Posted on 10/18/2001 7:02:50 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
Where are the advocates of the classical curriculum when you need one? The most likely answer is - off engaging the radical secular left in a philosophical debate on the battlefield of the absurd. Indeed, if the dead-white-European-males have anything to worthy to say, one would think now would be the time.
As hackneyed as George Santayana's axiom that "those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it" may be, history does seem to have the auto-repeat button switched firmly on. And to their credit, some media pundits have rushed to the military history books to inform us that Alexander the Great waged the last successful military campaign in Afghanistan. But that sort of "fact-checking" is a thoroughly modern approach. The classical idea is that things have immutable natures, especially humans and the cultures that humans create. Cultures are, then, predictable, as is the interaction between cultures. This is not the preferred worldview in our post-modern, multicultural society. But tradition says militant Islam does have a nature and the West has encountered it before. The warning lies, perhaps unexpectedly, in the pages of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Amongst the bawdy stories of love and lust, Chaucer gives us the tale of the man of law (or lawyer's tale) which deals with an Islamic encounter, something the men of Chaucer's day were quite familiar with. In brief, the lawyer tells of a sultan who, through his merchants and traders, becomes aware of the most lovely princess in all of Christendom, fair Constance of Rome. To win her hand, however, the sultan must adopt Christianity. He goes a step further and declares that his whole dominion will adopt the Christian faith. Upon returning with his bride, a wedding banquet is held but it is interrupted by a bloody coup led by the sultan's own mother, culminating in the death of all the Islamic apostates and the banishment of Constance from their land in a most horrific manner.
Chaucer's tale is more than a medieval musing but an allegorical socio-political guidebook to Middle Eastern / Western relations based on the real world experiences of Christendom with Islam. It sets conditions and makes predictions as complete as any political science dissertation but it does so under the unfamiliar guise of verse.
To translate into modern terms, the mutual attraction of the two cultures was, and remains, trade, commerce making tenuous bedfellows. Then it was spices, now it is oil. But as is the case with trading partners, commerce makes for the exchange not only of goods but also culture and ideas. Then, as now, the cultural trade deficit lies in favor of the West, as more Middle Easterners want blue jeans, Coca Cola and SUV's than Westerners want bishts (robes), hummus (chickpea dip), and the chopping off of hands for petty thievery. So too, some modern Arab leaders, like our fictional sultan, have fallen in love with the ways of the children of Rome.
But for every West-loving, enlightened sultan, every Beverly Hills sheik, there is a throng of xenophobic radicals who want to purge their land of the European infidel and Western ways. The rank and file of this mob is comprised not just from uneducated lower castes of Islamic society but finding support, and perhaps even its very impetus, in the wealthiest, most educated houses. Osama Bin Laden is not a rustic with a fearful ignorance of Western ways. Rather he has been immersed in our culture but has knowingly rejected it in favor of the utopian ideal of the "pure" Islamic state. He is not the ignorant one - we are: Ignorant of his culture and ignorant, even, of our own heritage, literature and thought thanks to our embracing of the chimera of multiculturalism.
Chaucer outlines the Mohammedans' desire for trade followed by the desire of some of them for the fruits of our culture. This has come to pass as predicted. But his tale warns that the "moderate" leaders of Islamic countries will succumb to broad-based radical movements within their own countries for their alleged apostasy from the will of Allah. After that, the most severe measures will be taken to expel the infidel from their lands and their culture.
So, we coalition build and strategize assuming that we will have moderate Muslim friends in power, a strategy that runs counter to the ideas and experiences of Chaucer and medieval Christendom. If our leaders' assumptions prove wrong the consequences could prove catastrophic to our war efforts, but ironically our own tradition will have been vindicated. This, in turn, might bring dead-white-European-males a new credibility. But lest we forget, irony is part of our forgotten heritage.
Free Congress Foundation
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