著者

松村 昌廣

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

桃山学院大学経済経営論集 (ISSN:02869721)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.57, no.4, pp.155-171, 2016-03-22

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With the November 2015 Paris attack, Islamic terrorist threat has increasingly become acute and severe. The major powers, especially Western liberal democracies, seem to have made a decisive shift at last toward hard line policy involving the use of armed force and other coercive law enforcement measures against the terrorists. This shift is overdue given a series of large-scale acts of Islamic terrorism including the September 11 attacks on the U.S., the 2004 Madrid train bombings, and the July 2005 London bombings. Cultural relativism has long hindered liberal democracies from taking timely counter-measures, on the ground that the dominant idea is politically correct in liberal democratic discourse on inviolable human rights and, as its corollary, firm commitment to tolerating societal diversity. The idea retarded swift implementation of anti-terrorist counter-measures, while requiring due respect to the freedom of religion of ordinary moderate Moslem minorities in liberal democracies. To meet Islamic terrorist challenges, this article is intended to eliminate intellectual confusion on the limited political relevance of cultural relativism in liberal democracy, arguing for the central importance of the separation of church and state and secularized political culture that is indispensable to maintaining the separation. The analysis will identify Islamic terrorists, who reject the separation, as a mortal enemy of liberal democracy, against which relentless suppression and oppression is essential.