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Secular Society and the Allure of ISIS

Monday, February 23, 2015

In an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, just prior to his address to the White House conference on extremism, President Obama noted that ultimately the battle against religious extremism like that of ISIS is a battle “for hearts and minds” to prevent people around the world from being radicalized to violence. Vice President Biden, speaking at the opening of the conference, also emphasized the importance of addressing deeply imbedded economic and social issues that provide fertile ground for those who seek to recruit supporters for ISIS in Western societies.

Although having a greater stake in one’s own community may help to deter some from experiencing the kind of alienation that can lead to the embrace of radical ideologies, the fertile ground for religious terrorists coming from the West is far more likely to be the secular character of Western culture itself.

A culture that reduces, or tries to reduce, religious belief to the realm of personal, subjective experience rather than recognizing that religion is more than some private world-view, is a culture that marginalizes religion, and thus alienates those believers for whom religion always addresses the whole realm of human experience. Too often Western culture affirms an exclusively secular realm of public discourse – and hence of public policy. Into such a realm, religious views are neither welcomed nor, in some cases, even tolerated.

Secular culture can be as blindly ideological and intolerant of divergent views as any religious fanaticism. Those who disagree with prevailing secular standards, on social issues, for example, are often dismissed as ignorant bigots whose ideas are not to be taken seriously. Examples of such smug dismissal and the chilling atmosphere of secular conformism are easy to find in Western nations. If we are to battle for the “hearts and minds” of others, we need to be open to the hearts and minds of others, including those who do not accept a secularist view of reality. Intolerance breeds intolerance.

The Islamic terrorism of organizations like ISIS is not justified because Western culture is itself often intolerant of religion. The barbarism of ISIS is not on some continuum with the intolerance of secular society. Yet if we wish to understand the fertile ground in the West in which Islamic terrorism begins to have an appeal, we need to think more clearly about the secular creed that is so pervasive in the West.

Jihadi brides: Two Austrian girls who joined ISIS in Syria [Daily Mail]
Jihadi brides: Two Austrian girls who joined ISIS in Syria [Daily Mail]
ISIS, of course, has first of all attracted young Muslims in the Middle East, and that attraction involves religious motives within Islam as well as the real and perceived corruption of Muslim societies. But its attraction for youth from the West has much to do with the way Western culture is perceived.

However perverse ISIS is, its appeal reveals a fundamental truth about human beings and their motivations. In the modern world, especially in the West, there has been a progressive loss of any sense of transcendence, any sense of a realm of values and truth that exists beyond the mundane world of economic, social, and personal realities. This loss of a sense of transcendence leads to a culture that has no opening to any realm beyond itself – to no grand purposes or projects beyond this-worldly goals.

In the midst of a prevailing culture that is hostile to transcendent values, individuals react in diverse ways. Some simply accept secular standards that embrace a kind of ethical relativism according to which whatever one chooses to value is valuable because he or she chooses it to be so. Others seek to resist the encroachment of secularism by trying to maintain traditional religious practices. The human need for a connection to the transcendent does not disappear because society either denies the existence of the transcendent or seeks to re-define it as a purely subjective preference.

The longing for transcendence is an innate human desire that can be and has been perverted throughout history. Secular society offers counterfeit types of transcendence in the form of satisfying physical needs, and then not always very effectively. History is full of false prophets who promise a liberation from the merely mundane. That these prophets exist, and succeed for a time, is evidence that they speak to something deep in human nature. Not every appeal to the transcendent is worthy of respect, as ISIS certainly proves.

But by ignoring, marginalizing, or dismissing those who look to religion as a transcendent source of truth, societies help to provide fertile ground for those who invite young people to consider a different kind of transcendence.

We must be careful in examining claims about ultimate values, and here rational discourse is crucial. We need even more, however, to reject the view that rational discourse somehow excludes claims to truth based on religious faith. Once we separate reason and science from religious faith, we allow any kind of “faith” to have an appeal. It is ironic that the more secular society seeks to keep religion out of the public square, the more it may be enabling barbarous perversions of faith like ISIS.

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William E. Carroll

William E. Carroll

William Carroll is Thomas Aquinas Fellow in Theology and Science, Blackfriars, University of Oxford.

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  • Manfred

    Up until my middle twenties, if an American doctor assisted in an abortion he was arrested, tried and sent to prison. That was 56,000,000 abortions ago. Soon legalized sodomy will be “the law of the Land”. GOD WILL NOT BE MOCKED!.Divine Justice demands that contrition and atonement be accomplished.
    It has been discussed on this page before that World Wars I and II, as well as Russian Communism , were graphic examples of Divine chastisement. The Nazis, NKVD, the Imperial Japanese, the Allies all served as agencies which were allowed by God to administer thiese horrific scourges.
    Mr Carroll is correct that ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, criminal gangs et al. are the current agenies which have been unleashed to scourge us further. We find it in the Church today as well with three paragraphs concerning sodomy and divorce and remarriage sans annulments on a Synod on the Family. African cardinals are more Catholic than those of the West.

  • TBill

    Excellent analysis. We’re going to be in trouble when some of the young adult men living in their parents’ basement decide to look up from their video games and porn to find some meaning in life. Isis and other abominations will be waiting for them.

  • Rosemary58

    I agree completely. The West spurned its Christian roots and left a huge vacuum which alarmed those who believe they are loyal and obedient to God. When the Church is weak in her teaching, when she works with Caesar, the rest of society also suffers.

    It is not clear that our Church leaders understand that upholding Catholic morality is the bedrock of all society. When relativism creeps in, everyone suffers the consequences.

    Islamic terrorism is not only a problem, it is a symptom, a reaction to the failure of the Church to obey God and make a clear protestation of faith and doctrine. When our Catholic leaders get fuzzy about what they believe, it has appalling ramifications. Pope Francis can use the bully pulpit all he wants but if he does not use it to articulate the faith and doctrine just as loudly, he will eventually sound merely like a gong.

  • Robert

    Excellent piece. If transcendence is thrown out the door, it climbs back in through the window – usually, however, as violence. Indeed, I’ve long observed how the atheistic left, from the French Revolution to Pol Pot, has often found a frisson of transcendence in revolutionary violence, which substitutes for the genuine transcendence that they explicitly reject. Most certainly, this lust for transcendence through violence is one of things that, in part, attracts left-wing types to the likes of ISIS.

  • grump

    Huge props to whoever does ISIS public relations. Here is a ragtag sect of as many as 25,000 splintered, disorganized fanatics largely toting antiquated AK-47’s driving around in rusty old pickup trucks surrounded by more than a million heavily armed Iraqi, Turk, Syrian, Saudi, Egyptian, Israeli
    and Jordanian forces with tanks, heavy artillery, F-16’s, napalm and cluster bombs that comprise the most modern and powerful weapons weapons known to man led by the heft of nuclear America and yet somehow they are cast as an “existential” threat to the world and comparable to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Whoever is producing the ISIS videos should have received an Oscar for “the best propaganda short action film.”

    Oh, how the media love scare headlines, nurturing the twin drivers of Western Civ: Fear and Greed. Fact: since the United States was founded in 1776, she has been at war during 214 out of her 235 calendar years of existence. Let’s keep the streak going.

    Obama is bombing at 7 countries that we know of, Iran and Ukraine are in the crosshairs and World War III seems a pretty good bet.

    Perpetual war for perpetual peace. Meanwhile the powerful elite are reserving space in the mine shafts, as Dr. Strangelove urged.

    The author blames “secular culture” but it is religion, tribalism and nationalism is at the heart of the major conflicts in the world.

    • toddyo1935

      These splinter groups have been gathering large stashes of modern weapons as our “allies” walk away from them. They don’t need to be united, except under their general interpretation of the Qur’an. These are more dangerous because they seek a spiritual reward while unconstrained by disciplined leadership.

      Not to take away from your view of the elite – The “Twin Drivers” of Western Culture are Faith and Reason. Greed and fear are for the uninformed and rebellious. The USA’s overall success is because our Founders gave us a gift of a Republic so structured that our true diversity is the infinite range of gifts and talents endowed by our Creator that have an environment where they can be developed and put to profitable and practical use.

      These gifts and talents are abundant in all populations. It has been the USA that has made it possible for any who want to try – to take the risks – to succeed even after failing.

    • Fr Kloster

      Do you really believe the posts you write? Do you think Hitler was religious? Do you think Stalin was religious? Do you think Mao Tse Tung was religious? Can you even name one religious individual responsible for killing hundreds of thousands or millions of people? The only ones I can come up with are Muslim Sultans. You can’t count the crusades because they were defending (not attacking) the Holy Land. You can’t even really count the Ceasars because they considered themselves god; by definition a god cannot be “religious.” Let’s talk about what really starts wars. It’s not religion, it’s greed, money, and the need to dominate; in other words pride starts wars, not religion (except where Mohammed is concerned).

    • Bro_Ed

      Good points, but we’ve seen it all before. Leni Riefenstahl, the NAZI film maker was a genius of her craft. Her “Triumph of the Will” stands as one of the greatest propaganda films of the 20th century. It didn’t win Hitler the war. As for the ragtag ISIS with outmoded weapons, fanatics, unafraid of death, with attack with hatchets and stones. And, as we have seen, ISIS picks up the modern weapons dropped by the insurgents we have trained and armed. I agree with you that secular culture is not the sole, or maybe even the primary cause of conflict, but it’s right up there and needs to be exposed and discussed.

  • Dr. Robert Schwartz

    The analysis provided by Dr. Carroll is crucial to understanding our own American slide in public morals, which have taken a megaturn during the past six years. The crucial statement upon which everything hinges is: “Once we separate religion and science from religious faith…”, then we flounder like individual demigods, seeking and grasping at values that secular society reinforces through material promises and legal caveats. The laws against robbery, theft and violence exist precisely because mankind carries within him the innate values of our “humanness,” and legal systems simply reinforce those values through threats of punishment. The value of cooperating with our innate moral code is a lesson taught largely through religion. What, the secularist may ask, is “religion”? By definition it means “rebonding” or “returning to the bond that ties us to our Creator.” Unless we learn and inculcate values through our religion, and unless society recognizes this basis of our legal system, integral to our very nature as humans, there will still be those whose sole motive for avoiding murder and theft will be “to avoid getting caught by the (secular) authorities.” Those who seek to undercut the natural bond between religious and secular life will continue to see the divergent development of those who lack one and eschew the vacuity of the other.

    • Dan Guerriero

      You can thank John Kennedy the worse President in history for our slide. The only promise he kept was he would not let his religion interfere with his office. He proved that with an intern. But worse he did not support school vouchers which Nixon did. When Kennedy won the election it was a sure win for a secular society. The Catholic Church as we once knew is gone forever. I am now a traditional Roman Catholic. Either something is right or it is not. If everything is okay then lets just turn the present Church into a big fellowship.

  • toddyo1935

    Over 100 times since 2007, I am posting a circa 1950 quote attributed to the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, one of America’s greatest teachers/preachers. Sheen was not a bigot – truly a saintly man of God who was also a scholar relating to Islam. He did however see that the depraved death cult in Islam enjoys support from another death cult – the deniers of the sanctity of human life at all stages – the “progressive.”

    “At the present time, the hatred of the Islamic countries toward the West has become hatred against Christianity itself. Statesmen are now taking it into account that there is a grave danger that the temporal power of Islam may return on a broad scale, and with it, the menace that it may shake off a West which has ceased to be Christian, and affirm itself as a great anti-Christian world power. Muslim writers say, “When the locust swarms darken vast countries, they bear on their wings these Arabic words, “We are God’s host, each of us has 99 eggs, and if we had 100, we should lay waste to the world and all that is in it.”

    Sadly, the evidence is now overwhelming with DC crawling with Muslim Brotherhood operatives – the United States of America is Islam’s “100th egg!” Are we not exporting jihadist’s with impunity, weapons, and money?

  • Jim Loiacono

    Spot on! Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once commented that if we have nothing to die for, we have nothing to live for. In a symposium held over a decade ago by the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, a young Indonesian professor, Dr. Donny Gahral Adian, spoke of the radicalization of Indonesian youth by the incursion of Saudi Wahhabism which was displacing gentle and accepting Indonesian Islam. Addressing the issues at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Dr. Adian, whose father is the chieftain of large group of Indonesians, targeted secularism as the slurry in which the culture of “radical” Islam grows and festers. These impressionable youth are from middle and upper class, university trained families who have abandoned faith and faith based values, embracing secularism and essentially offering a valueless and therefore meaningless materialism. This lack of values and the transcendent empties their lives of meaning, something deeply human and necessary for human existence. The sense and awareness of their true cultural and religious values are either unknown or eventually die within them Adrift in an dark vacuum of meaninglessness, blindness and even depression, their inner self is awakened and energized by the only spiritual message being heard by these youth. Arrogantly dismissed and scoffed by the secularist mentality, they close ranks and fight with anger and self-righteous indignation. This was also raised by an ex-jihadi and a Muslim professor in a TV panel discussion about the two Somalis from Minneapolis who died while fighting for ISIL. True, there are other important factors, socio-cultural and economic which have led to alienation, especially in Europe which has been much more resistant to accepting the Muslim immigrant. These desperately need to be addressed as well. But, how does one explain Muslim and non-Muslim converts joining ISIS – young women running off to the front from the USA and Canada? We need to look seriously at the insights put forth by Dr.s Adian and Carroll. Present governments are ideologically blind and impotent, virtually incapable of comprehending that which is important to these youth, thereby unwittingly and unknowingly contributing to the the growth of a pernicious movement which self-righteously commits bestial enormities and blasphemes God by their inhuman actions in his Name, He who is most compassionate and merciful – “b-ismi-llāhi
    r-raḥmāni r-raḥīmi” ( بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ ). Let us remember that faith values are not to be used to maintain a status quo which is exploitative and oppressive or murderous movements and their ideologies. These values must promote the truth that makes us free to be truly human, merciful and compassionate to all.

  • bernard M. Collins

    It seems there are three enduring ideological positions with which the world is faced and which cannot be reconciled –
    1. The Christian: God is our loving Father, and is Truth and goodness itself; we are his free children and necessarily able to do good or evil based, as we understand it, on the Natural Law found in our hearts and the Revelations of God throughout history, culminating in Jesus; our eternal destiny depends largely on how we treat our neighbors on Earth.
    2. The Islamic: God transcends goodness and evil and demands submission to his will as interpreted by a particular man named Mohammed; Adam is the only father they acknowledge. Their neighbors must submit their will or die.
    3. The Secular: God is effectively man himself. He is morally ambivalent and he allows himself to proclaim his own rights, laws and practices. Man makes himself the center of the knowledge of good and evil.

    Although Christianity still pervades some of the air we breathe in the West, Islam guides a great bloc of society in the East of relatively equal size. Secularity, a concoction of Enlightenment and scientific thought, and now has the ascendency in government on the broadest scale, (witness, e.g., the UN). It can blend with neither the Christian nor the Islamist, nor can it even reconcile itself on a practical level with either, other than through brute force. In fact and practice, it substitutes its own God and religion as the only legitimatized way of life, i.e., the worship of unfettered ‘man’ himself. History seems at an impasse with no way forward other than the witness of our ways of life and the resultant eventual fall-out of intended and unintended consequences.

  • JaneSeymour

    The Western secular culture is becoming anti-Christian year by year. We can hardly find a country in which Christians are not on attack. Traditional priests are dismissed and liberal religion which is in tune with secularism, becomes the accepted and tolerated form of worship. When even a Pope declares war against faithful Christians and sides with atheists, what can we expect from our liberal politicians. Christians, who are against abortion, homosexual activities and support traditional values have portrayed as opponents of democracy and human rights. We are persecuted even in our own so called Christian countries, so we should not be surprised when Muslims have so little respect for our faith and us as Christians. Nobody respects someone who doesn’t respect himself.



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