On the surface, the forces behind the spread of secularism and Islam would appear to have little in common. Secularism is essentially a movement against a place for religious belief in public life, while Islam holds the complete subservience of the public sphere to Islam through the imposition of Sharia law. But, as Richarad Bastein points out in an article at Mercator.net, things may not always be as they seem. Just as similarities were notable between the seemingly opposed forces of Nazism and Marxism, so links can also be seen between Islam and secularism.
First and foremost, as Bastein emphasizes, is the complete separation of religious belief and reason. As Christianity came into contact with the philosophical reasoning of Greco-Roman culture, there was bound to be conflict as some in the fledgling Church would see wisdom outside of the Christian revelation as a “pagan influence”, some would make the new faith subservient to reason, and others would seek to harmonize the nartural truth found within classical philosophy with the supernatural revelation found within the Holy Scriptures. The Church would come to reject the first two approaches as she saw that all truth was of God and throughout the patristic period the use of philosophy aided in bringing clarity to the ideas contained within Christian dogma.
When the forces of Islam conquered much of the Christian East, they too came struggled with the existence of ideas outside their religious system and there were many Islamic scholars in the middle ages who hovered on the border of Islam and classical philosophy. But, as the centuries wore on, the sway of competing ideas outside the Islamic tradition became noticably weaker. Islamic culture was greatly enriched by its contact with the rich cultures of its conquered lands in Persia, Byzantium, and India and the internalization of these influences would lead to the flowering of Islamic culture. However, as varying forces swept through Islam brought on by the rise of differing regimes, there would be increasing hostility to ideas that could be considered to constitute an independant influence not specifically subservient to the goals of Islam. Islamic culture would eventually ossify and its role as the worlds’ great power overcome by the rise of the Christian West.
Yet the West itself was coming to reject its Christian roots as it became infected with a secularism that has today degenerated into a shallow hedonism. Herein lies the answer to the riddle Bastein poses. Both Islam and secularism reject the harmony of divine and human reason with each allowed to stand on its own. They disagree on the result of this rejection but both have as a significant element of their movement those who would impose totalitarian edicts to raise either the will of Allah as given within Islam or the will of the secularized individual to the dominant role in culture and silence all competing voices. Within Christianity there is an abiding belief that the the man can through reason find natural truth and with divine revelation know supernatural truth and these two are complementary and can be integrated without compromise.
Thus allied on the destruction of what remains of Christian civilaztion (those living there may not be Christians but still contain much of the influence of prior generations), both Islam and secular voices join forces to eradicate any hint that there was once a Christendom. The question remains open whether there are enough Christians with the will to oppose them.