13 - Do we have a similar value?

Summary

One culture conspicuously absent from the comparisons made in the previous chapter is our own. This culture may not have much standing sub specie aeternitatis, but here and now it has a certain call upon our attention, if only by virtue of being ours. What I have in mind here is Western culture in its prevailing modern form, which I would describe as broadly secular and liberal, though not necessarily irreligious. It seems to be readily compatible with a non-fundamentalist allegiance to a variety of traditional religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Does this culture possess a value similar to forbidding wrong?

Common ground

There is certainly no problem with the intelligibility – and indeed acceptability – of the basic idea of forbidding wrong in Western culture. It is accordingly easy to apply the Islamic conception in a Western setting. A contemporary Muslim writing in Arabic tells a story about a Swede who told off a rich American tourist for speeding on a quiet Swedish country road; he comments aptly that this is an instance of forbidding wrong. (The American, of course, tells the Swede to mind his own business, but backs down in the face of the manifest solidarity of the Swedish bystanders with the author of the rebuke.) But it is not just the basic idea that has this cross-cultural intelligibility. Almost everything of substance that Muslim scholasticism has to say about the doctrine can be understood by a Western reader who knows nothing about Islam; and a lot of it makes good sense.