Western Christianity & Muslim Societies on Morality

Modern Age (Spring 2007), a traditionalist conservative magazine, carries an article by Anthony T. Sullivan, the Founder and Director of Near East Support Services, titled “Islam, America, and the Political Economy of Liberty.” Sullivan surveys two World Values Studies by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart. Sullivan says, “The data collected show a mean score in the ‘Approval of Democratic Values’ category of 68 [percent] for Western Christianity and 68 [percent] for Islamic society.”

However, the scores for gender equality, homosexuality, abortion, and divorce are different. Approval of gender equality in Western Christianity stands at 82 percent, in Islamic society at 55 percent. Western Christianity approves of homosexuality by 53 percent, but Islamic society by 12 percent. Approval of abortion in Western Christianity scores 48 percent, but in Islamic society 25 percent. Approval of divorce stands at 60 percent for Western Christianity, and only 35 percent for Islamic society.

Western conservatives believe that morals matter. The Holy See frequently allies with Islamic countries on morality at the UN. Sullivan says, “Muslims do not hate America for what it is, but for what it does [to their Islamic societies]…. to seize and occupy oil-rich Arab and Muslim lands…. There is no future for any American imperium in the Islamic Middle East.”

Sullivan says, “These days, what passes for conservatism has largely been transformed from what one of my own mentors, the late, great litterateur and traditionalist thinker Russell Kirk, identified with the ‘politics of prudence,’ into something almost its polar opposite. Currently, conservatism [actually neoconservatism] appears to have largely abandoned its traditionalist and non-interventionist credo. Moreover, it has transformed itself into something most closely resembling a revolutionary Trotskyism….” As the NOR has said, the neocons are more aptly called Trotskycons.