[Heacechig]

Are there any alternatives though? Serious question.

The usurious money lending practices and prevalence of pornographic culture are not condemned by anyone "mainstream" in the West. In fact they try to use pseudo-science (evolutionary psychology, twisted economics and other things) to justify the behavior. Dante really was the highlight of European literature on this subject (morality) and during that period of time.

There is of course the Bible (which condemns both these things clearly) but everyone's already given up on the Bible as some backwards thing in the West (and he isn't speaking to an audience of evangelicals). Referring to Dante is kind of a big deal, it anchors his argument in the West's own rationalist morality's roots.

What else is there? It's not like they can use science because both Christians and Muslims seem to ignore that these days while the humanists and atheists dominate it and twist it to their own ends where necessary in the "social sciences". I'd love to see more studies exploring the long term effects of pornography for example but they are really few compared to the immediate studies which show pornography decreases sex crime because it provides a short term outlet but which is used by people to argue for its harmlessness. As for economics, there's no chance of Muslims producing enough people versed in the language of mathematics and statistical analysis to say anything. Muslims who go into graduate-level fields tend to do so as Westerners themselves or demarcate religious view of the world from their career or field's philosophical view of the world. If they cannot even understand their religion's view of the world fully or the West's view of the world fully (instead of blindly imitating both) what hope is there to construct a new world view? One exception that comes to mind is Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of Black Swan) who has written some interesting but subtle things which can be seen as criticisms of some foundational errors in the mode of thought of Western economists. He's Lebanese but Christian (Greek Orthodox). But he's thoroughly Westernized himself.

Plus SHY is a religious scholar, his talks are based on spirituality. He's going to take the moral angle, he can't be expected to arm himself with mathematical or scientific arguments.

With what little he had to go on he did a pretty effective job. If anyone's got better alternatives to his approach let's hear it, I'm certainly interested to know more.