Decay of rule of law and appeal of islamism

Submitted by Concerned European (Lithuania), Jan 9, 2007 at 06:19

[A religious appeal that provides deeper resonance and greater staying power than the artificial ideologies of fascism or communism.]

I think that religious appeal can provide deeper resonance not only in relation to "artificial" totalitarian ideology, but also in relation to the Western system of the "rule of law", because this system has an obvious tendency(even without the terrorist threat but merely because of technological developments) to become more and more clumsy and unwieldy, mechanical and inhuman or even dehumanizing, where a person feels caught between the wheels of the huge state machine which works like robot without any human feelings and compassion, and the enforcement of which is more and more based on total surveillance and stiff control than on moral values of individuals.

Now islamists(obviously the peaceful kind of them) can claim and not without apparent success that their system is more human, that the sharia rule is rule by humans according to a divine plan, and not by some impersonal state machine.

We of course know that Islamists, when they truly come to power, would certainly throw off their masks and would establish machine much worse which would couple the excesses of an oriental tyrant which an inhuman and total state machine outside any control, however their false mask and their pretended human warmth (again I stress that I have "peaceful islamists" in mind) could induce many people in error and not only Muslims by belief, by birth or by background.

Finally it can happen that if the Western system of "the rule of law" gets too much erroded, the Western and Westernized non-Western people can lose any incentive of defending their own system turned semi-totalitarian in the face of real totalitarism and barbarism. Not necesssary they should feel any appeal towards barbarian totalitarianism, but it can happen that they do not see any more willingness to protect their own system. One must not forget that barbarians have crushed the gates of Rome exactly at the moment when the Roman system became too much controlloing and oppressive.

Increasing surveillance and control maybe can protect from physicall danger or reduce it, however it can still further erode moral commitment of the Western people to the "rule of law", especially when perceived necessity of limiting and controlling measures is far lower now as it was during more conventional conflicts of WWII and the Cold War.

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