As for Western apologists for Sharia, I believe their motivation is simple.
In the past, they have “signed on” to every totalitarian philosophy that came down the pike, not just Communism. In the thirties, the “intellectual left” was evenly split between (1) those who admired Stalin, (2) those who admired Hitler, and (3) those who had a crush on both. By the fifties and sixties, this had mutated into admiration for Mao Tse-Tung, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, and Che’ Guevara, the heartthrob of PoliSci departments from Berkeley to Harvard. Today, they are getting tingles from Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, and most recently Erdogan in Turkey.
The common denominator in each case was that they looked at these virulently anti-Western, anti-enlightenment movements and leaders, and saw what they wanted to see. That being a society run by an “intellectual elite’”, with absolute power, and no backtalk allowed from the peasants. And they saw themselves in the same place, once those societies had conquered ours.
The “intellectuals” pride themselves on rejecting the “irrational” beliefs of their inferiors, ranging from religion (their bete noire’) to democracy. Like their spiritual guru, Plato, they believe that only they, the “best and brightest”, should decide anything. And anyone who objects should face the supreme penalty. Not for daring to speak up, but for daring to have a thought they did not approve first.
They believe that, just as they signed on to fascism, communism, and every other “movement” that promised them absolute power in the last century, that Islam in general and Sharia specifically will welcome them with open arms- and that they will then rule both because, well, everybody else involved just isn’t as smart and sophisticated as they are. And they will readily swear allegiance to the new version of totalitarianism, because since they fundamentally believe in nothing except their own “innate superiority”, they will pretend to believe in anything which promises them power.
And of course, there is always the subset of the “enlightened ones”, who don’t really want to rule, just to destroy. They support the new destroyers because they dream of, not “starting from zero” limned against the ruins, but of watching the world burn. They, too, will support Sharia, just as they have supported every apocalyptic creed that preceded it.
As with fascism and communism, the fact that the latest group of “homicidal Utopians” will take their support, use them, and then destroy them, means nothing to the “enlightened ones”. Because they believe that they are Just So Much Smarter than everyone who tried it before, that it just can’t happen to them.
Personally, I’d be perfectly willing to let them do it, and learn the hard way how wrong they are. Except that it’s the rest of us who would pay the price of their delusions.
clear ether
eon
