Monday Reformation-Blogging

I read the first two sentences of this Mark Steyn post and had a sinking feeling that he was writing something sensible and important about the Muslim world:

Lisa, your second post is really the answer to your first one. What if we've already had the reformation of Islam and jihadism is it?

Fortunately, he turned out not to be going in the direction I feared at all. Where he should have gone, however, is this: People who call for a "Muslim reformation" seem to have completely forgotten what happened during the Protestant Reformation. The dime-store version, though, is massive religious wars in which huge numbers of people died. This happened on the European continent and also in the British Isles. It's true that in the long-run the Reformation led to the development of doctrines about religious tolerance and liberalism, but it took a good long time. Martin Luther's 95 Theses were written in 1517 whereas John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration was written in 1689. In between came an awful lot of wars, witch-burning, fanaticism, etc.

Clearly, any analogy between present-day circumstances and 16th and 17th century Europe is going to be very, very, very imperfect but this seems to me to be the direction an appropriate analogy would take: the Islamism-related violence we're seeing is in some ways reminiscent of the violence associated with the Reformation and Counterreformation rather than something that would be solved by something Reformation-esque.

Comments

Its also a not-so-subtle of saying Muslims are 400 years behind 'the West'.

Posted by Rickm | December 3, 2007 6:12 PM

Nu? Locke was so tolerant?

Indeed, the "Muslim world needs a Reformation" crowd should bear in mind, for example, exactly what did happen and who killed whom in Calvin's Geneva ...

Posted by DAS | December 3, 2007 6:17 PM

The view that the Christian reformation was a cuddly, huggable event is peculiarly anti-catholic. In the real world, it was bigoted, violent and unpleasant. Wierd to see the Reformation extolled on the (Catholic-ish) National Review.

Posted by Ikram | December 3, 2007 6:19 PM

Matt, what you say is true, but still the larger problem is that these kinds of assertions are based upon the first fallacy that any honest historian learns to avoid: the implicit belief that European development represents a kind unitary 'track' upon which all societies are destined to travel along, at faster or slower rates.

First of all, there's no special reason to treat European historical experience as a blueprint for the rest of the world. Europe just so happened to reach higher levels of 'material development' earlier than other parts of the world; it found itself in a position inscribe this hegemony in the modern discipline of historiography, writing histories which looked towards Europe first as the most 'successful' or the most known, for obvious reasons, fashioning its own story into the 'story of the world'. But it's simply not. The Middle East had a 16th century too, a time just as tumultuous and transformational as the European 16th century.

Second, history in one part of the world affects history everywhere else, and the last few centuries of European history, since the Reformation, have of course had global consequences in ways that are too obvious to mention. The global effects of local history alone prevent any repetition, any track-like behavior, in historical events.

There will be no 'Islamic Reformation'. There might be reformulations and reassessments of doctrine, but its forms and consequences are not, I think, at all predictable on the basis of the 16th and 17th century European case.

Posted by XY | December 3, 2007 6:21 PM

Okay. The [Day of the Week] [Topic] Blogging post titles really have gone too far. You've either got to jump up to the next level of meta or just abandon the trope altogether.

Posted by southpaw | December 3, 2007 6:23 PM

The idea that the Reformation "led" in any meaningful way to the spread of a pluralistic ideology of civic religion implies a very warped notion of causation. I mean, how many confounding factors could there possibly have been over the 1500s and 1600s? And yet, Luther caused Locke!

Posted by Aaron | December 3, 2007 6:24 PM

Aaron: well, the Reformation was *one* of the constitutive elements that produced Lockean liberalism. Not because Protestantism as dogma had something to do with liberalism (lets ignore Weber), but because in 1600, and not in 1500, you had the presence of large populations of multiple confessional groups in most countries Western Europe, and especially England. Suddenly there was diversity which was manifested in all different social strata in many different countries, and Locke and others finally arrived at the conclusion that mutual toleration worked best. In 1500, everybody was Catholic.

In Islam, you had similar articulations of the actual mechanics of managing religious diversity, every time that a polity encompassed zones of high religious heterogeneity. But the countless individual Islamic jurists, who brought out ancient law and elaborate deductive arguments in order to rule that so-and-so Armenian could repair his family's chapel on some hillside near Erzurum, have been forgotten by history, while Locke has not.

Posted by XY | December 3, 2007 6:39 PM

This confuses me. Obviously there was plenty of religious violence related to the reformation in 16th and 17th Century Europe. But there was also plenty of religious violence in Europe prior to the reformation, wasn't there? Why does Matthew say that the "Islamism-related violence we're seeing is in some ways reminiscent of the violence associated with the Reformation and Counterreformation" rather than the Islamism-related violence we're seeing is in some ways reminiscent of the pre-Reformation Christian violence (the Crusades, the reconquista, etc.)?

Posted by Al | December 3, 2007 6:49 PM

XY: Your history is not accurate. In 1500 everyone in Europe was most certainly not Catholic, either de jure or de facto. To cite only one example, the last Muslims were expelled from Europe only in 1609. The bulk of them were in fact forced to convert officially only in 1525, and they were treated as a separate community until the end. As a matter of practice, in 1500 there were in fact innumerable religious communities in Europe, whether variant interpretations of Christianity or actual competing faiths (Carlo Ginzburg has been fairly prolific on the former point). So if Reformation "led" to pluralism, the intolerance it corrected had only been in existence for a few decades or so when Luther posted his Theses.

As an island nation, England was naturally more homgeneous/xenophobic, and they had in fact kicked their few Jews out early, in the late 13th century (two centuries after they arrived from Sicily with the Norman conquest). But to use England as a paradigm for Europe in general is rather absurd, however fond English historians may be of doing so. In any case, if the Reformation brought tolerance to England, someone forgot to tell it to Cromwell. Arguably, what provoked the "outbreak" of tolerance represented by Locke's treatise was in fact the Glorious Revolution, i.e., invasion by the Netherlands.

Posted by Aaron | December 3, 2007 7:06 PM

One more reason we need to get off oil. Then we can stop screwing around with them so much and let them do things their way.

I feel the same way about Africa, but we can't afford to do that there either. I just wish we could.

Posted by MNPundit | December 3, 2007 7:19 PM

Jonah Goldberg made that very same point here: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmI1ZjU5YTRkZGEzYWYzZTMwOTY5MjU4YzAzYzg3OGI=

Posted by jamie | December 3, 2007 7:48 PM

Your point is well-taken. As a sometimes Catholic apologist, I have made it as well.

You might be curious to know that Jonah Goldberg made a tangential point about Islam needing a Pope instead of a Luther (you made the point much better of course, and without being insulting):

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmI1ZjU5YTRkZGEzYWYzZTMwOTY5MjU4YzAzYzg3OGI=

Posted by d | December 3, 2007 7:49 PM

Re: But there was also plenty of religious violence in Europe prior to the reformation, wasn't there?

Yes, but to much lesser degree, and for long stretches of time very little at all.

Re: In 1500 everyone in Europe was most certainly not Catholic

And this posts leaves out by far the largest non-Catholic population: the Orthodox Christians of Eastern Europe

Posted by Jonf | December 3, 2007 8:11 PM

Aaron, you misunderstand my point. I am not defending anythhing like inherent 'tolererance' in Protestantism, or the value of the Reformation per se, or anything like that. And I am fully aware of the fact that the whole southeastern quadrant of Europe was a patchwork of faiths, Orthodox and Catholic and Muslim, from a very early date. And yes, there were various heterodox communities scattered throughout the continent before Luther. I know Cromwell was intolerant, and so were the Calvinists of Geneva, and so on and so forth. Catholics and Protestants to a comparable degree.

My only point (and it would be hard to argue against this) was that Europe, after the spread of Reformation ideas, and after the 30 Years War, was a site of much greater religious heterogeneity than it was 100 or 200 years earlier. For example, the Holy Roman Empire was part Catholic and part Protestant, and the communities were in close proximity to each other. The same could be said of Huguenot/Catholic France, Calvinist/Catholic Hungary, England, and pretty much every part of what used to be "Catholic" Europe except, I guess, Iberia and Italy.

This diversity, most of the time not peaceful, was one of the factors which compelled political thinkers to adress the issue of 'tolerance', to grapple with political solutions to the issue of religious diversity, in a way that had not been demanded of them earlier.

That's all I was saying. I was saying nothing about Protestants, or Luther, being more tolerant than those before them... a case which would be hard to make. Just that the reformation created a mass of non-Catholics (or equally, that the counter-Reformation prevented the total hegemony of Protestants) and this religious heterogeneity was one of the empirical facts which liberal theories were a response to.

Posted by XY | December 3, 2007 8:14 PM

Europe wasn't the epicenter of the movement to freedom of religion. As far as I know, the first place where freedom of religion and seperation of church and state were core principles was the colony of Rhode Island, founded in 1636 by Roger Williams. He had left England for Massachusetts to escape religious persecution, but was then persecuted there for being too radical. (Among other things, he felt that land should be purchased from the Indians, not taken.) He was banished, and bought Rhode Island from the Narragansetts. Eventually he stopped preaching altogether, even to the Indians - he realized that their religion was, well, their religion. In other words, to him "freedom of religion" didn't just apply to Christian (or Judeo-Christian) denominations. Roger Williams' principles were key to the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution - written at a time when most, if not all, European governments were at least nominally religious.

Posted by RI | December 3, 2007 8:19 PM

XY, I don't think your recollection of 16th and 17th century European history is accurate. The Reformation did not produce anything like tolerance for religious diversity. Rather, it produced the principle of "cuius regius, eius religio" (Whose kingdom, also his religion) and an immense amount of violence and repression to enforce orthodoxy. And it is certainly not true that the Reformation produced religious pluralism in England during the 17th Century --- lets recall Mary Queen of Scots, Cromwell and the Glorious Revolution after all. And to take a point Aaron makes above a little farther, Latin Christendom in the early renaissance and late middle ages, while still a violent and authoritarian place, featured much more diversity in religious customs and expression than Latin Christendom after the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation (although the trend had favored orthodoxy since the 13th century). Not only did Protestant proto-states emerge during the 16th and 17th century to enforce their preferred view of Luther or Calvin, but nominally Catholic proto-states became much more rigid and orthodox.

Posted by FTJ | December 3, 2007 8:22 PM

Ain't that a Bush, son of a Bush is here all up in yo zone.

Posted by It's raining mennonintes. | December 3, 2007 9:37 PM

The dime-store version, though, is massive religious wars in which huge numbers of people died.

I glad you made this point, it doesn't come up enough when people talk about a 'reformation' movement in Islam. There's already a (very) rough approximation bewteen the East/West split of Christianity and Sunni/Shi'a split. An equivalent 200+ year reformation movement in Islam would probably involve similar development curve from the Reconquista to the 30 years war and Acadian expulsion, and all the various blood history in between.

Posted by Kenny | December 3, 2007 9:39 PM

In Escape From Freedom Eric Fromm makes the case that the reformation in its own way helped to contribute to the rise of totalitarianism in Europe. I don't have the background to evaluate this critically, but it is something to consider

For an excerpt check here on Google Books:

http://books.google.com/books?id=YCygU2ucf6AC&pg=PA81&lpg=PA81&dq=fromm+luther+fascism&source=web&ots=H9381t3vhj&sig=-tcGQPn60PCQVP0vd5hSkgLjSCk

Posted by Fromming at the mouth | December 3, 2007 9:44 PM

How diverse could religion in pre-reformation Europe really be? How free could it possibly be since it still had to answer to one authority? Sorry Waldensians. Whatever real diversity there was. not just in "customs" but in doctrine, was due to a lack of centralized authority with muscle, not a generosity to respect the religious wishes of others.

Posted by DRR | December 3, 2007 9:59 PM

Matt: "the Islamism-related violence we're seeing is in some ways reminiscent of the violence associated with the Reformation and Counterreformation rather than something that would be solved by something Reformation-esque."

I call bullshit. The Islamist violence we're seeing today is almost entirely POLITICAL, not religious. It's merely dressed up in religious terms, as is everything in Islam. Even the Sunni-Shia split is mostly over political power, not religion. There isn't any "Reformation" going on or any apparent need for one, let alone one that presumably is intended to be imposed by Westerners. Good luck with that idea.

And trying to relate the whole process of a religion's evolution by comparing Islam to Catholicism seems to me to be really reaching. Since when did Matt become on expert on the evolution of religions? For that matter, religion at all?

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 3, 2007 10:10 PM

OK, let me just refine my statement to its barest skeleton: Locke would not have written 'a letter concerning toleration' if there had been no environment of Catholic-Protestant conflict in 16th and 17th century Europe. I never said that as a norm across Europe toleration became a widely adopted principle (it didn't until the 19th and even 20th centuries).

Where, then, did Locke, the Glorious Revolution, etc, come from? ... if not from the environment of religious tumult, of radically competing visions of the relation of man to God, of the 16th and 17th centuries?

--
This issue is quite tangential. More important is the issue of the ridiculousness of talking about an Islamic reformation as if every society has to go through a corresponding Reformation, 30 Years War, French Revolution, etc (see Kenny's post, above). That's a conception of history we have to get away from.

Posted by XY | December 3, 2007 10:12 PM

“Clearly, any analogy between present-day circumstances and 16th and 17th century Europe is going to be very, very, very imperfect”

Yes. But unfortunately, that 200 year period of carnage may represent one of the best case scenarios for similar situations.

The time span can be truncated in these “modern” times through speedy massive ethnic cleansing, forced emigration and brutal totalitarianism.

Posted by erict | December 3, 2007 10:13 PM

And the lesson, for me, from this exchange, is that I really need to learn more about religious heterogeneity in pre-Reformation Western Europe.

Posted by XY | December 3, 2007 10:14 PM

There is no single Islam. The Koran itself allows multiple interpretations and human ingenuity has further extended Islam from that multi-faceted base. So, by other names, there are reformed Islam and re-reformed Islam and progressive Islam and conservative Islam today.

Other commentators have referred to a growing absolutism that is not confined to Islam and is better understood as a cultural trend that spans and even transcends religions. That is the force that needs confronting. Islam itself is not the enemy.

So talk of a need for Reformation in Islam and proposed parallels to 16th and 17th century Europe are beside the point. The greatest intellectual challenge for people of religious faith is reconciling the increasingly technological and material world, with all its gains and promise, to the traditions of abiding faith. The retreat to Absolutism is a failed response to that challenge. Better explicated models of how to reconcile the breath-taking changes in the modern world to different faiths will serve us much better than drawing parallels to European history.

Posted by Robin Barr | December 3, 2007 10:15 PM

The Islamist violence we're seeing today is almost entirely POLITICAL, not religious.

And stuff like the 30 years war, and various other similar 'ethnic cleansing' operations through the 16th-18th centuries, including those in North America, were not almost entirely political? If the whole Reformation was not, at its base, about how much political power the Church had, what was it about?

Posted by Kenny | December 3, 2007 10:21 PM

DRR: even within the Church there was no single authority. The popes and the mendicant orders for example were often at total cross-purposes on questions of religious pluralism. As for secular authorities, hardly: even when they were able to exercise tight control, minorities played an important economic and social role, and were preserved deliberately. David Nirenberg's Communities of Violence is good on this front. Moreover, as centralization increased after the Reformation (which was arguably manipulated as a way to advance that project), most states became more intolerant, more homogenous, not less ("cuius regius, eius religio").

Was medieval pluralism an outgrowth of tolerance or self-interest? Both. To the extent that worldview had something to do with it, the ideology wasn't "freedom" but rather "multiplicity." Still, your scenario is more of an Enlightenment-era calumny than an accurate portrayal.

Posted by Aaron | December 3, 2007 10:28 PM

From a power, control, economic, military, governing perspective, “absolutist” organized religion is the same as other “political” absolutist” ideologies.

Tolerance and secularism are born of both self preservation and true humanistic advancement. As in Europe, the emancipation of women in Islamic societies will be key for leading their societies out of absolute darkness.

Posted by erict | December 3, 2007 11:08 PM

"As an island nation, England was naturally more homgeneous/xenophobic, and they had in fact kicked their few Jews out early, in the late 13th century (two centuries after they arrived from Sicily with the Norman conquest). But to use England as a paradigm for Europe in general is rather absurd, however fond English historians may be of doing so. In any case, if the Reformation brought tolerance to England, someone forgot to tell it to Cromwell. Arguably, what provoked the "outbreak" of tolerance represented by Locke's treatise was in fact the Glorious Revolution, i.e., invasion by the Netherlands.

Posted by Aaron | December 3, 2007 7:06 PM"

Ironically, the only good thing Cromwell ever did was allow Jewish people to once again live in England. Well, the other good thing he did was die.

Posted by Reality Man | December 4, 2007 12:08 AM

A quick off-topic threadjack, for a good cause. You can now vote online for your preznit nominee at:

http://runvote.org

transparent, non-partisan and democratic.

Posted by j | December 4, 2007 12:33 AM

Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration basically said that everyone should be tolerated except Roman Catholics, Muslims, and atheists. While Locke's principles do allow for Jews, Hindus, Zoroastrians, etc, the main point seems to be the coexistence of different Protestant denominations, not coexistence of Catholics and Protestants. So if you want to say that the Reformation resulted in a lot of Catholic/Protestant violence, repression, and intolerance, but eventually lead to liberalism and tolerance, Locke's LCT might not be the best work to use as an example of the latter, considering that Roman Catholics are explicitly excluded from Locke's views of appropriate toleration.

Posted by Julian Elson | December 4, 2007 12:44 AM

Locke, it should be remembered, was writing at a time where England's greatest concern was, once again, France (France had been a basket case during the second half of the 16th Century, and an ally up to Charles II), since William and Mary pulled England into the anti-Louis coalition. Hell, William of Orange was the damn coalition.

Therefore, from a political standpoint, the most important thing was to shore up William's money maker (ironically, this is exactly what the first king William saw England for - wealth he could use to strengthen his continental position). In this light, Locke's argument for toleration of other proddies makes bloody good sense. Why, after all, should Presbyterians be persecuted when they were likely to be the staunchest supporters of William? They still are in Ulster! (Moreover, the Scots were a great source of warlike recruits for the continent)

Roman Catholics, meanwhile, were very likely to support the dethroned James, and later, the Old and New Pretenders. So, while neither Locke nor William probably cared that they prayed with a rosary, their potential *political* allegiance to James could not be tolerated. In fact, High Church Anglicans like me have a lot more in common with Catholics than with the Presbyterians. My Catholic friends at home even say my Episcopal parish is far closer to the archetype of a Catholic church than their congregations.

Posted by Greg | December 4, 2007 1:28 AM

Err, that should read "and an ally on many occasions up to James II"

Posted by Greg | December 4, 2007 1:30 AM

My point was that so-called "religious" actions tend to end up being more political - and of course, economic - than religious per se. Therefore, the various doctrinal schisms and factions in the religion itself are not as relevant as is the question: who has the power and what are they doing with it?

Therefore, discussing a "Reformation" of Islam would seem to be rather irrelevant, given that the Islamic violence can be divided into 2 aspects: 1) anti-Western violence, and 2) Sunni-Shia violence. The first is the only one the West need be concerned about, and it is based entirely on the West's attitudes and actions toward the Islamic countries for the last century. This includes the Israel-Palestinian situation, but encompasses far more. The Sunni-Shia violence is limited, so far, and has only been intensified by the stupid actions of the West - notably, invading Iraq.

Trying to discern some generally applicable historical principle concerning the evolution of religions does not seem to me to be particularly useful in this context. Certainly not without some notion of exactly how such a thing could be influenced by anyone in the West.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 4, 2007 2:03 AM

Puleeze...

Posted by gauss | December 4, 2007 2:09 AM

Let's all keep in mind that we're doing for religion what naive modernization theorists did for economic development in the 1950's. As far as I can tell, there's no particularly good reason to think there's a particular path or trajectory that religions follow over the centuries.

Posted by djw | December 4, 2007 3:46 AM

"Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration basically said that everyone should be tolerated except Roman Catholics, Muslims, and atheists. While Locke's principles do allow for Jews, Hindus, Zoroastrians, etc, the main point seems to be the coexistence of different Protestant denominations, not coexistence of Catholics and Protestants. So if you want to say that the Reformation resulted in a lot of Catholic/Protestant violence, repression, and intolerance, but eventually lead to liberalism and tolerance, Locke's LCT might not be the best work to use as an example of the latter, considering that Roman Catholics are explicitly excluded from Locke's views of appropriate toleration.

Posted by Julian Elson | December 4, 2007 12:44 AM"

It's been a while, but I think I remember Locke making a moral equivalency argument between Christian Europe's belief in its rightness and the Ottoman Empire's belief in the rightness of Islam and that both people's should be allowed to practice their faith. Also, I think I remember reading that he borrowed a lot of his ideas from a couple of Islamic legal scholars. Then again, I read that 5 years ago at like 2 in the morning for class.

Posted by Reality Man | December 4, 2007 8:28 AM

Exactly Yglesias! The right really means
Islamic Enlightenment, but their own relations to the European and American Enlightenment are too strained and ambiguous for them to embrace it.

Posted by MOral Panicker | December 4, 2007 8:31 AM

There is no way in a little blog to tell the story, events, tragedies, and characters of the 300 year period from 1400 to 1700 in Western and Central Europe, starting with Wycliffe and the Hussites and ending with William Penn, Locke, and Bayle. One of the conclusions, that I did draw from it is that in the late 17th century the Enligthenment movement began because of the rising successes of the scientific revolution as exemplified in the application Francis Bacon's philosphy combined with that seed of intellectual doubt laid by Montaigne in the fertile ground of the emotional disgust with the slaughter, ethnic cleansings, massacres, and expulsions over the preceding 200 hundred years. The educated elite in the U.K., France, and the low countries decided to question the whole point of religion, and to begin to rely on material explanations for reality and to construct solutions for the problems of society. It was a unique situation and combination of circumstances and ideas, as all historical events are. Regarding a Muslim Reformation, that again shows the Tom Friedman does not know much about Islam as there has been many "reform" movements. In fact, it is one of those movements that is giving us such trouble today, Wahabism. For an interesting book about English Civil War and that depredation and death rate that resulted, read "Cavaliers and Roundheads." Finally, I think one of the posters meant "Muslims expelled from Spain," but said "Europe." The Sultan of Turkey, whose Armies were knocking reapeatedly on the gates ov Viennat upto 1683, and was esconced in the European side of Bospurus in Constantiople, would have been surprised to hear this.

Posted by Rickster Sherpa | December 4, 2007 8:41 AM

"The right really means Islamic Enlightenment,"

So what we need is for the Muslims to have something equivalent to the European Enlightenment? But would that necessarily be a peaceful thing, either? We think of the Enlightment as bringing tolerance to Europe, but we forget the French Revolution, and the Enlightenment's various secular tyrannical children: Napoleon, the Communists.

Posted by Glaivester | December 4, 2007 8:44 AM

"As far as I know, the first place where freedom of religion and seperation of church and state were core principles was the colony of Rhode Island, founded in 1636 by Roger Williams."

Ghengis Khan had him beat by about 400-500 years.

Before that, the Chinese were very tolerant as far as their three prominent religions were concerned, but that was attributable to the religions themselves.

Posted by Njorl | December 4, 2007 9:32 AM

I second the comment about how most Islamic violence today is political rather than religious. Actually, I'll take it a step further and say that outside of Iraq - which finally may be calming down a bit - and perpetually violent Afghanistan and Palestine, there isn't even all that much Islamic-related violence going on right now, political or otherwise.

Posted by Peter | December 4, 2007 9:51 AM

Re: An equivalent 200+ year reformation movement in Islam would probably involve similar development curve from the Reconquista to the 30 years war and Acadian expulsion, and all the various blood history in between.

While Europe was having its Wars of Religion so too was Islam. The Sunni Turks and the Shi'ite Persians spent generations battering each other bloody all along their border. This is one reason Sunnis are rare in Iran and Shi'ites none too common the further away from the Iranian border you go. Each side enforced orthodoxy upon its own populations and the divided state of today's Iraq, and the passions that have boiled over there, stem from tha era.

Posted by JonF | December 4, 2007 8:00 PM

According to Locke the problem with Catholicism and Islam was that these were religions which required their followers to give their ultimate obedience to the head of the religion, not their secular government, and the secular government certainly didn't have to tolerate that.

In his words: "That Church can have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate which is constituted upon such a bottom that all those who enter into it do thereby ipso facto deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince. For by this means the magistrate would give way to the settling of a foreign jurisdiction in his own country and suffer his own people to be listed, as it were, for soldiers against his own Government. Nor does the frivolous and fallacious distinction between the Court and the Church afford any remedy to this inconvenience; especially when both the one and the other are equally subject to the absolute authority of the same person, who has not only power to persuade the members of his Church to whatsoever he lists, either as purely religious, or in order thereunto, but can also enjoin it them on pain of eternal fire. It is ridiculous for any one to profess himself to be a Mahometan only in his religion, but in everything else a faithful subject to a Christian magistrate, whilst at the same time he acknowledges himself bound to yield blind obedience to the Mufti of Constantinople, who himself is entirely obedient to the Ottoman Emperor and frames the feigned oracles of that religion according to his pleasure."

Posted by Ted | December 4, 2007 9:15 PM

Re: According to Locke the problem with Catholicism and Islam was that these were religions which required their followers to give their ultimate obedience to the head of the religion, not their secular government

The head of the (Sunni) Islamic religion, in Locke's day, was the Sultan of Turkey who wasalso Caliph.
Louis XIV ("L'etat c'est moi") would have been surprised to learn that he had no claim on the ultimate loyalty of Frenchmen. The Papacy generally opposed the political aims of France in the 17th century but that certainly did not hamper the French very much.

Posted by JonF | December 5, 2007 6:31 AM

A comment:

What makes me laugh about the idea that there needs to be a Reformation in the Islamic World - as if such a momentous occurence can be somehow willed from without and isn't a product of organic reform from within the religious community of believers - is how little understanding it shows of what the Christian Reformation actually was and entailed.

The Protestant Reformation was many things, but it most certainly was NOT a triumph for liberalism, moderation, and secularism. In fact, if you think of yourself as a rather secular, liberal individual, you would probably have preferred to live in countries/areas that never "went over" to the Reformation and remained Catholic. The Reformation was about returning Christianity to its "true nature," wiping away elements of Catholicism believed to be unBibilical and too worldly. People like John Calvin were, by modern standards, religious fanatics and theocrats. Read about places like Calvin's Geneva or Cromwell's England, and these share much in common with Islamism.

Really, if one wants to make analogy, the Protestant Reformation's best contempoary comparison would be to Islamism. In other words, to think of Luther and Calvin in a contemporary Muslim context would be to compare them to Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood. In both cases, Protestant Reformers and Islamisms saw/see themselves as returning to the "true nature" of the religion and in the process, attempting to reform what they saw/see as a fundamentally corrupt and unpious religious and political order.

Posted by Ben P | December 5, 2007 7:59 PM