“Before us there stands a last spiritual crisis that will involve all Europe and America” (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, 1923)
The West’s moral order originates from Judeo-Christian principles. America’s founding documents clearly reflect this fact. Upon these tenets are founded constitutionally protected human rights such as justice, mercy, equality and liberty.
In the view of America’s founding fathers, the laws of Moses – those moral codes collectively representing the core of natural law – are considered seminal tenets applicable to all humanity. Broadly speaking, these principles underpin the value-based Western order, its civilization, societies, culture, and political traditions. They also give life to the exceptionalist value-laden identity of America itself.
The moral components of Moses’ eternal law, says Leon Kass, are “an orienting aspirational guide for every Israelite and, perhaps, every human heart and mind.” The codes comprise the West’s civilizational values, as distinguished from barbarism.
Universal Application
The Jewish people appreciate the underlying primacy of the Ten Commandments, as amplified, to their religion, their community, and to themselves as individuals. After all, to various degrees, they have been motivated, and mostly compliant, with these principles for over 3,000 years. The ancient Hebrew prophets periodically reminded the Israelites of this obligation.
Yet, whether Jewish or not, all humans are obligated to the divine moral codes delivered to the Israelite tribes assembled at Mt. Sinai. These principles of virtue are of eternal, transcendent, and of universal relevance. This means that, in the Judeo-Christian view, followers of other religions, other gods, or other faiths remain subject to these principles. From this perspective, all humanity is morally bound by humanitarian precepts derived therefrom.
The emphasis on definitive ethical-moral parameters disturbs many in the West, particularly those who hold contrary agnostic, secular, pagan, illiberalist, or atheistic worldviews – and those who decry all constraints on their lifestyles. Contrarians challenge the validity of these exclusive paradigms; the issue thus becomes one of legitimacy as monotheistic Judeo-Christianity claims to represent absolute truths, definitive ethics, and firm morality.
To be expected, hostility and rebellion ensues from a variety of quarters. Nonetheless, the West and its allies have an obligation to defend these core values against nefarious attempts to overwhelm the traditional civilizational ethos – one which upholds commitment to humanitarian concerns. This obligation particularly applies to the Jews as initial custodians of the sacred canon.
One commentator explains this enduring mandate as follows: “Jerusalem, past and present, is the moral capital of Western civilization.” Located in the midst of adversaries embracing a religion with diametrically conflicting values and worldview, it is unsurprising that Israel finds itself at the centre of fierce attempts to eradicate its people and their exclusive claims to moral legitimacy from the region.
Conflicting Core Values
The Islamic worldview and its values originate from the Quran and various Hadith (a collection of the Prophet Muhammed’s sayings) – the dogma of which leads to Sharia – Islamic law. In contrast to Judeo-Christian precepts, Islamic values lack divine import. Even so, Islamic law is deemed sacred by its proponents, and punishment for contraventions are therefore justified in terms of religious principle. Sharia law, in application, can be considered acutely authoritarian on occasion; imposing severe moral and ethical dictates contrary to Western concerns of justice, mercy, human rights, and compassion.
The principles of Sharia appear to contradict the West’s liberal democratic tradition and its civilizational values. In the hands of fundamentalist jihadists (Islamic warriors engaging in holy war), nuanced Sharia law is rigidly enforced – often with draconian punishment for contraveners – sans principles of justice and mercy, as understood in the Western canon.
The outcome is that, in application, the moral laws of each tradition – that of the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew canon containing laws handed to Moses) and Sharia – result in contrasting outcomes: Torah reflecting a timeless source of natural law with its offshoots of human rights and obligations. The other tradition, Sharia, in harsh consequences, sometimes even death or mutilation as punishment, and generally devoid of humanitarian concerns as understood in the Western canon.
The Tragedy of Gaza
A stark example of ethical and religious differences in action is seen in the motivation of the two primary combatants of the Gaza war, initially witnessed on that dark day of October 7, 2023, in Israel. The Human Rights Watch group released a report in July 2024, in which they stated Hamas and its allies had, “committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity during the October 2023 invasion in southern Israel.”
The Group’s report concluded Hamas engaged in a “systematic” assault against civilians. In straight-forward terms, Hamas aimed to kill defenceless men and women, children, and babies. In this way, Hamas contravened all international humanitarian laws of a just war; acting against all principles of human decency, and reverting to what can be considered acts of barbarism.
Unsurprisingly, the Watch Group’s findings were rejected outright by Hamas whose spokesman, Gazi Hamad, justifies the killing of innocents. Hamad averred that “Israel has no right to exist in this region.” In plain words, all non-Islamists in Israel must be eliminated, whether combatants or not.
The moral-ethical attitude of Sharia-law driven jihadists, with their ideology of martyrdom, rage, and death for all, could not be better expressed than through the words of Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on July 11, 2024. Nasrallah declared, “We are sacrificing tens of thousands of martyrs, so that millions can live, so that tens of millions can live in pride, honor, and security, so that they can feel their sovereignty and maintain their dignity and the resources of their land.”
It is evident that natural law-derived human rights appear anathematic to Islamist jihadists, and their Sharia-based value system. The following exposé reveals that assassinated jihadist leader, Yahya Sinwar, allegedly positioned Hamas:
“At the head of a worldwide movement for the deconstruction of history that legitimizes rage as the emblem of life, (and) believes it must take this action against all of civilization. This movement has decided that the contemporary outcome of history and religion, including the Jewish-Christian civilization and the human rights culture, is advantageous only for those who created [it], and so it is a tool of oppression to be ripped to pieces.”
The Natural Law in Conflict
By practicing a competing faith with opposing humanitarian values, non-believers (infidels) of Islam are deemed to be in breach of Sharia and, therefore, subject to a penalty of death. This is particularly the case with Jews and Christians who are regarded as prime apostates. As an example, on January 4, 2024, Abu Hudhayfa Al-Ansari, spokesman for the jihadist group, Islamic State (an iteration of the transnational radical movement, Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a branch), called on devotees around the world to carry out killings in what he said would be vengeance for the people of Gaza:
“Lions of Islam: Chase your preys whether Jewish, Christian or their allies, on the streets and roads of America, Europe, and the world. Break into their homes, kill them and steal their peace of mind by any means you can lay hands on.”
This is precisely what transpired in Israel on October 7, 2023, with the slaughter of innocents without mercy of any kind. Validation for this horror is found in many verses of the Quran, exhorting the killing of those who decry the Islamic declaration of “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.” Here, the Quran’s Sura 9:5 reads, “Slay the infidels wherever you find them…and lie in wait for them … and establish every stratagem of war against them.” Not to overlook Sura 5:33, where infidels “shall be slain or crucified, or have their hands and feet cut off.” The reward for such deeds is found in Sura 47:4-9 which promises paradise to “whoever cuts off the head of an infidel.”
Salem Al-Sharif – leader of Al-Qaeda – on July 16, 2024, wrote in his essay titled, “This Is Gaza: A War Of Existence, Not A War Of Borders,” that Islamists should not take civilians as prisoners, as Hamas did on October 7. Instead, says Al-Sharif, “Islam tells us killing takes precedence over taking prisoners.” With this instruction, the militants should not bother with capturing civilians but simply kill them, as that is the way of Islamism. Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, expressed similar sentiments, “We will tear down the border, and we will tear out their hearts from their bodies [and] eat their livers,” he promised.
Imposition of Sharia law upon the wider world, through the creation of an Islamic Caliphate, is the intent of jihadist State actors such as Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and various non-State actors including Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Taliban, Hamas, Houthi, and Hezbollah. All these groups seek to inflict their narrow and draconian interpretations of Islamic law, often upon an unwilling populace, and subjugating them to a micro-managed life under constant threat of penalty.
On the other hand, Hamas’ political elite become exorbitantly wealthy, enjoying comforts unavailable to the general population. This finding is evident from the luxurious lifestyles of jihadist leaders in Qatar, Lebanon, Turkey, and elsewhere. Perhaps, for these Islamist leaders, their religion is but a veneer for material benefits – a hypocrisy, and the scourge of many so-called liberation movements.
Part Two of this essay will further address the irreconcilable chasm between two diametrically opposing religious worldviews.
