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{"id":16890,"date":"2014-12-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=1715"},"modified":"2014-12-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T00:00:00","slug":"islamic-revolutionaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2014\/12\/islamic-revolutionaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Islamic Revolutionaries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

In his brilliant\u00a0Earthly Powers<\/a> (3), Michael Burleigh cites a passage from Tocqueville\u2019s book on the French Revolution. Taking a note from Schiller about \u201chow early modern religious wars spilled across political boundaries,\u00a0which reminded Tocqueville of the ideological struggle between Jacobins and counter-revolutionaries in late-eighteenth-century Europe,\u201d Tocqueville drew a comparison between the revolutionary pursuit of human regeneration and the aims of Islam:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the Revolution seemed to be striving for the regeneration\u00a0of the human race even more than for the reform of\u00a0France, it lit a passion which the most violent political revolutions\u00a0have never before been able to produce. It inspired conversions\u00a0and generated propaganda. Thus, in the end, it took\u00a0on that appearance of a religious revolution which so astonished\u00a0contemporaries. Or rather, it itself became a new kind of\u00a0religion, an incomplete religion, it is true, without God, without\u00a0ritual, and without life after death, but one which nevertheless,\u00a0like Islam, flooded the earth with its soldiers, apostles, and\u00a0martyrs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rousseau exhibited a preference for Islam over Christianity quite explicitly. As Burleigh says, \u201cIn his more extended political writings, Rousseau\u00a0discussed what he dubbed \u2018civil religion.\u2019 He revealed himself more\u00a0admiring of Islam\u2019s blurring of the sacred and temporal than of Christianity.\u00a0He sought to transcend the potentially divisive duality of spiritual\u00a0and secular powers inherent in Christianity (with hindsight its major\u00a0saving grace), by separating each citizen\u2019s right to an individual opinion\u00a0on the afterlife from his duties as a citizen and moral actor in society.\u00a0The latter was to have as much weight as the former\u201d (78).<\/p>\n

Jacobins and Islamicists: It seems a strange comparison, but perhaps highlights not how ancient Jacobins were but how modern Islamicist ideology is.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"