While I definitely share Infidel753's dislike of Islam, I don't share his apocalyptic, confrontational interpretation.
Quite a lot of the "Islam-isn't-really-so-terrible" stuff is coming from within Islam. I have a tiny bit of sympathy for such apologists; I can see them struggle to try to reconcile humanist ethics with Islamic scripture, but I also see them failing miserably every time. Unfortunately for Islamic moderates, there just isn't much equivocation or wiggle room in the Islamic scriptures (the Koran and to some extent the hadith), and they haven't had the extra millennium that Christianity has had to really perfect their double-think.
The Western/Islam confrontation is between two "huge, misogynistic, imperialist ideological" movements driven by religious and political fundamentalism. Neither Infidel753 nor I are at all justified in considering our personal libertarian[1] political philosophies to represent "true" Western thought. The West is as the West does, and right now the West is George Bush's and Tony Blair's.
The real confrontation is between rationality and superstition, a conflict that rationalists are not yet winning, even in the West. The Islamic world is lagging behind, but their ability to affect the West is limited mostly to inducing paranoia.
[1] In the small-ell literally descriptive sense of valuing individual liberty. Neither Infidel753 nor I self-identify as members of the Libertarian political party.
Friday, February 09, 2007
1 comment:
Please pick a handle or moniker for your comment. It's much easier to address someone by a name or pseudonym than simply "hey you". I have the option of requiring a "hard" identity, but I don't want to turn that on... yet.
With few exceptions, I will not respond or reply to anonymous comments, and I may delete them. I keep a copy of all comments; if you want the text of your comment to repost with something vaguely resembling an identity, email me.
No spam, pr0n, commercial advertising, insanity, lies, repetition or off-topic comments. Creationists, Global Warming deniers, anti-vaxers, Randians, and Libertarians are automatically presumed to be idiots; Christians and Muslims might get the benefit of the doubt, if I'm in a good mood.
See the Debate Flowchart for some basic rules.
Sourced factual corrections are always published and acknowledged.
I will respond or not respond to comments as the mood takes me. See my latest comment policy for details. I am not a pseudonomous-American: my real name is Larry.
Comments may be moderated from time to time. When I do moderate comments, anonymous comments are far more likely to be rejected.
I've already answered some typical comments.
I have jqMath enabled for the blog. If you have a dollar sign (\$) in your comment, put a \\ in front of it: \\\$, unless you want to include a formula in your comment.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Well said.
ReplyDelete