On Friday, I attended the excellent Tocqueville Forum at Georgetown University where Robert George of Michael Novak , and other scholars addressed the topic of "Natural Rights and the American Constitutional Experience." For a lay person untutored in legal matters, Novak offered, perhaps, the most accessible presentation: "Belief in a Certain Type of God as a Foundation of the Natural Right of Conscience." Novak spoke primarily about the "accident of history" that led to the development of the U.S. constitution within a Judeo-Christian ethos. But he told the audience of undergraduates and scholars that Muslims also had asked him to help identify specific elements of their faith that could serve as the wellspring for constitutionally protected rights within the Islamic world. Novak said he was no scholar of Islam, but suggested such an effort would encounter some significant theological obstacles. Novak made one point that echoed the view of George Weigel in Faith, Reason and the War Against Jihadism: This is the notion that the Islamic conception of God is of absolute will that transcendends reason. I would like to study this question further.
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