I’m not sure I want to wade too deeply into this debate, but it is rather galling to read an article about the terrorist militant group, Boko Haram (meaning “Western education is a sin”) who recently kidnapped 270 Nigerian girls and see them referred to as “conservative fanatics”. I refer to the horrifying incident that is slowly gaining global recognition, and that is reported in this article here:
“No girl should be a hero for getting an education. But for many girls around the world, walking through the schoolhouse doors isn’t a right or an assumption: it’s a victory over conservative fanatics – some of whom carry guns,” writes Jill Filipovic.
Her article is entitled “The kidnapped Nigerian girls show that religious conservatives hate education“. It’s just the kind of thing a Western, modern, politically correct feminist schooled in our left-leaning universities would say. She goes on to further insinuate world religions with this quote:
On the surface, these kidnappings follow a theme we’ve seen across the globe: religious extremists don’t want to see girls getting the kind of education that will allow them to enter the workforce, because they correctly understand that education sets girls on a path to economic independence and self-reliance.
On April 16, armed men herded the girls out of bed and forced them into trucks in the town of Chibok. The convoy of trucks then disappeared into the dense forest bordering Cameroon.
The fate of these girls is horrific and the perpetrators of this violence are hardly “religious conservatives.” To equate the two is an outrage.
Risking the ire of these Western feminists, I say thank God for Western civilization and Western democracies. Without the civilizing effect of Christendom, whose tenets teach respect and reverence for all human life, and whose advocates have been the founders of our political democracies, our universities (before they were taken over by leftists) and our health care institutions (before the advent of abortion on demand) I dare say that the world would have experienced a lot more of the likes of Boko Haram.
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Way to go Natalie. This misnomer, ‘conservative fanatics’, is a red herring. Everybody is a conservative trying to conserve something. The question is; ‘Conserving what?’.
I appreciate your comments on ‘Western Civilization’. An author I find quite worthwhile is Rodney Stark who has authored a number of books related to this discussion including ‘The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom …. ‘.