Is there a lecture on The Relevance of the Koran for Law and Ethics in Society Today? If not, is there one to come?
Has Rabbi Sacks read the Koran?
Why did China decline? The way all civilisations decline, when they stopped being outward looking, started breaking their own rules and no longer allowed free speech. The advisers of the emperor were traditionally were allowed to speak their mind, but later they were tortured for doing so.
The Mandate of Heaven was in fact a theocracy, was it not? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven
The Abrahamic God is the most powerful idea conceivable, and this was what the West worshipped. But so too is the Islamic God the Abrahamic God. What went wrong for them?
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3114/muslims-ijtihad
"During the twelfth century, nevertheless, there were still attempts to use rational and deductive reasoning. In Muslim Spain, for instance, Averroes (aka Ibn Rushd, 1126-1198 CE), one of the founders of secular reasoning in Europe, refused to accept the closing of the Gates of Ijtihad. He continued to use Arabic translations of classical Greek sources, and preferred strictly rational methods to decide matters in contention. As in the Muslim world the Gates of Ijtihad had been closed, however, his rulings proved unacceptable."
Western hegemony is based on Western military supremacy, the idea of full-spectrum global dominance - a US military doctrine. Niall Ferguson, mentioned by Rabbi Sacks, "now distances himself from the neocons". https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/feb/20/niall-ferguson-interview-civilization
Western military supremacy was of course achieved through warfare amongst European nations. The more you fight, the better you get at it. Scientific advance is always accompanied through warfare because necessity is the mother of invention. Not only did Christians conduct the Crusades against Muslims, they massacred each other too in the European Wars of Religion. After having started two World Wars, military supremacy inevitably followed.
"The place in the world where Christianity is growing fastest today is China" - Communism is materialist which means it is an ideology that does not take into account abstracts us as spirituality and contentment. Things and resources being finite and our desires infinite, demand will always outstrip supply and cause greed, envy, anger, conflict, division and perhaps eventually the disintegration of the group. Perhaps it will not be long before the Chinese establish their very own Church of China?
If your proposition is that the West is most successful because it worshiped the most powerful God, what happened to the Muslims who also worshiped the same God? It seems that all adherents of Abrahamic faiths have at some time in their histories lost their way after breaking their own rules. When Jews broke their own rules they suffered invasion, conquest and exile. I am sure this applies to all the other Abrahamic faiths. Christians have now so utterly forgotten their Christian principles they no longer talk about sin or hell and indeed are no longer even Christian and should be more accurately described as Post-Christian. In 2014, it was discovered that the Archbishop of Canterbury is so theologically ignorant that he did not even know that he was supposed to believe in the Trinity, the indispensable ingredient of being Christian. This was when he confessed to sometimes doubting God existed, but was absolutely sure about the existence of Jesus, as if that were enough.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/archbishop-canterbury-justin-welby-questions-whether-god-exists-n206261
It seems from his utterly imbecilic comment that he was not even aware that neither Jews nor Muslims denied the existence of Jesus.
Rabbi Sacks mentioned morality and the law and discussed the problem of what we should do when the law entitles us to do that which we know to be immoral.
QUESTIONS FOR RABBI SACKS
1) What should we do when we know our government is promoting policies that we know to be evil because they undermine the institutions of marriage and the family such as no fault divorce, the civil partnership, gay marriage as well as encouraging transgenderism in primary school children?
2) Is our government being actively evil, or just confused and misguided?
3) If our government is evil, then it must be overthrown. If it is merely confused and misguided, is decades of policies promoting sexual liberation in an environment of indiscriminate universal suffrage the cause of this confusion?
4) Is it possible for these policies to be corrected under the current political system?
5) If we come to the conclusion that it not possible for these policies to be corrected under the current political system, what should we do?
6) If our solution to the problems created by policies designed to promote sexual liberation and gender confusion as well as undermine the institutions of marriage and family is not allowed under the current political system, will we be accused of extremism?
7) If we are accused of extremism, bigotry, intolerance and hate speech, what should we do?
8) Are we governed by Amalekites if our government promotes policies that break all the principles of the Noahide laws?
9) Do Jews have a religious duty to exterminate Amalekites or at the very least denounce them?
10) If someone comes along claiming to have a solution to these problems, should this person be regarded as a potential Mashiach even if they are neither male nor Jewish, but possibly descended from King David who had 700 wives and 300 concubines?
