Wicked Beauty

The phrase ‘official knowledge,’ coined by Roman Catholic author and New York Times columnist Ross Douthat in his 2025 book Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, refers to the discourse produced and policed by hegemonic Western secular institutions—a concept he elaborates in the following article, english.aawsat.com. The Economist sums up the thesis in a review entitled, “Why You Should Believe in God. Or Allah. (But not Baal).”

Cross-cultural anthropological research, cognitive science of religion, and classical philosophical thought all converge on one conclusion: the human inclination toward belief in the divine or transcendent is not incidental but deeply embedded in our cognitive and moral nature. Secular experts have long been forced to acknowledge this reality: The Sacred Canopy (1967) by Peter Berger argues that religion arises naturally as humans construct meaning in a chaotic world; Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained (2001) shows how cognitive structures predispose humans to religious belief; Scott Atran’s In Gods We Trust (2002) attempts to provide evolutionary evidence for the natural emergence of religious thought; Harvey Whitehouse’s Modes of Religiosity (2004) explains how religious practices align with innate cognitive and emotional mechanisms; and Justin Barrett’s Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Belief (2012) presents empirical findings that children are naturally inclined toward belief in God—a disposition he terms “theistic receptivity.”

For example, Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular (2003); José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (1994); Peter Berger, The Desecularization of the World (1999); Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (2007); Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Faith (2015), to name a few, each argues that historical studies and global data show secularism to be an elite project and religion's persistence despite it. This elite secularism is true of the existing legal institutions in the West and, by extrapolation, worldwide: Hugh McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (2007), which traces how Western legal systems (e.g., U.S. Supreme Court rulings on education, abortion) marginalized religious authority; Winnifred F. Sullivan, The Impossibility of Religious Freedom (2005), which shows how U.S. courts define "religion" in narrow, Protestant-centric ways, privileging elite secular norms.

Consider the following "working definition for Psychotherapy” by the American Psychological Association: “Psychotherapy is the informed and intentional application of clinical methods and interpersonal stances derived from established psychological principles for the purpose of assisting people to modify their behaviors, cognitions, emotions, and/or other personal characteristics in directions that the participants deem desirable” (emphasis added). See American Psychological Association, “Recognition of Psychotherapy Effectiveness,” accessed August 22, 2025, apa.org.

Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, no. 2999.

An accessible summary of various studies can be found in the working paper by Dr. Alice Evans (Senior Lecturer, King’s College London) linked to this post: “What Caused the Global Islamic Revival?” ggd.world.

Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿarab, 15 vols. (Dār Ṣādir, 1993), 15:371, shamela.ws.

Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, 14:445, shamela.ws.

Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, no. 2822.

The isnād of this report is generally deemed weak, but the meaning is confirmed in the Qur’anic verse 4:65: “But no, by your Lord, they will not believe until they make you, [O Muhammad], judge concerning that over which they dispute among themselves and then find within themselves no discomfort from what you have judged and submit with full submission.”

Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 5063; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim no. 1401.

See Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (Columbia University Press), 1988.

Bradley B. Bowman, Christian Monastic Life in Early Islam (Edinburgh University Press, 2023).

The term secularism, fittingly, was first introduced in its current meanings during the mid-nineteenth century by

Ḥassān ibn Thābit, Dīwān Ḥassān ibn Thābit, ed. Muḥammad al-ʿInānī (Maṭbaʿa al-Saʿāda, 1331/1912), 19.

Frederick Nietzsche, The Gay Science, “Preface to the Second Edition” added in 1887, Section 2, trans. Kaufmann, (Vintage, 1974), 35.

Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 181.

Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, no. 1006.

Philip Rieff, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist, 3rd ed. (University of Chicago Press, 1979), 36. Also, Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. David McLintock (Penguin Books, 2002 [1930 orig.]), 56.

Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, Kitāb Riyāḍat al-Nafs: “The heart is the sovereign, the limbs its loyal soldiery. Reason is the faithful minister, ever counseling the ruler toward his welfare, while passion is the adversary, ceaselessly plotting the sovereign’s ruin.”

Edward Bernays, Propaganda (Horace Liveright, 1928); Stuart Ewen, PR! A Social History of Spin (Basic Books, 1996), esp. chapters 2–4. See also Larry Tye, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations (Crown Publishers, 1998), for a comprehensive biography and analysis of Bernays’ influence on modern consumer culture.

The notion that secularization would inevitably lead to a disenchanted, rational world has come under serious scholarly revision. Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm, in his influential study The Myth of Disenchantment, argues that the standard narrative of the Enlightenment and modernity as eras of rising rationalism and the retreat of magic is itself a myth. Drawing on detailed intellectual histories, he shows that many canonical figures of modern thought—Descartes, Newton, Goethe, Freud, even Weber—remained entangled in occult, mystical, or esoteric traditions, even as they laid the groundwork for secular modernity. Josephson-Storm suggests that what modernity produced was not disenchantment but a transformation in the discourse about magic and belief, wherein elites came to see belief in enchantment as irrational, even as they themselves often continued to be drawn to it. See Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (University of Chicago Press, 2017), esp. chapters 1 and 8.

Contemporary sociological trends testify to this dynamic. While the number of Americans identifying as religious “nones” (those who profess no religious affiliation) has grown significantly over the last two decades, this shift has not led to a widespread embrace of atheism or materialist rationalism. Instead, what has emerged is a surge of interest in astrology, pagan rituals, tarot, crystals, and New Age mysticism—particularly among younger, more progressive demographics. See, Ross Douthat, “The Return of Paganism,” New York Times, Dec 12, 2018 (Accessed 25 Aug 2025); Liel Leibovit, “The Return of Paganism,” Commentary, May 2023, commentary.org (Accessed 25 Aug 2025).

On the disillusionment of European elites post-WWI, see Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (Pantheon, 1994). Hobsbawm details how the confidence of 19th-century secularism gave way to catastrophe and moral crisis after the world wars.

Jonathan Glover’s Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century provides a sobering account of how the century became morally distinct—not merely in death toll but in the systematic scale and ideological intensity of state violence (Yale University Press, 1999). Glover underscores the 20th century’s uniqueness in terms of ideologically motivated mass murder, such as the Holocaust, Stalinist purges, genocide in Rwanda, and Cambodian atrocities—linking them to advances in bureaucratic techniques and technological capacity for mass destruction. Note that even what appear to be cases of ethnic violence, such as in Rwanda, were the result of modern colonial ideologies. Belgian colonial rule entrenched the idea that Tutsis were a superior “Hamite” race—more intelligent and closer to Europeans—while Hutus were portrayed as inferior.

One social scientist contends that algorithmic systems on social media platforms are profoundly destructive: they amplify moral outrage, undermine adolescent mental health, fragment democratic societies, and prioritize engagement over truth, wisdom, or human flourishing. See Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (Penguin Press, 2024), esp. chap. 5. For more on this, see jonathanhaidt.com.

James Montgomery, “Revelry and Remorse: A Poem of Abū Nuwās,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 25.2 (1994), jstor.org.

Nizar Abdullah Al-Nuweiri and Al-Taj Ibrahim Dafallah, “The Ascetic Themes in the Poetry of Abu Nuwas: An Analytical Study,” Mesopotamian Journal of Arabic Language Studies (2022): 37–49, doi.org.

Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 6147.

In Islamic law, pornography is unequivocally forbidden, and socially it carries a deep sense of shame and reprobation. Its widespread consumption among youth in the Middle East reflects social dysfunction and collapse rather than cultural acceptance; unlike in the West or elsewhere, it has not been normalized. Its rejection remains anchored in the broader Islamic moral universe, where resistance to such practices is integral to the collective understanding of a dignified life. For further discussion, see “Porn in the Middle East – The Elephant in the Room.”

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Ranks of the Divine Seekers: A Parallel English–Arabic Text, 2 vols, trans. Ovamir Anjum (Brill, 2020), 2:162-65, doi.org.

Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World (Simon and Schuster, 1996), 51.