To the Editor:
James Q. Wilson summarizes very well the case for hoping that we might create a liberal regime in Iraq [“Islam and Freedom,” December 2004]. But in that country, as in all the Muslim countries Mr. Wilson deals with, there is a cultural problem too little discussed in the West.
For economic and other reasons, we take it for granted that government is most desirable when it permits a species of liberalism—or “freedom”—in which the space and will of the individual are highly valued. But in countries with a long history of despotism, this is not the case. In many Muslim societies, and especially among Arabs, populations are comfortable with despotism in a way utterly foreign to most Westerners (though Europe has had its own exceptions to this rule in the 1930’s and after World War II).
In such a system, the dissent that is normal in a democracy is felt not only by rulers but even by many subjects as a threat to social and political stability. Despotism can thus command the loyalty of subjects who hope to survive in relative security and comfort by keeping their noses clean. Although this trade-off is one that we in the West, with our traditional suspicion of unlimited power, are unwilling to accept, we make a grave mistake if we underestimate the willingness of others—especially in Muslim societies—to accept it.
Herb Greer
Salisbury, England
To the Editor:
James Q. Wilson’s well-thought-out and informative article is marred by a throwaway comparison of modern Islamic states with the 16th-century Roman Catholic Church. I take specific exception to Mr. Wilson’s statement that the “Protestant Reformation helped set the stage for religious and even political freedom in the West.” A more correct formulation would give credit to the Catholic Counter-Reformation as well.
Even better would be to acknowledge that the Church itself, as an institution, set the stage for religious and political freedom. The Church was the greatest benefactor of Renaissance art and science, and the preserver of Greek and Roman philosophy and science through its universities (which were hardly like madrassas), libraries, monasteries, and theologians. Then as now, the Church’s doctrine was one of “free will”—a doctrine necessary for freedom and democracy.
Stephen Kelly
Saint Paul, Minnesota
James Q. Wilson writes:
Herb Greer suggests that Muslims are more “comfortable with despotism” than are Westerners. How does he know that? I am deeply suspicious of the unsupported view that people are “comfortable” with authoritarian rule. The same could be said of the West from the time of imperial Rome to the 17th century; but freedom, once offered, proved an irresistible lure to people. I do not know why anyone should think Muslims will be different.
Stephen Kelly does not want me to explain Western freedom by reference to the Reformation. He is quite correct; if I had more space, I could have written at length about the tensions that the Reformation created, or discussed the fact that neither Martin Luther nor John Calvin supported personal freedom. But the religious split they helped create did give birth to many Protestant sects, which in time secular authorities had to accommodate by a policy of toleration. (I develop this point in an earlier article, “The Reform Islam Needs,” in the Autumn 2002 City Journal.) I am skeptical of Mr. Kelly’s claim that the Counter-Reformation and the Church’s support of art and literature encouraged freedom. It was the papacy that, after the Counter-Reformation, expanded the Inquisition and put Galileo on trial.
Mustafa Akyol rightly reminds us of the changes in Turkey under the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, the Tanzimat, or high council of reform, did leave an important legacy, one that permitted the emergence of the Young Turks and after them the dissident officers among whom Mustafa Kemal was a leading figure. But it was Kemal who took the ideas of the Tanzimat and converted piecemeal change into the beginnings of modern Turkey.
