referred to as “third generation immigrants.” That seems a better solution than what most European countries offer to immigrants.
But I’ll write up something after I get through the book and have had a chance to understand what Bawer is proposing.
Orhan asks, “What do these people [anti-Islamist writers] want from the muslim communities in the western nations?” I’m going to go out on a limb here and take a wild guess, but I suspect the answer to your question, Orhan, is: “Not trying to impose Sharia [with or without the comma in the middle] on the rest of us; being a little more vocal in saying ‘No’ to terrorism; getting with the program of freedom and religious toleration; not giving aid and comfort to Islamofascit whack-jobs trying to kill us.” Is that too much to ask, effendi? Do you think we could shoot for that?
Bilwick no muslim is trying to impose sharia in the west, there are oly a few muslim nations were sharia is applied. “Imposing sharia” is an analogy used by many anti-Islamist writers without any base. There are probably a few nutjubs out there who want to impose it but they are a very tiny minority within the muslims in the west. The anti-Islamist writers use this to accuse the muslims as fifth columnists. Besides sharia only applies to muslims and not to non-muslims, just like the jewish halakka so how could they impose that on non-muslims
Bilwick please explain to me which muslim community in which country said this (imposing shaia)???
‘No’ to terrorism —- That would have been great if they said that but you are expecting that from people who were unable to that in their own countries. On a side note the vast majority of the muslim world did not experience the enlightenment. One of the advantages of the enlightenment was that the europeans would question their leaders and their policies. That eventually led to a powerfull citizenry, something like that did not happen in the muslim world. Todays muslims are more like sheep always following their leaders whether they are dictators in their countries of origin or the western politicians in their adopted countries.
You apply that majority of muslims in west are helping these terorists thats nonse, there is no proof for that.
Could you please explain to me why you call me ‘effendi’? Are you greek?
Hey, if the Muslims of Europe and elsewhere are non-coercive, and don’t believe in imposing their beliefs in others, and don’t support those who do–then we have no problem, right? And, yes–he said proudly–I am geek.
I have zero doubts that Orhan has not picked up Bower’s book at all. I am almost finished with it. I don’t think he is a bigot. I can not comprehend this absurd tactic of accussing people of bigotry because they oppose bigotry. Islamists in the West are bigots on lots of issues. They treat women like animals and don’t mind bashing homosexuals. When people oppose that they are labelled bigots for criticizing people for being bigots. Bizarre.
Over and over I have read comments from Islamic religious leaders in the West arguing for Islamic sharia law. And Bawer quotes them. For Orhan to say no one does this is just proof that he has not read the book. When I lived in Africa the nation where I resided had an Islamist movement start up while I was there. They called for sharia law quite openly. In addition they were behind several bombings of popular restaurants and bars.
As for Bawer’s book reminding him of the Protocols what a laugh! That is proof he hasn’t read either book. But if he wants a copy of the Protocols they are sold openly as fact throughout the Muslim world.