I disagree with David Brooks's analysis of the moral beliefs of social conservatives and liberals in the Terri Schiavo case ("Morality and Reality," column, March 26).
In that case, morality plausibly asks us to make the best use possible of the objectionable tools we find at hand.
Sometimes morality is regarded as the code of conduct that is put forward by religion, but even when this is not the case, morality is thought by many to need some religious explanation and justification.
In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed … That's not pro-life.
Application of sharia law then becomes selective, petty, literalist and most importantly, inflicted on citizens in cases of morality and personal arbitrage, paying lip service to an Islamic law that has neither been happily incorporated into the modern Muslim state, nor honestly jettisoned as incompatible with the needs of that very state.
In any case, his morality is so muddy and ill-considered.
As in the case of morality, there is no exclusive or infallible mode of understanding, religious or otherwise.
It means governments have to address how to achieve desirable outcomes beyond the limits of the business case and morality.
According to another perspective, derived from Kant, not only is it not the case that morality depends on religion, but in fact the reverse is true.
Even if this is the right thing to say about the law, the answer cannot be transposed to the case of morality: morality contrasts with the law precisely because it is supposed to apply even to the inner workings of the mind.
