Noted: The uninformed morality of 'intellectuals'.

By MARGARET WENTE [Toronto Globe & Mail] – Nomad is, in part, a brilliant introduction to the dynamics of Muslim families in the West. It explains how girls are cowed and shamed into submission, and how boys grow up confused. They are easy marks for the propaganda of well-funded jihadists, who offer them a meaning, a purpose, and a sense of identity. Ms. Hirsi Ali has met plenty of these young men and women on university campuses. “They start displaying what I think of as al-Qaeda chatter,” she says. “Israel is the small Satan, and America is the big one. They defend sharia law.”

So what can secular society do? “We need to offer an alternative sense of morality,” she says. How about Christianity – a mild, good-natured, evolved version of Christianity, one that welcomes arguments and questions? This strikes me as an odd suggestion, coming as it does from a committed atheist. But Ms. Hirsi Ali does have a point. Young people long for causes bigger than themselves. It’s not enough to counter the certainties of radical Islam with the hedonism of the West and a blithe “whatever.”

Continued at the Globe & Mail | More Chronicles & Notices.

This Fortnightly Review article is filed under the following rubrics: Chronicle & Notices.
Publication: Friday, 11 June 2010, at 01:58.
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Noted: The uninformed morality of 'intellectuals'.

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