Glenn Greenwald has a great long piece tearing Sam Harris’s ideas apart. It was so satisfying to see my own opinions reflected with such clarity and reason — I have to agree with it all. Read it. It is a thing of beauty.
That said, what I did say in my emails with Harris – and what I unequivocally affirm again now – is not that Harris is a “racist”, but rather that he and others like him spout and promote Islamophobia under the guise of rational atheism. I’ve long believed this to be true and am glad it is finally being dragged out into open debate. These specific atheism advocates have come to acquire significant influence, often for the good. But it is past time that the darker aspects of their worldview receive attention.
Whether Islamophobia is a form of “racism” is a semantic issue in which I’m not interested for purposes of this discussion. The vast majority of Muslims are non-white; as a result, when a white westerner becomes fixated on attacking their religion and advocating violence and aggression against them, as Harris has done, I understand why some people (such as Hussain) see racism at play: that, for reasons I recently articulated, is a rational view to me. But “racism” is not my claim here about Harris. Irrational anti-Muslim animus is.
Contrary to the assumptions under which some Harris defenders are laboring, the fact that someone is a scientist, an intellectual, and a convincing and valuable exponent of atheism by no means precludes irrational bigotry as a driving force in their worldview. In this case, Harris’ own words, as demonstrated below, are his indictment.
Exactly so. I don’t like Islam, I don’t like any religion, and I think all of them do harm to their adherents…but I don’t think the solution is to declare war on people who believe. I’m also saying that as a scientist and someone who has long identified as a New Atheist (although, believe me, the leadership of that movement is putting a serious strain on the relationship), the kind of ideas espoused by Harris are harmful to the propagation of a diverse, world-wide, tolerant atheism.
The key point is that Harris does far, far more than voice criticisms of Islam as part of a general critique of religion. He has repeatedly made clear that he thinks Islam is uniquely threatening: “While the other major world religions have been fertile sources of intolerance, it is clear that the doctrine of Islam poses unique problems for the emergence of a global civilization.” He has insisted that there are unique dangers from Muslims possessing nuclear weapons, as opposed to nice western Christians (the only ones to ever use them) or those kind Israeli Jews: “It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of devout Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence.” In his 2005 “End of Faith”, he claimed that “Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death.”
Islam does have unique properties; Judaism is unique; Christianity is very, very special. You can always single out unusual properties of any religion and make them a basis for universal condemnation of the whole faith, but unfortunately, Harris seems to think only Islam is a particularly dangerous force.
I have to ask, are only American Muslims piloting the drones blowing up civilians in the Middle East? If Islam is a cult of death, perhaps we should compare casualties: who has killed more, American Christians or Iranian Muslims? That we have sterilized and dehumanized war to the point of being grainy video images of fleeing blobs seen through the camera of a guided bomb, while some Muslims revel in getting up close and personal and chopping heads off, does not imply that one is more death culty than the other.
I also do not want atheism to be used as a justification for barbaric behavior, such as torture or bombing campaigns.
When criticism of religion morphs into an undue focus on Islam – particularly at the same time the western world has been engaged in a decade-long splurge of violence, aggression and human rights abuses against Muslims, justified by a sustained demonization campaign – then I find these objections to the New Atheists completely warranted. That’s true of Dawkins’ proclamation that “[I] often say Islam [is the] greatest force for evil today.” It’s true of Hitchens’ various grotesque invocations of Islam to justify violence, including advocating cluster bombs because “if they’re bearing a Koran over their heart, it’ll go straight through that, too”. And it’s true of Harris’ years-long argument that Islam poses unique threats beyond what Christianity, Judaism, and the other religions of the world pose.
Most important of all – to me – is the fact that Harris has used his views about Islam to justify a wide range of vile policies aimed primarily if not exclusively at Muslims, from torture (“there are extreme circumstances in which I believe that practices like ‘water-boarding’ may not only be ethically justifiable, but ethically necessary”); to steadfast support for Israel, which he considers morally superior to its Muslim adversaries (“In their analyses of US and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. . . . there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah”); to anti-Muslim profiling (“We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it”); to state violence (“On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right. This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that ‘liberals are soft on terrorism.’ It is, and they are”).
I am also peeved every time an atheist shouts that Islam is an existential threat, therefore we shouldn’t waste our time on trivial problems at home.
Beyond all that, I find extremely suspect the behavior of westerners like Harris (and Hitchens and Dawkins) who spend the bulk of their time condemning the sins of other, distant peoples rather than the bulk of their time working against the sins of their own country. That’s particularly true of Americans, whose government has brought more violence, aggression, suffering, misery, and degradation to the world over the last decade than any other. Even if that weren’t true – and it is – spending one’s time as an American fixated on the sins of others is a morally dubious act, to put that generously, for reasons Noam Chomsky explained so perfectly:
“My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it.
“So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.”
It’s a devastating critique, and good to see it delivered so well — the foaming-at-the-mouth mad ravings of Chris Hedges are nowhere to be seen — and he doesn’t succumb to that Hedges-style condemnation of atheism as a whole.
One last point: I absolutely do not believe that Harris – or, for that matter, Hitchens – is representative of all or even most atheists in this regard. The vast majority of atheists I know find such sentiments repellent. They are representative only of themselves and those who share these views, not atheists generally.
#NotAllAtheists. Yay. But we all still have a responsibility to stand up against the right-wing neo-cons who are cloaking themselves under the umbrella of atheism.
I’m hoping Harris retires to doing nothing but touting New Agey pseudo-spiritualism. There’s good money there, I’m sure.
I wonder if Jerry Coyne is going to read the Guardian article (or if he’s already done so).
If so, I expect there’s going to be another knee-jerk defense of Harris that (again) ignores all the things that Harris used to get criticized for on WEIT.
Nice one. Loving Greenwald more is not a burden.
Yeah. It’s amazing how American Jews can get away with murdering thousands of their own countrymen (9/11 terror attacks) and then blame it on some dying Muslim living in caves in Afghanistan with no wifi access… Yet we aren’t allowed to criticize Jews like we can of Christians or Muslims. And ironically, Afghanistan up until the Soviet invasion had been a quite liberalizing and pleasant country. That all changed that year and after the Soviets pulled out the Americans moved in. An atrocious display of what Western occupation of other countries can do to turn on religious fanaticism.
Oh, pshaw! Everyone knew that mostly white people wouldn’t use nukes on each other, even as mutual destruction was assured. Why, if nukes in the hands of non-Muslims was at all a worry, we surely would have heard about it.
The strange thing, to me, is that Harris’ argument becomes stronger if you eliminate the Islamaphobia. What’s the difference between the “West” and these Middle Eastern governments Harris focuses on? Not the religion, it’s the existence of secular governments that have squashed down barbaric religious nuts (with varying degrees of success).
There is literally no difference between a government run entirely by the most radical elements of Israel, the Doomsday Christian cults, and ISIS. The question then needs to be asked, why is it the case that Islamic countries are largely devoid of powerful secular organizations able to control religious extremism. If your answer doesn’t involve things like decade-long wars launched by the West or the usurpation of democratically elected leaders or the propping up of horribly oppressive governments, then you’re just being dishonest.
It’s the total lack of uniqueness of Islam as a religion that shows the effectiveness of secular governments, not its magical scariness.
Oh shit, I hadn’t read that Harris opposed the “Ground Zero Mosque…”
That’s a shark-jumping moment. That veers into Fox News land of fake hysteria and comic-book nonsense.
Ah, Mark the Christianist idiot strikes again.
Are you really a fucking 9/11 troofer too? And one of the antisemitic conspiracy nutjobs at that? Holy fucking shit.
Fuck off. Even if this was some half-assed attempt at humor, you are still odious as shit.
haha anteprepro, yeah just continue your illusion. However, being a scientifically and technically literate person myself, it’s obvious that there is a 0% chance that the official lie we’re supposed to believe about 9/11 is correct. That then opens up a whole new can of worms: who actually did it? That’s something you seem unwilling to do since it conflicts with your misdirected national pride. Get with it man. The US media / government / banking complex has you, and 95% of all Americans, hook line and sinker.
Nice article overall (with one problem*).
I bring this up every time Sam Harris’s views on Muslims come up: the problem Islam and the Muslim populations around the world have is not terrorism. It’s the oppressive grip the straight Muslim man has on all aspects of Muslim society. It’s a grossly unchecked privilege that is openly used to suppress. Let this fester for generations upon generations and one of the by-products will have to be groups like ISIS or the Taliban, whose domestic policies consist of merely putting those prevalent views into practice. It doesn’t matter if their actions are extreme. They still line up with the various prejudiced opinions held by the male-dominated public. For example, I’d have to doubt a man expressing sympathy for a woman who has been raped if that man also believes women are the property of men and bring shame upon their community via sexual intercourse.
Back to Harris: It’s plain as day to me his concern isn’t for the victims of Islam and Islamic oppression. It is just a political concern. If he really did care, he’d spend time addressing the real problems. He’d speak about how important it is for girls to go to school, how important it is that women not be prohibited from working or marrying if and when they want, etc. Instead, we constantly hear about terrorism and profiling from him on the topic of Islam.
I’m full aware of the threat to other countries that Islamic terrorism poses. But profiling and torture are stupid and immoral responses to it. You create more victims when you do either.
* The issue is the word “some” in “… the suppression of women by some Muslims …”. Calling it “some Muslims” implies it’s not the standard way of life. The suppression of women is done by most Muslims (even women). Open misogyny is a firmly established status quo in Muslim countries. But I don’t blame him much for writing “some” as he has probably imagined sexism there to be somewhat on a similar scale as it is in the U.S. And when speaking of an unfamiliar culture or country, one would feel safer understating something like that rather than overstating it and appear prejudicial. But since the topic is Islam and the Muslim world, I don’t feel right not correcting that crucial part.
Mark: stupid and bigoted is no way to go through life, son.
Bye.
I observed in response to one of Terry Firma’s posts on Friendly Atheist that he is using atheism as a reason for his bigotry and I suspect that Harris is doing the same.
One of the big problems of such bigotry is that it is tainted because you regard your enemy’s enemy as your friend; thus militarists are regarded as your allies and the military has a track record of using Fundamentalist and Apocalyptic Christianities as agents in any “righteous” fight. In practice the allies required are the moderate communities of Islam and the attitude of the Harris and his ilk do not allow for such alliances.
There is also a second problem in that because you are intent on solving a hard problem you ignore the lesser problems that can more easily addressed, if not solved. Male privilege and misogyny in the atheist community can be addressed without any loss of focus on proscribing the hateful tenets present in all fundamentalist faiths.
please, do give us a rundown of how the “official lie” is a lie, with the evidence that changed your mind.
I am all ears.
damnit pee-zed I wanted to poke a truther >( you are the worst person in the existence of everything for ruining my fun.
America runs around destroying countries and then leave others to pick up the tab. Libya, Iraq, Syria, people are fleeing in the thousands from the benevolence of the west. The previous regimes weren’t good by any standard, but if you can’t do anything improve the situation it is better to do nothing. If the West or Harris cared about the oppressed in the Muslim world, why have they never called for completely open borders for people fleeing from those countries?
Ah, the article is dated April of 2013–well over a year ago. (I wondered if/why/how Glennzilla had returned to Teh Grauniad–he hasn’t.)
This doesn’t take away from Greenwald’s arguments and points, but it does rather pull the rug from under any optimism regarding a change of heart, rhetoric or tactics from Mr Harris, does it not?
microraptor @1:
Well, he’s had plenty of time to do so — the article was published in April 2013.
Not that I’m complaining; I don’t think it’s any less relevant today. In fact, now it’s even clearer that Dawkins has lined up with Harris in proclaiming the urgent threat of Islam.
I know. I just loathe troofers.
Maybe if one wants to whine about “Benghazi!”, I could let them linger for a comment or two before kicking them out.
I do too but i was curious if this one had anything different to offer
Not to mention i’ve never seen the “its a jew plot” aspect before
RWA troofer vs libturd troofer?
Greenwald’s post may be dated (April 2013), but PZ’s is as timely as ever. The more people see just how right-wing some of their atheist heros are, the better we can tell by their reactions and defenses who is on the side of humanity – and who isn’t.
I think the whole Benghazi thing was filmed in the same studio as the moon landings.
So, Harris is styling himself as part of the atheist Trinity incarnating senator Cato, or is that the senator Cato Institute (yet another creation of Kochthought)? He’s certainly pulling the train of CARTHAGO DELENDA EST like a Roman building up The Great External Threat to Empire.
When someone starts Othering folks as a monolithic monstrosity culture, whatever their collective identity, and advocating social harms against persons on the basis of that identity alone and NOT what deeds are done by those persons, what makes a tribalist non-believer more justified than a tribalist believer in demanding collective punishment of all for some?
If ignorance is what leads entire societies of people into becoming the weapons of violent leaders, why aren’t people like Harris advocating at top volume every day in lobbying PACs to increase the access and quality of US evidence-based education at all levels; formal and informal? Wouldn’t that lead as an example to the world, corrupt exchange students to the benefits of such a standard, decrease the number of religionists (especially those dangerous Moozlims) and even increase the body of ideas on how to combat extremist irregular violence?
I don’t see a lot of that organized pro-education lobbying happening; quite the opposite on the rightwing side of the US political spectrum. Where is the US on the surveyed scale of education again?
(PS: I freely admit to being pro-education/lifelong learning and desiring to have the anti-education/science attitudes leaching into Canada from the US halted/reversed)
Mark:
Therefore, Jews.
Scientifically literate my ass. If you can’t do basic logic, you can’t really do that well understanding science. Sorry. And good riddance.
Saad:
That is an excellent point and it really puts into light how Dawkins and Harris et al will point to Teh Evil Muslims as the place that needs Real Feminism. Those countries are what happens when you turn patriarchy up to eleven, impacted by giving a patriarchal religion incredible cultural and political influence. They will only selectively pay attention to that, though. The oppression of women is only relevant to them insofar as it lets them dismiss Western feminists and excuse violence and atrocities against Muslims.
Harris and his other atheist ilk do show that we were wrong about Christians. I once thought that Christian militants advocating for this violence and these wars were the mirror image to the Muslim fanatics they opposed. But this war isn’t about Christian vs. Muslim. It’s about White American vs. Middle Eastern. This was never the holy war I thought it was. Though that is part of it. Harris and his ilk show quite clearly that this is a race war.
With a side order of antisemitism to boot. He’s a fucking wingnut happy meal.
Also, the benighted West has been the biggest booster of fundamentalism in the Middle East, beginning with the creation of Saudi Arabia (recipient of billions in arms sales from the US). The West decided to break up the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire, with disastrous consequences (price not paid by the West of course).
doubtthat #6,
The idea that Harris opposed the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” needs elaboration. As is, what you’ve written is supremely misleading. Harris was personally opposed to the building of the mosque, but he did not think anyone had, or should have had, a legal avenue to prevent it. In my opinion, that position is exactly right. Freedom of religion is important, and it means we can’t prevent the building of a mosque just because we don’t like Islam, but there’s nothing in there that says you have to support the building of mosques or any other house of worship.
You can’t honestly talk about Harris’s views on that mosque without including that rather significant caveat (that he opposes any legal effort to prevent it). That point provides necessary context without which you will misunderstand his position. Similarly, one can’t honestly talk about his views on torture without including that he thinks torture should be illegal in all cases.
Tashiliciously Shriked:
It’s one of the more fringe, ugly versions of the troofers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=9/11_conspiracy_theories#Israel
The only way I have been familiar with it is by 4chan-like trolls (who use the idea as a joke) with the meme “Jews did WTC”
https://www.google.com/search?q=Jews+did+WTC&oq=Jews+did+WTC&aqs=chrome..69i57.2368j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Exactly! I have no problem criticizing Islamic theology and terrorism, but here in the West (i.e. white dominated countries), folks tend to criticize Islam through the old “Us good civilized Westerns (white people) vs. those savage bloodthirsty brown people” lens.
I hadn’t seen it before, just found it today.
YOU PEOPLE ARE SUPPOSED TO TELL ME ABOUT THESE THINGS.
Not our fault. The Jews kept us from telling you.
drewvogel:
Fucking face palm.
Do you know what is even more supremely misleading than omitting the fact that Harris didn’t want to prevent Teh Ground Zero Mosque OMG from coming into existence? Using the characterization “Ground Zero Mosque”. It was a fucking community center. And it was two fucking blocks from Ground Zero. 0.5 miles away in a bourough of New York that consists of only 23 square miles, one of the densest populations in the fucking world.
What Harris was saying, by jumping on the right wing bandwagon, was that nothing remotely Muslim-y was allowed anywhere in Manhattan. That is what the right-wingers were saying, that is what Harris was agreeing with even if he reluctantly admitted that there wasn’t anything they could do to stop it, and that is what you are fucking coming to the defense of. Do you not see the bigotry involved? Not at all?
@25 drewvogel
I find it borderline astonishing that you think you’ve provided a defense of Harris’ position.
This is just fucking nuts:
First, that’s just a perfect articulation of his Islamaphobia. The people building that community center two city blocks from where the towers stood have absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. They have as much to do with 9-11 as you have to do with Stalin’s labor camps. Linking the two is as horribly ignorant and malicious as the nonsense Fox News shits out on a daily basis and, more disturbingly, what Bush Co. relied upon to start a war.
Second:
Hysterical overreaction + insane generalization + typical conservative gibberish about “values” and “cowardice.” The true cowardice lies in panicking over a fucking community center. I’m sure that a thousand years from now historians will point to that community center as the Waterloo of Western Liberal Values.
If you can read that article and come out siding with Harris, you are honestly operating at a Fox News level.
Truthers never fail to amaze and amuse me with their “logic.”
How many bank headquarters, trading floors and exchanges (including NYSE) were either in the Trade Towers themselves or the immediate vicinity thereof? How many major media companies, with massive broadcast antennae and other equipment on the roofs of WTC I & II? How many local, state and federal government offices and agencies?
Media puppets, banksters and their lackeys in government deserve endless scorn for a whole lot of evil shit, but flying airplanes into themselves and their own critical infrastructure is not one of them. LMAO.
drewvogel, #25
The mosque issue is something I agreed with Harris on (I’m sure for different reasons though).
I was opposed to the mosque in the same sense I’m opposed to posting a video of yourself burning the Qur’an. Sure you shouldn’t be legally opposed but why are you doing it?
There were thousands of people whose loved ones died horrible deaths and Islam is inextricably linked with that event. It’s extremely insensitive to do a ground zero mosque at the cost of grief to innocent people, when you can do it somewhere else. That’s not what freedom of religion should be. I’m not going to blame someone whose husband burned to death in a building for not ridding herself of all emotions and not coolly and rationally separating 9/11 from a mosque.
Irisvanderpluym: It was a false flag operation! The Jewish Banker Politician Reporters needed to destroy their own money in order to make sure that they could cause the banking crisis, get bailouts, use drones to spread chemtrails, and finally give the Illuminati enough money to start faking moon landings again while they send black helicopters around to ensure that all Christians are vaccinated with the Mark of the Beast and then are sent off for judgment in front of Obamacare’s Death Panels.
All part of the plan. Wake up sheeple.
The irony with Harris is that he is an Islamophobe in that other sense… he’s not prejudiced against Muslims (which is what the word is usually used to mean), but he does have an irrational (that is, exaggerated) fear of Islam, which is what the word should mean. The dangers he lays out in “The End of Faith” are all quite real. They’re just a lot less likely than he makes them out to be.
Harris seems to have an exaggerated fear of violence across the board. His views on guns are similarly skewed by his over-estimation of the threat of violent crime. His instant reaction to the killing of Michael Brown was to sympathize with the difficult job that police have to do. He’s not exactly wrong about that, but he’s completely missing the fact that cops pose far more danger to young black men than young black men pose to cops. He doesn’t seem to realize that the upshot of this view is that, for all practical purposes, he’s holding the Michael Brown’s of the world to a higher standard than trained, armed policemen. On Israel/Palestine again, his views are driven by his knee-jerk identification with the fear of terrorism. He doesn’t exactly defend Israel, but he refuses to criticize either.
Recently (perhaps a week ago) he tweeted out a study showing that the majority of global terrorism is driven by religious extremism. His point was to say “Look, Bill Maher and I are right” (and they are). But the same study also breaks down the terrorism threat geographically. There is very little terrorism in the United States, relatively speaking, and most of it comes from right-wing separatists. Only a small sliver of the terrorism threat in America comes from religion, and only a small sliver of that comes from Muslims. There’s really no reason for people in America (or even Europe) to be obsessively afraid of Muslim terrorists. Globally is a different story, but that’s because Islamic groups (ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, etc.) are concentrated in just a handful of countries (Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria).
I’m going to have to get better acquainted with this Chomski fellow i hear so much about.
anteprepro,
Thanks for educating me on that. I didn’t bother to look up the actual proposed location when the debate was raging.
But my opposition is based on the fact that there were victim family members who were opposed to it because they felt that proximity was insensitive.
Not just insensitive but “extremely insensitive” to build a freaking Islamic community center in an abandoned Burlington Coat Factory in the general area of the towers simply because they happened to share the same religion as the attackers? You probably couldn’t build a church in the Americas that wasn’t in the general vicinity of some atrocity visited on indigenous folk or Africans by Christians but nobody is throwing a fit when a new church is built.
@33 Saad
1) It wasn’t a mosque.
2) It was a half mile from Ground Zero.
3) The people raising money for the community center had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.
If the “values” of our nation involve creating an amorphous “No Islam” zone based purely on the association of all Muslims with a group of hijackers, then we are in deep trouble. I wonder if there is a No Christianity zone surrounding the location of attacks on abortion clinics and health providers.
nich, #38
You are correct. If there were relatives of people murdered by Christian terrorists that opposed the building of a Christian center somewhere in the general area of the massacre, I’d be opposed to that too.
There were people who lost relatives in the attacks who were opposed to the construction and for that reason, it would be the better thing to do to plan it elsewhere.
Allowing benign religious activities EVEN when it causes to discomfort to some is exactly what is meant by freedom of religion.
I’m saying it’s not a responsible use of that freedom just as there are insensitive uses of the freedom of speech.
@42 Saad
I agree with that statement, I do not believe it applies to this situation. The “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy was 100% nonsense drummed up by the Limbaughs, Hannitys, and Coulters of the world. Think “War on Christmas” with threatening racist overtones and you’ll have a better understanding of the nature of the “debate.”
Saad: I imagine that some of the opposition from the families themselves came from the media misinformation and hysteria worked up over the place. And some may have come from their own bigotries. Just because they suffered a loss does not make them pure, innocent, and infallible.
Additionally, #NotAll911Families:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park51#9.2F11_families_2
drewvogel:
Citation please? You say quite confidently that the former isn’t the case, but the latter surely does indicate that some form of prejudice is at work. Would you say that a man who has an irrational/exaggerated fear of black men is clearly not prejudiced against black men, for example?
I will say you are very on point with everything else in that post, however.
anteprepro, #44
That’s a good point. It could be true.
People deal with tragic losses in different ways, and if there’s a woman who lost her son and granddaughter in the attack feels it’s disrespectful, then it’s the better move for the planners themselves to be the bigger people and do the project elsewhere. I’m talking about a compromise out of empathy. I’m not talking about the government telling them what to do. I’m emphatically against that.
anteprepro,
I’m not sure what you’re asking me to cite. My opinion that Harris isn’t bigoted toward Muslims? That is my judgment which I have come to after having considered the matter carefully and reading innumerable attacks against and defenses of Harris. There’s nothing definitive about my opinion except that it is my opinion. Feel free to disagree.
You ask a good question when you bring up the “fear of black men” hypothetical. That’s a really good point, and it’s why I’m not especially interested in convincing anyone that Harris is not bigoted. I don’t think he is, but I can see why someone might, and that’s fair. Certainly, someone could easily have an exaggerated fear of black violence because they are prejudiced against black people. I expect that’s quite common. And something similar may well be at work in Harris. I just don’t happen to think so.
By the way, I may be a bit dim, but can someone point me to an explainer for how to do those nice quotes with attribution that many of you are using? Thanks.
Saad@42:
Please don’t attempt to equate the crap you see on Twitter aimed at feminists and the like with some Muslims building a community center. You might have a point if we were talking about some Saudi prince buying up 1 WTC to erect a Wahhabi mosque and madrassa on the site with a ribbon cutting ceremony on 9/11/2011, but it’s a community center in the general area. Turning Manhattan into a No Mozlems Club for the sake of the tender fee-fees of a few ‘Muricans (few of whom, it is my understanding, were actually direct relations of 9/11 victims) is total bullshit.
Saad and Drewvogel, fair enough :)
And drew, they have brief instructions underneathe the comment box for how to use tags. The quote boxes are blockquotes. The basic format is:
[blockquote cite=””] Blockquoted Text [/blockquote cite]
Replace the [ symbols with < symbols and you get:
It is similar for bolding (b) and italicizing (i) text.
Just discovered this about the “Ground Zero Mosque” and now I suddenly want to see it.
http://itvs.org/films/building-babel
anteprepro #48:
Thank you very much.
I’m not sure that Sam Harris qualifies as “right-wing.” He’s virulently anti-islamic and has made pro-gun statements.
But people are a bit more 3-dimensional than the media likes to pigeonhole them. So he has some right-leaning ideas on these two subjects. Starting a charity seems a bit more progressive. He’s talked about the insights he gained taking Ecstasy, and is by no means crusading against drug use.
Maybe people are more complicated than a simple black/white viewpoint allows.
Aside from what others have said, efforts to block the “mosque”, which wasn’t really a mosque, were not spear-headed by the 9/11 families. The project had proceeded quietly with support from city leaders and had received all the relevant permits. And then professional bigots like Pam Geller got wind of it and turned it into a hate-fest. I think some of the 9/11 families may have dragged themselves into the fray, but the impetus for blocking the project was not that it offended them, it was that a Muslim wanted to build something kinda-sorta in proximity to ground zero, and this clearly offends America. Legal attempts to stop it were about as blatant a violation of the 1st Amendment as you’ll find.
Also, the guy who was in charge of the project is the very picture of a moderate, ecumenical Muslim, the kind of guy who you actually want to be leading Muslims and is almost certainly sincere about wanting everyone to get along. Of course, that just enraged the Islamophobes all the more, who denounced him as a super-terrorist radical based on the usual lack of evidence and bullshit.
For more, see:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/a-mosque-maligned/
Saad, there were Muslim American victims of the 9/11 attacks: “electricians, iron workers, financial Analysts, restaurant workers, secretaries” who died at the Trade Towers. What possible justification is there for keeping downtown Manhattan Islam-free, in favor of Christianity and Judaism and every other religion? Second, on every anniversary of the attacks Muslims are “vilified, taunted and made fun of, their holy book trashed, lit on fire, pissed on and put in the toilet.” At ground zero a d00d sells Quran toilet paper. Yet a Muslim community center half a mile away is somehow provocative and insensitive to victims? Please.
The solution to this nonsense is not less exposure to the moderate Muslims who are good and decent members of my community. The solution is more.
As is ever the case, iris says it better than I ever could. People don’t suddenly become wise just because a loved one died unjustly. And I would be very wary of such a principle becoming widespread, except if it led to the razing of all buildings on property ceded by force or violated treaty.
Fantasy aside, allowing a Victim’s Veto would be a dreadful idea on a lot of levels. I get the compassionate impulse you’re expressing, Saad, but I think it’s leading you to a poor conclusion due to misweighting of premises.
I am extremely nervous around men I don’t know, and fundamentalist christians. Therefore, all men I don’t know and all fundie christians should not be allowed to exist within HALF A MILE of me because disrespect and empathy.
“The vast majority of Muslims are non-white; as a result, when a white westerner becomes fixated on attacking their religion and advocating violence and aggression against them, as Harris has done, I understand why some people (such as Hussain) see racism at play: that, for reasons I recently articulated, is a rational view to me. But “racism” is not my claim here about Harris. Irrational anti-Muslim animus is.”
Not to me. There are many Muslims who cannot wait for the day the Iranian regime is overthrown by force. Many more so who want to see ISIS eliminated, and Assad’s regime overthrown. And there are indeed many Muslims who despise Hamas as much as they despite the land-stealing Zionists. And I don’t have to spell out the Kurds, do I? The idea that all Muslims are pacifists (an immoral position in itself) is the real painting of all religious folk in one brush, as a result of people’s ignorance of liberal movements within Islamic culture. I happily side with those Muslims who will not give in to totalitarianism and fascism.
People really need to stop telling others to stop speaking for all Muslims and then go doing exactly that. It’s boring.
“Islam does have unique properties; Judaism is unique; Christianity is very, very special. You can always single out unusual properties of any religion and make them a basis for universal condemnation of the whole faith, but unfortunately, Harris seems to think only Islam is a particularly dangerous force.”
If this were the middle of the 20th century, we would probably be having a discussion about how Catholicism was the most dangerous religion due to its alliance with European fascism. And no doubt would such a sense of seriousness be undermined by claims of “well other religions like Islam have their extremists, too”. Prioritisation and sense of proportion very often get lost when people try to change the subject.
All religions have the potential to be the most dangerous at any given time period. In this period it just happens to be Islam. It could be Christianity again in a few decades. And I wouldn’t be surprised if criticism of the vile nature of the Bible ended up being equated to painting all Christians under one brush, as if there was no such thing as a Christian who was willing to criticise his own religion.
“…to state violence (“On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right. This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that ‘liberals are soft on terrorism.’ It is, and they are”)”
I personally think right wingers are not hard enough on Islamofascism, frankly. You’d be surprised how isolationist they get.
“Beyond all that, I find extremely suspect the behavior of westerners like Harris (and Hitchens and Dawkins) who spend the bulk of their time condemning the sins of other, distant peoples rather than the bulk of their time working against the sins of their own country. That’s particularly true of Americans, whose government has brought more violence, aggression, suffering, misery, and degradation to the world over the last decade than any other. Even if that weren’t true – and it is – spending one’s time as an American fixated on the sins of others is a morally dubious act, to put that generously, for reasons Noam Chomsky explained so perfectly:
“My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it.
So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.”
”
Complete and utter nonsense. It is exactly this kind of isolationism that helps cause poverty and extremism in the third world. When people say this sort of self-centeredness I immediately want to compare them with bankers and corporate shills who do not redistribute their luxury and fortune. That is the logical conclusion. “America First”. What else could it be, here? “America-First-Causeism”? Perhaps both.
I CAN do something about the struggles of those who do not live under the American state. I can donate to charities and causes. I can republish blogs and newspapers that get little circulation. I can publicise their protests. I can point them to revolutionary literature. I can protest myself about the rights of minorities, women, homosexuals, the rights of people to believe in what they want, all of it, in a state that is not mine, where such rarities are taken for granted by spoiled brats. It’s incredible how Chomsky is suggesting that if I do not focus all my attention on some crackpot banker with the same weight (or what it seems to be here, ALL my weight) that makes me immoral. Where the fuck does this callousness come from?
Can’t people understand the need for proportion when it hits them? When I do criticise the crimes people commit here in the West, which according to Chomsky I seem incapable of doing, I make sure that I know how to prioritise. Which is more modest than it sounds.
“One last point: I absolutely do not believe that Harris – or, for that matter, Hitchens – is representative of all or even most atheists in this regard. The vast majority of atheists I know find such sentiments repellent. They are representative only of themselves and those who share these views, not atheists generally.
#NotAllAtheists. Yay. But we all still have a responsibility to stand up against the right-wing neo-cons who are cloaking themselves under the umbrella of atheism.”
I don’t have to have other atheists agree with my position in order to advocate it – that would be an argumentum ad populum. And I don’t even have to be an atheist to advocate the above: I can be Muslim, Christian or Jewish. A belief in God is irrelevant, here.
And I’ve been called a “neo-liberal” as well as a “neo-con” for advocating such leftist politics. When you have opposite terms used interchangeably as insults you know how meaningless they are. Right-wingers call me a “Trotskyite” from time to time on this issue, too. I’m used to it. Not all leftists sell out to far-right extremists and fascists. And not all leftists are pacifists. It’s just not in my fucking name.
Americans in general have a hard time dealing with acts of war on American soil. possibly because there have been so few of them in comparison with the sites of destruction caused by American bombs in other countries. Pearl Harbor seems to coexist with neighboring Shinto shrines just fine, and Urakami Cathedral is at ground zero in Nagasaki. For those aware of history, peaceful coexistence is the only way forward. Killing people never results in social progress.
Thing that pisses me off about Harris is that he talks out of both sides of his mouth. He’s very skilled at advocating extremely right wing ideas while using a lot of rhetorical trickery to make himself sound much more moderate to people who don’t try to think about the practical reality of what he’s promoting. Which, sadly, is most people.
There were also victims and family members of victims who were very much in favor of it. Three thousand people died in those attacks, including some 2600 or so in the WTC towers, but some 50,000 people worked in the two towers and quite a lot of them made it out. With that many people, there are going to be a range of opinions on whether the sun will rise tomorrow or not. I think your motive does you credit, but I also think it’s misguided.
And if there’s a woman who lost her son and granddaughter in the attack and feels that it’s disrespectful to use her grief to make a political point then…what? What about the opinion of the man who merely lost his job and not his life or his family member in the attack? Do his opinions not count? Or the genderqueer person in the midtown office who had a splendid view of the towers–and therefore got to witness the death of xer colleagues from afar that day? Not a person whose opinions are worth taking into account? Lots of people lost everything from their lives and family members to their sense of safety that day. They have plenty of opinions and I don’t see why any one of them should have veto power over the decision of whether to put a community center in an empty building several blocks and a neighborhood away.
Oh for feck’s sake… There was a “mosque” in the World Trade Center (in about the same sense as the proposed cultural center was also a “mosque”), and several genuine mosques already in the area.
And the mass murder which destroyed the WTC was done by people who self-claimed to be devout Muslims, a claim disputed by Islamic scholars, mullahs, and others. For instance, President Obama pointed out “those who brought down the twin towers had also disgraced Islam” (said, as it so happens, at the time of the so-called “ground zero mosque” manufactroversy).
Incidentally, back when there were all the protests of the “911 mosque” a few years ago, I talked to people involved in protests both pro and con. The people who were protesting the community center were basically all out of towners. A couple of people from Staten Island, I think maybe someone from outer Queens and apart from that–New Jersey and further. Some were obviously bussed in from the south and midwest. The people counterprotesting were locals. Make of that what you will.
Saad #9
And, as I’ve asked before when you bring this up, this differs in what way, precisely, from the practices of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, etc.? In places where those religions are dominant, you find exactly the same fucking problems except to the extent that a secular state intervenes to correct them. There is absolutely nothing unique about Islam in this regard.
Yes, yes it is. And checking that male privilege is a fight that is still very much ongoing in the non-Muslim world as well; you may have noticed there’s a whole lot of discussion of it around here.
Or the FLDS, or fundamentalist Baptists, or Hasidic Jews, or…
And you’ll find advocates for the very same views except in the name of Jesus throughout the U.S., to my certain knowledge. In many states, they’re being implemented too.
Once again, this differs from the other Abrahamic religions in what precise way? Please be specific.
There is no meaningful threat to any non-Islamic country from Islamic terrorism*. There never has been, and there likely never will be. Furthermore, the problems that you describe with Islam, which certainly exist, do not, in any way, make Islam a threat to people who are not born into a Muslim community. I, as a white American from a semi-Christian background, am under exactly zero threat from Islam or Muslims. I have never been under threat by Islam, and I never will be. I am, however, threatened by Christians and Christianity on a constant basis, as there is an endless supply of people who want to take away my rights and possibly my life in the name of Jesus. Not Allah.
#37
Well tough shit for them, I guess? I thought it was pretty fucking insensitive for those homophobes at Mars Hill Church to set up 5 blocks from me, but that’s life in a place with freedom of religion, innit?
drewvogel #46
Why not? What, specifically, makes you so confident that the obvious answer to why Sam Harris makes all kinds of bigoted statements about Muslims (i.e., that Sam Harris is bigoted against Muslims) is not correct? Please be specific.
namelesscynic#51
And spoken approvingly of Fascists, and supports torture and preemptive war… Where are the reasons we should think he’s not a right-wing asshole again?
Why? There’s all kinds of charities (or ‘charities’ anyway) started by total assholes for totally asshole reasons. Look at Mother Teresa.
James Hogg
NO IT FUCKING WELL IS FUCKING NOT FOR FUCK’S SAKE!!!!!!! As I noted above, Islam is not a fucking threat to anyone outside the Muslim world. If you have an actual fucking argument for where this supposed fucking ‘threat’ comes from, fucking articulate it. You won’t, though, because you haven’t got one, because no one has, because it’s NOT FUCKING TRUE.
* To clarify, I am not classifying the ongoing fighting in Palestine as terrorism per se; while I personally consider acts of war to be functionally indistinguishable from terrorism, international law disagrees.
I’ll concede since enough of you are telling me the debate was drummed up more by the right-wing media than by the victims’ families themselves. I didn’t read into the issue enough back then so it’s quite possible I’m fully informed. I do remember reading quotes from that grandmother I referenced earlier and also a father whose son was killed that they both wouldn’t want it built there and for that reason, my suggestion on the issue would be to build it elsewhere. If I had a vote on the topic, I wouldn’t use it to block the construction.
Dalillama, #62
You’re not saying anything I disagree with in relation to my post #9.
I’m describing problems the Muslim world is having right now (present tense). Nowhere did I say there’s something inherent to them that they can’t get rid of. They need an enormous amounts of action to even begin to fix those problems though. That action will have to come from Muslim men. They have the numbers; they have the voice. It’s the same as with sexism or racism in the U.S. The dominant group has to wake up or change.
My entire point of saying all that is in opposition to Sam Harris’ obsession with terrorism and profiling. That’s not the cause of the problems in those societies.
Shit, my second sentence in #63 should of course read “I’m not fully informed”.
Being open to recreational drug use just makes him a Libertarian conservative. If he’s really a progressive, where does he talk in support about progressive policies like improving education, protecting women’s rights, or closing tax loopholes for the rich?
“I have to ask, are only American Muslims piloting the drones blowing up civilians in the Middle East? If Islam is a cult of death, perhaps we should compare casualties: who has killed more, American Christians or Iranian Muslims?”
You can debate whether suicide bombers and drone strikes are morally equivalent, but I don’t think you can connect the rationale for drone strikes to the Christian beliefs of their pilots the way you can with suicide bombers. It doesn’t seem that different from saying that atheist regimes have killed more people than Christian ones, when it hasn’t been positively identified how their atheism directly led to their respective massacres. Sure, Bush occasionally quoted scripture, but then you could argue that he was pandering to his base using religion the same way that terrorists pander to their demographic using religious language, as some have argued.
I like Greenwald’s piece and I am a fan of Chomsky, but I can’t quite get my head around this:
First, despite the inherent contradiction in Chomsky’s own words (the anticipated and predictable consequences of denouncing someone else’s atrocities might actually be positive and measurable, while failure to condemn can often be considered a tacit endorsement and also unethical, vis. “the standard you walk past…”), I think some of Greenwald’s best and most significant writing has been doing exactly that – denouncing the atrocities and lesser evils of others (notably the US). If you can anticipate that the outcome of condemnation is a positive change – especially if other voices can be brought in to lend weight to the censure – then it is absolutely an ethical thing to do. Denouncing atrocities from two centuries ago is the definition of “missing the boat” and hardly a fair comparison.
Second, the ethical value of an action is not at all predicated on their being a predictable consequence. Any regular visitor to this website could probably name at least a dozen people who regularly take to public fora to point out and excoriate sexism, racism, homophobia and a host of other malignant concepts, with the entirely predictable consequence that they will be harassed, threatened, bullied, mocked, and falsely accused of all manner of nonsense. But they persist in what is an entirely ethical pursuit, because of the hope and understanding that it might all over time make a difference. Evidence suggests that it can indeed make a difference, despite the bullcrap we see every day, but that is not a certainty – though building a critical mass behind them will make it more so.
Or am I missing something?
Just to add to iris’s comment here, the primary stated purpose of the Park51 project was to serve as vehicle for inter-faith dialogue.
Plus, I hear the availability of 13-story buildings made available due to costly structural damage incurred during terrorist attacks in NYC is rather limited. Saying “well, they should have been more sensitive and gone somewhere else” is a breathtaking attempt at hand-waving away the realities of New York real estate.
Shit, they barely managed to get in there before the Coat Factory was turned into condominiums.
@ Christopher Olsen:
Perhaps not directly comparable, but I’m guessing you haven’t heard of Liberty University’s Drones For Christ program.
Dalillama @62
You said what it is, and you are right that it has nothing to do with doctrines, tenets, practices or traditions of Islam per se over and above any others. It is precisely that secular states aren’t intervening to correct them. That is, I would say that what is different about Islam at this particular point in history is just that it is still allowed to operate on the basis of an honor/shame-oriented morality enabled by social and political institutions that do not answer to the modern secular imperatives that mitigate such self-serving patriarchal and otherwise illiberal ideologies. (“different” not “unique” because of course Christian excesses of exactly the same kind occur where state power is lacking even in nominally secular societies and where state power colludes with the ideologues for whatever reason.) And you’re quite right that this is primarily a problem for those who live in those societies, not for those at negligible risk for becoming collateral damage. But it is a geo-political problem also, one that Western states seem hell-bent on exacerbating at every turn.
James Hogg, #56 (on the Chomsky quote):
Saying “I can (and should) actually do something about this, while I can’t do anything about this” is not isolationism. There are lots of things that help cause poverty and extremism in “third world” countries, just like there are in “developing” and “developed” countries. One way to look at this is to notice that you (in the US) get to vote in the US, and our economic and foreign policy which results from that has a huge impact on things like poverty and extremism worldwide. Yet that means we can do something about those — we’re not isolating ourselves or pretending as if we’re isolated — by fixing problems with our own system, instead of trying to intervene by means of starting wars, staging coups or otherwise meddling undemocratically with the structure of their governments, using our mililtary to suppress weaker countries in conflict with our supposed “allies,” sending something you might like to call “charity” or “aid”, and so on.
Those are things we’re already doing, at one level or another, and they are things we can address without doing anything wrong. We shouldn’t be starting wars all over the place — that is one sort thing we could do to intervene, but that’s hardly the only option. But the general point is, once we’re on the same page that not just any old intervention is fine to avoid the charge of “isolationism” or “self-centeredness” or whatever you’re going to cook up, then it’s still a matter of figuring out which interventions are better and worse.
Others have jumped on saad already about park51, but i got this to add:
The idea tou espoused is also problematic because it assumes a nigh monolithic muslim entity. Not only did #notallmuslims cause 9/11, but there are so many sects of it that the equivalent would be to ban a greek orthodox church in boston because of the catholic child rape cases.
You don’t see a connection between Christian doctrine and smiting “the wicked (and anyone in the vicinity)” invisibly, with impunity, from on high?
PSA
Doing this
<blockquote>paste copied text here</blockquote>
Results in this
It makes comments with quotes easier to read.
Meh. Religious leaders are always disputing the religiosity of abhorrent people.
Ugh… “Ground Zero Mosque” again? Looks like I need to remind people yet again that the people building that community center were the victims of the 9-11 attacks. VICTIMS! It is seriously thoughtless if not outright bigoted to erase their status as members of the community that was attacked.
@1 microraptor
Coyne has gone all IDF apologist over the past year or so. He’s also a bigot abusing his academic status to spread his anti-Muslim hatred.
Religion is a part of culture. I am not a cultural relativist. I believe that certain cultures make people more prone to violence than others. To say otherwise is absurd. To say that there are zero things in common between Islam in one country and Islam in another country is absurd. Ergo, the conclusion is that Islam necessarily has a non-zero effect on the rate of violence of its believers, on average. Again, the alternative is cultural relativism.
Perhaps you want to haggle over how much that amount is, and argue that Islam on average only very weakly contributes to violence. That’s a legitimate discussion to have (at least legitimate compared to a cultural relativist position). I think that modern Islam is one of the leading causes of violence and intolerance in this world, far more than modern Christianity and Judaism, although I’m no fan of Christianity nor Judaism.
I think Sam Harris is very right on these points.
However, as PZ and Glenn Greenwald have written, Sam Harris has said a lot of other stuff which I think is very wrong, such as the defensibility of killing someone just for their beliefs if they are sufficiently effective advocates of evil, which no one ever seems to harp on, not even Greenwald seemingly, and yet Sam has clearly defended this many times. There’s also religious profiling at airports which is highly dubious at best. Sam has said some pedantically right things on torture, but he’s also had the nuance that these situations are commonplace rather than confined to a one in a million years thought experiment, which is morally outrageous.
Still, it’s not fair to say that Sam Harris says “the solution is to declare war on people who believe.” That’s simply a strawman. Attack Harris for what he actually says, not for the shit he doesn’t say.
If we define neo-con as someone who supports military intervention to impose western-style democracy, then Sam Harris is clearly not a neo-con. He is very clear that foreign military intervention to impose democracy has a horrible track record, and generally should not be done. For example, IIRC, Sam Harris was against the US-Iraq war of 2003.
…
Agreed. That’s another example of his ridiculous stances. IIRC, Sam Harris has said that Israel has no blame, and they’re trying to make the situation into an equitable solution. – My ass. Israel is doing a naked power grab and trying to destroy the Palestinians. They’re just taking their time with it via legal harassment, slow land grabs, attrition. Their end goal is the same.
…
Cultural relativism at its finest. Beliefs don’t matter. All religions are just as harmful and/or any religion is so plastic that it can encompass any set of beliefs. There’s no point in getting rid of religion because people will still behave just as badly. /snark
…
I dare you to videotape yourself and your face while you burn a clearly identified Quran, post it to youtube, give your address, and advertise it.
I’ll do the counter of that right now if you want. I’ll take a holy communion wafer, stick some rusty nails in it, videotape the whole thing with my face, post it on youtube, with my address, and advertise it. Or I’ll do any other kind of desecration or blasphemy against Christianity or Judaism that you want.
Go ahead.
PS: You really should not do that. I don’t want to be morally complicit in your death.
There is no terrorism only because we have already surrendered on important issues, such as freedom of speech. You have only to look at the Danish cartoon debacle to see how the western world has already surrendered on this issue. As Hitchens says, in our image driven media, it is amazing that effectively not a single newspaper in the entire western world published the cartoons which are at the heart of the controversy. That’s because they feared for their lives, and rightly so.
@78, Enlightnement Liberal
They basically are. Take a look at all the contradictory varieties of any of them.
What you meant to say (I think) is that in probabilistic terms some are more likely to create badness than others.
*The only way to regard religions as less than totally plastic is to be more rigorous in identifying their species. Evolution!
I’m rather in favor of this, because I have no idea what a ‘christian’ is if it isn’t the awfulness in the bible. Sure, plenty on non-awful people self designate as ‘christian’ but when they do that, the word suddenly has no power to describe them. At all. This annoys me. Silly liberal christians.
More than a hundred did, actually. And what is this, fatwa envy by proxy? Do you really think if you were to, say, burn a US flag, that you wouldn’t be putting yourself at risk of bodily injury in a great many public spaces in the US? And that the roots of that kind of nationalist fervor aren’t a teensy bit similar to the motivations of the participants in angry mobs over such incidents of “blasphemy”?
enlightenment Liberal
Utter fear-mongering bullshit. Your freedom of speech is clearly in full effect, and you are also 100% safe from being the victim of a drone strike or bomb attack, unlike many of these supposed scary terrorists. Your Quran burning challenge is a particularly noxious strawman. Indiscriminate bombing and decades long wars tend to radicalize those being bombed. regardless of religious ideology.
Right, which is why I should expect that if I blaspheme a Buddhist in Tibet, some of them will try to kill me.
@brianpansky
You understand the implications of this, yes? IMHO, this directly leads to the position that moral and cultural advancement of society is impossible, and that we are just as well off today as we were a thousand years ago. Do you adopt such a ridiculous position?
If you think that society across the world is slowly getting better on average over long time windows, what do you think is causing that change? Do you think that humans are evolving to be innately kinder human beings? Again, I think not. The only plausible mechanism is culture. It is the ideas that people believe. We are better off today because we have a culture of freedom of speech, of liberty, of self determination, etc. Beliefs matter.
Or do you consider the word “Islam” to be so plastic as to include expressly atheistic humanism? Currently, it is not. Whereas, the word “Judaism” is compatible with expressly atheistic humanism. Words do not have intrinsic meaning. Words have usages. Currently, the culture has changed so that the word “Judaism” no longer means the same thing it did long ago. The same for Christianity and Islam. I welcome the day when it’s common that atheistic humanists identify as (cultural) Muslims just like many cultural Jews do today. But currently very few do.
I am not complaining about a word. I am complaining about a cultural movement centered around a purported prophet and the writings attributed to him and his associates. If the culture changes to minimize these elements while keeping the same word, then I would be happy.
@Tethys
I stand corrected on the pedantic point. Do you want to take me up on my dare?
Ta-Nehisi Coates once wrote that racism was, at its root, a lie
He’s absolutely right: racism is not a belief, it’s an intent to harm: the ethic/cultural-deterministic rhetoric produced and spread by racists being nothing more than a defense mechanism invented by sociopaths who understood that most human beings tend to react much less fiercely toward outlook they disagree with than toward candid expression of egoism.
It’s more tactically sound to proclaim “Islam is dangerous: look at these Quran-quoting, beheading, mass raping thugs! Surely the other Quran-reading people must be like them deep-down” than to frankly say “I want these immigrant metics to become disenfranchised serfs leaving as far away from me as possible so they’ll never be able to challenge my and my heirs’ position on top of the food chain”
***
Yeah, about that: the last undiscriminated bombing in Gaza followed by calls for ethnic cleansing by respected members of the israeli ruling-class kinda proved that it was a big, fat lie.
@EL
No, not sure how you got this from what I said.
@brianpansky
Could you please engage the rest of my post? I’m trying to ascertain your position. I’d rather not copy-paste it again, but here I go.
Do you believe there has been moral progress? What do you believe has caused that moral progress? Do you believe that the moral progress has been caused by the change of ideas held by people? May I use the word “culture” to describe the ideas held by people in particular societies? Is it fair to say that our world is becoming a better place over hundreds and thousands of years because of advancement of culture?
Consider this scenario. Consider a world where the three Abrahamic religions were just as popular as they are today, but their holy books were rewritten in such a way as to unambiguously:
– promote the ideals of John Stuart Mill from his book On Liberty,
– promote equality of the sexes and genders,
– condemned slavery,
– and said they people should work together to make this world into a better place.
Do you think that people in the modern era in this alternative world would be better, worse, or about the same as our world?
If you’re with me thus far, all that remains is to dig into the differences between modern Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.
…and the Koch bros contribute massive amounts to museums and the arts.
no, that’s not a sign of being progressive.
Honestly, EnlightenmentLiberal? I think the troglodytes would find something else besides the holy books to justify their retrograde views.
LOL
please tell me that was a joke?
Neoliberalism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
“liberal” in that word has nothing to do with being progressive. The two terms “neoconservatism” and “neoliberalism” are complementary to one another, not in opposition.
yes, I suppose it’s confusing if you don’t spend the 30 seconds or so it takes to look them up, and assume they mean the same things as “conservative” and “liberal” in modern political slang.
Well, I borked that blockquote. Retrying:
Honestly, EnlightenmentLiberal? I think the troglodytes would find something else besides the holy books to justify their retrograde views.
Because all Buddhists are pacifists? Because all Tibetans are pacifists? Seriously?
or maybe, just maybe, the root cause of the differences are something else entirely, and Islam takes root for the same resasons xianity takes root in poor countries in Africa.
but then, you aren’t one for examining things from other angles when you already have your prefered angle in mind.
you’d make a TERRIBLE scientist, just in case you were considering that as a possible career choice.
Might I recommend Belligerent Crank? There a number of such positions open, in many growing sectors of the economy.
Great. I’m thrilled that you concede that the original point you raised; your fears of death via Quran burning, and your conflating baseless fears with freedom of speech, was a compleat waste of pixels. The same proscriptions against depicting yahweh can be found in the babble, So what? The west has plenty of blood on it’s hands, so the fear mongering about scary Islam merely reveals EL as an ignorant bigot with a horrible lack of empathy.
yeah, but there’s a lot of competition for the few positions that actually pay anything. ;)
That has been obvious for a while. Handwaving can’t change the underlying paranoia.
A Zen Buddhist temple was the ONLY religious locale that I ever experienced being physically hit (by a stick), out of hundreds I have visited in my lifetime.
“But that’s meaningless” you say?
yes, it is.
You might consider being a Muslim in parts of Myanmar, and see how you fare against the Buddhists.
The junta in Myanmar, responsible for so many human rights abuses? Entirely Buddhist.
The army in Thailand, attacking protestors? Buddhist.
The perpetrators of the Cambodian genocide? Buddhist, or at the very least products of a Buddhist culture.
Lay off the “peaceful Buddhist” shit. Some Buddhists are pacifists. But it’s hardly a universal trait.
Icthyic
I thought ze was a familiar rabid anti Islam troll. The pretzel flavored logic of book burning = loss of civil rights whinging is particularly repugnant. The USA is currently engaged in actually killing innocent Islamic children and families in several countries on an ongoing basis. Only an asshole would ignore that fact to posit ravening heathen Islam infidels who will murder you for burning their holy book. (not to mention, only a fascist asshole would think that insulting people by burning their sacred books is a path toward a more progressive, equal society )
That quotation from Noam Chomsky says so much about Harris, Dawkins et al. They don’t give a damn about trying to change their own socieites, except for the one thing that pisses them off, religion. They love the status quo and want women and minorities to shut the fuck up. There’s not an iota of desire to make life better for anyone not a white het male, and their idea of “better” is not one I’d like to see. Harris is, after all, the one who said he’d get rid of religion if it was a choice between that or getting rid of rape. That was about as revealing and hideous a statement as he could make, I think. Yeah, we keep a crime that is entirely evil, but we get rid of a whole range of beliefs that, whether he likes it or not, are a very mixed bag of good and evil, because the latter annoys him and he doesn’t give a fuck about the former.
2kittehs
Wow, what an horrifically evil thing to say. Is there any chance you have a link to that? It’s hard to imagine anyone could deny Harris is a sexist when presented with that quote.
Ichthyic wrote:
It’s actually a bit of a anomaly of U.S. politics, where liberal is seen as the complete opposite of conservative. In many countries, the Liberal party is the right leaning party, where “liberal” refers to the economic policy more than anything else.
I’m surprised that Greenwald displays the same ignorance as the people he is criticizing. The focus on Islam is too simplistic of an analysis to understand “honor killings” of women, frequently cited by Harris, Maher, et al, as evidence of Islam’s evil. Other religions in the region of South Asia — Hindus, Yazidis, and Sikhs also have traditions of these killings. Yet Muslims in Southeast Asia (Indonesia and Malaysia) do not have this tradition. “Honor killings” predate Islam and are more associated with the region and culture.
It’s so much easier to blame the Other…
How do these people manage to stay oblivious to the amount of misery that we White Westerners have brought to the world?
toska, here you go:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sam_Harris
It’s about a quarter of the way down the page, opposite a painting of Tarquinius raping Lucretia.
He’s more than a sexist, imo: he’s an utter misogynist.
yup.
While I may hesitate to use the word Islamophobia (due to the fact it makes the religion rather than the people the victims of the phobia, much like the defamation of religion nonsense does), it’s pretty damn clear that Harris has a lot of anti-Muslim bigotry going on. That has been clear since his “End of Faith” book, although a lot of people chose not to see it. Honestly, I’m still shocked that Harris has any defenders left trying to claim that he’s being misunderstood. A tip to his defenders: when someone claims to be misunderstood, and then functionally says the same thing again, he’s not being misunderstood; he’s gaslighting.
@87, EnlightenmentLiberal
I have a bit more time on my hands now, so let’s see.
I’m not sure diving into all this stuff is actually the best way to reveal my position, but I know it would be annoying for me to make a bunch of my own posts without engaging with what you actually said. I know this is annoying because it’s what you did to my two original posts (79 and 80). And my posts weren’t even big messy confusing things either, they were short and to the point.
Ya, beliefs matter. Culture is an important facor, but I’m not sure what that means to say “it’s the only plausible mechanism”. Is economics culture? Is not-being-bombed culture? Well, being bombed and not-being-bombed have an affect on culture, I suppose…but only culture?
Though I must say, I’m not sure what all that had to do with whether my original posts 79 and 80 were correct.
I suspect you’re right, in these two sentences. That such a day could occur is what I meant in my first reply to you: such a thing is possible, I suspect.
Alright.
So now that that’s done…maybe I’ll do another post? We’ll see.
I mean, my posts weren’t really opposing EL’s main points anyways. Not sure why I got so much attention for that…
Now, EL, your post 87
Sure!
Hmm I dunno.
This is kinda vague, and I don’t know much about all this.
That alternative world would be better. Not that I know much about Stuart Mill.
I’m left hanging with this last part. All that remains…In order to what, exactly?
When your indifference to collateral casualties is such that you will shell an apartment building full of noncombatants to eliminate a sniper, this becomes a distinction without a difference.
“…but I don’t think the solution is to declare war on people who believe.”
Does Harris really advocate this? I don’t read him much as he doesn’t seem to blog often, but I’m not sure this represents his views.
“…unfortunately, Harris seems to think only Islam is a particularly dangerous force.”
A particularly dangerous “force,” or a particularly dangerous “religious force?” What other religions promulgate violent death to non-adherents? Actually, most of them. But Islam is the only one I’m aware of in the current era, that actually follows through with action. Christianity, tempered by Western secularism and common sense, doesn’t do that any more.
Bear in mind also that Islam, in its extremist guise, has publicly and repeatedly stated that its goal is to spread across the world, using force where necessary, until Islam is the only religion on the planet. Christians, Jews, Hindus, atheists – convert to Islam or die. These people fully believe in their god, they fully believe that that’s what he wants them to do, and they’re fully committed to doing it. I find it incomprehensible that anybody would choose not to take that threat seriously. It’s not hearsay, it’s straight from the horse’s mouth, I’ve heard it myself. The surveys of even moderate Muslims show, incontrovertibly, that they believe in death for apostasy, stoning for adultery, and so on.
I’m not for one second advocating violence against Muslims. Like Coyne, I don’t know what the answer is, but wholesale bigotry and violence against Muslims isn’t it. But extremist Islam IS a major threat in the world, and to pretend it’s no worse than other religions is demonstrably wrong.
So what am I missing here? Genuine question – don’t flame me – I’ll accept that I may be missing some information… but what?
And frankly, one wonder if it is religion which pisses them, or simply the fact that religious plebeians are supposed to be their equals before the law: there’s a lot of class contempt dripping from Harris and Dawkins’ rhetoric.
@brianpansky
Thank you.
@brianpansky
So, you agree that beliefs matter. You agree that people act on their beliefs. You agree that religion plays at least some part in the motivation of actions for some people. Great. That puts you in a different position than Ichthyic, who writes:
I’m entirely with Sam Harris w.r.t. Ichthyic. What Ichthyic said is so stupid and naive. It could only have been said by someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to really believe; by someone who refuses to actually consider the possibility that Islamic terrorist nutjobs actually believe what they say they believe. Rather, people like Ichthyic will do all they can to blame anything else as long as it’s not religion. Ichthyic rejects out of hand the proposition put forth by Steven Weinberg: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
(Obviously, there are other reasons for good people to do evil, such as other kinds of non-religious dogma.)
…
To be fair to brianpansky. You are right that I missed economics. That undoubtably plays a huge role. Thank you there. For particular isolated incidences, I also fullheartedly agree that bombing people tends to make more terrorists. However, that alone is not the sole explanation. It’s part of the explanation.
…
@brianpansky
Pity. You should read. It’s freely and legally available online.
…
@brianpansky
Well, you just agreed that beliefs matter, and that had the beliefs (and written teachings) of the early Abrahamic religions been different, then the world could have been a better place. It then follows that if there is a similar relevant difference between the current collection of beliefs known as Islam vs Christianity or Judaism, then we should expect: 1- We could make the world into a better place by making better the beliefs of Islam. And 2- It is fair to say that the collections of beliefs known as Islam plays some causal role in the violence done in today’s world, moreso than some other religions.
Ack. The quote I gave was incomplete and didn’t include the point I wanted to address. The full quote is this:
That’s just a ridiculously naive and stupid thing to say. The denial of the very real fact that some people do violence because of their particular beliefs, and would not do so had they had different beliefs, such as atheistic humanism.
I think that there is plenty of misconceptions:
1)It isn’t true that criticizing Islam, and pointing out how backwards views of majority muslim are leads to war or drone strikes. Dawkins, and Harris were against Iraq war, and Greenwald was for it. Obama will claim that Islam is a religion of peace but he is pro drone strikes. It is also ridiculous to compare drone strikes to ISIS. I have no idea if they do more harm then good, and that might be the case, but Pakistan has a bit problems with Taliban terrorists, fighting with them can’t be compared to religious radicals that kill for being of wrong faith, or for not following Sharia Law.
2)Muslims don’t only affect middle east, in western Europe most attacks on homosexuals are done by ~5% Muslims minority, but even trying to discuss this problem is made impossible by “tolerant PC liberals”. In Sweden over half of brutal rape is committed by small Muslim minority, but again discussing it is intolerant far right bigotry so it isn’t allowed.
We shouldn’t confuse social problems caused by muslims with war, and drone strikes. Those are largely separate problems.
If fundamentalist Islam would only be problem in places that are tarnished by war then you could think that Islam has little to do with that, but it is a problem among 2nd, and 3rd generation of Muslims in the west.
laurentweppe @113
Yes, this! Plus, I suspect the fact that those mere priests, bishops, mullahs, rabbis, you name it, have institutional power, influence, and respect (deserved or not) from more people than Dawkins or Harris could ever hope to. I have a sneaking suspicion a lot of the time that they have a “Why aren’t you admiring Me and doing what I tell you to do when I am so clearly superior?” chip on their shoulders.
There are several comments here suggesting that Harris did not support the Iraq war. Harris has said that’ I have never written or spoken in support of the war in Iraq’ and ‘I have never known what to think about this war’.
But this is another example of his dishonesty. He has argued that we should have gone in to Iraq with everybody and has called for a multilateral coalition to defend civilization from the Muslim threat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGSYm8wXG9w#t=81m30s
Not exactly, he had said that he doesn’t know if we should attack, but if we do we should do so in coalition that agrees on our intentions first. It doesn’t seem that he did agree with Bush attacking, and deciding what will happen post war in Iraq.
Folk like Glenn Greenwald, whom I like, and this Ed Brayton, need to sing a different song. They should start by dealing with what Sam Harris actually says by quoting him and honestly attempting to capture what his arguments actually are before debunking him.
Instead, we have vague commentary like this that goes on and on about Islamaphobia but never represents what Harris says. By failing to explain Harris’s position, they aren’t really even disagreeing with him, only slandering.
Folks like you should stop pretending that you’ve not been bamboozled by psychopathic conmen, as it has become way too obvious to make any denial about it even remotely plausible.
We do deal with what Sam Harris says. We deal with all of it. When he says torture should be illegal, but there are situations where it may be necessary, we don’t close our eyes to the second part. When he says Semitic-looking people should be singled out for screening, but it’s OK because he looks like them, we don’t lose track of the fact that he’s still advocating for racial stereotyping.
That’s his schtick, to advocate for odious right-wing crap while tossing in an occasional disclaimer so that when he gets called on it, he can meander on repetitively about the qualifier. Some of us are able to see right through that.
@Masek
No, he says we should have invaded Iraq with multilateral backing to defeat the Muslim threat and then calls for this international effort to be applied elsewhere.
“Intelligent people could disagree about whether it was the right thing to do to go into Iraq. But one thing is pretty clear, going in we should have gone in with everybody. We need a truly international effort. We need to convince civilised democracies everywhere that civilisation itself has genuine enemies. These totalitarian, theocratic, tribal eruptions on many parts of the globe on a hundred fronts. Many if not most of them are Muslims.”
@Musek
He’s also described the ‘humanitarian purpose’ of the invasion of Iraq and defended Bush’s noble intent in Iraq by drawing up the thought experiment of imagining a ‘perfect weapon’.
@dereksmear No he didn’t, he had said that both options are valid (you understand that as support but that is your own bias).
The second point was that if we should invade it should be in the purpose of fighting against ” These totalitarian, theocratic, tribal eruptions on many parts of the globe on a hundred fronts. Many if not most of them are Muslims.” This isn’t what Bush was fighting for. He had installed government with religious fundamentalist in power. This is clear to him, going to war or not isn’t.
Not sure if x, but if x then y. Perfectly logical position to have. Being sure about y doesn’t support x.
In the case of Harris, that is certain. His argument for profiling relies on the assumption that one can “look Muslim”, and if he wasn’t referring to the vague Arab stereotype, his supporters certainly did.
What’s the fucking difference? You browbeat and kill people with the assumption that Whitey Knows Best all the same.
Come the fuck on. The article not only quotes him directly but links to his articles. We can read his own fucking words, but please do explain to us what kind of context makes these okay:
–
Sam Harris opposing the Non-Mosque at Non-Ground Zero, also fuck American Muslims (direct quote)
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Sam Harris pushing an hypothetical that relies on erroneous assumptions to advocate for torture (direct quote)
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Sam Harris twisting himself in knots to maintain plausible deniability while his argument boils down to “Not all Muslims are our enemy, just those who follow the Koran” (direct quote)
@112, wanstronian:
What you’re missing is a perspective outside of the Western media narrative that only displays Christians when they’re the agreeable “moderate” variety and Muslims when they’re of the extremist sort. Look into the behavior of Christians in Africa, India, and even Europe over the last few decades. Look into the behavior of Bhuddists in Southeast Asia. You will find examples of terrorism committed in the name of both faiths, and even examples of the forced conversion you are so quick to assign only to Muslims.
Singling out Islam as some unique existential threat is problematic for two reasons (beyond the larger implications of how it often has its roots in some racist and otherwise bigoted roots.) One: Islam simply is not unique in the bad behavior of its followers, nor is it the worst offender. Two: It is not, and never has been, an existential threat to any Western secular nation*, regardless of the desires of some to see it spread worldwide. To think otherwise is to be ignorant of simple military and geographical facts.
*well, at least not since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, but they were hardly unique at the time when it came to global empires forcing their beliefs on locals.
I’ve been to Manhattan. Half a mile is a long distance. It’s not like you could drive it in 30 seconds!
“There’s New York, and there is America”…
It’s very common among Islamic antisemites.
Um. I’ve posted dozens of new pairs of gaps in the fossil record in the [Lounge] over the last few years, often begging you to blog about them. Telling you doesn’t guarantee you’ll have enough time to even notice. :-)
The cite attribute doesn’t do anything here; it’s meant to allow website designers to make attributions part of the layout, but on FtB it’s merely not actively stripped away by the software. And putting an attribute in a closing tag isn’t necessary anywhere.
Spaces between tags and text aren’t required either. This is enough:
<blockquote>Blockquoted text</blockquote>
Greenwald can do something against the evils he writes about: he can write about them in a venue US voters will read.
On average, yes. But then you find out that the Hittites had abolished the death penalty well over three thousand years ago, and you just want to weep.
BTW, EnlightenmentLiberal, you’ve never replied to this. I can’t blame you, I took a very long time to respond – but feel free to take it to the [Lounge] or the [Thunderdome] now (the thread has long been closed).
…where by “modern political slang” you mean the specifically US usage of those words. Elsewhere, “liberal” tends to mean “liberal both on economic and on social issues”, which is what “libertarian” (a word largely unknown elsewhere) means in the US; US conservatives are liberal on economic issues, conservatives elsewhere tend to be less so and instead prefer having everything under a certain amount of control.
Or in southern Thailand. *shudder*
It isn’t hard to find thousands of American fundamentalist Christians who will happily agree with every word of that (once you’ve done the obvious substitutions).
Perhaps google for Dominionism and spend an hour or two reading.
And that’s before we get to the witch-burners in, say, Uganda who have successfully outlawed being gay in a few countries – all heavily supported by certain American fundamentalist churches.
Many of the most cowardish and most dangerous people in the world are those who are scared shitless that somebody might think they’re cowards.
If you’re really lucky, they’ll only spill their own guts to desperately prove they’re not. Usually, though, they spill someone else’s.
Oh, the Ottoman empire wasn’t at all big on “convert or die”. Non-Muslims were systematically disadvantaged on the whole, but that amounted to little more than paying extra taxes and having one’s loyalty put under somewhat greater scrutiny. It only turned sour in WWI, when the imported idea of nationalism started to mix with it.
The difference is in goals. I think that war would only be sensible if significant population in Iraq would have humanistic, and pro science view, otherwise you just give power from one nut to another.
I would as well consider myself in conflict with somebody who follows bible literally, what is your point? There is simply much smaller % of people who follow Christianity, fundamenalist on other hand is mainstream view among muslims, and that includes muslims that live in the west. In Europe fundamentalist muslims cause more problems then fundamentalist christians despite being small minority.
I don’t agree with Harris that Islam is intrinsically worse then christianity, but at this point in history christianity is dying in Europe, and most christians aren’t fundamentalist.
No he isn’t. He is saying that liberals are blind to the danger of fundamentalist Islam, and only Christian far right can see it. It doesn’t advocate joining far right. He himself says that it is troubling that you can’t see a problem, and that Christian far right is almost as bad as fundamentalist Islam, how can you see it as an endorsement of Christian loons is beyond me.
I hear a great many comments about Harris that orbit around his actual claims and comments rather than “dismantle” his actual claims and comments. He is usually much more careful and nuanced than some of the characterizations about him here. Reference for example, this in-depth discussion of his views in which he tackles head on the “islamophobia” charge: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-young-turks-interview
While I agree that Harris’s statements about waterboarding and ‘racial’ profiling are disturbing, I don’t see much leverage in the line of argument that he isn’t critical enough of the west (it’s certainly not ‘devastating’). One, he often is. Two, are we to hold everyone equally accountable for all the issues they have NOT addressed in the proportion we would like them to? That’s slippery quicksand. Finally, his main point that religious belief is a powerful motivator for bad behavior and that some religions are much more likely (currently) to do so seem to be matters that can be factually established, not mere opinions.
2kittehs @106
Thanks for the link! Honestly, I’m kind of shocked. Not shocked that Harris would say that, but shocked that we had so many defenders here after his more recent comments arguing that Harris isn’t a misogynist. I haven’t read Harris’ books or listened to him very much (by the time I found out about him, I quickly learned that he was bigoted and not the sort of person I care to listen to), but this quote is so well know that it’s on his wikipedia entry! I was kind of expecting the religion is worse than rape comment was something obscure that most people wouldn’t know about. But his fucking wikipedia entry? Goddamn.
I’m getting enraged all over again at all the people who came here saying we simply Harris’ comments on women and abortion. How much more plainly misogynist can someone be?
The paranoia of both sources is well known. They are scared of phantasms, and their own shadows. Nobody has ever given a realistic scenario where the the US, Australia, and Europe come under Islam and Sharia law. Until that happens, I will consider the Ebil Mooslim the same as I do the boogie man. Something to scare the weak-minded with.
Masek,
OK, this is bullshit.
Out breeding, in UK there is 5% muslim population, and 10% of newborns have muslim parents, it will be between 50-100 years before muslims will be the majority. Even second, and third generation of muslims out breeds non muslims, and there is many muslim immigrants, and asylum seekers, while officially it is hard to become an immigrant Pakistani use arranged marriage to get citizenships. Germany wanted to slow that down by requiring immigrants to speak German, but EUHR had decided that it is against human rights.
Citation proving this asinine claim desperately needed.
I am not in agreement with any of the bullshit you have strewn about this thread, so refrain from using the word we. I do not believe that there are any social issues that are inherently Muslim, nor do I fear that my Muslim neighbors are dangerous people. Drone strikes are not a social problem, they are a death problem that is being deployed by those who wish to protect their power and oil supplies against a population that has very good reasons to despise the western white christians who have destroyed their homes and families.
Oh do fuck off you disgusting racist fool. I bet you think they eat babies too, when they aren’t breeding like rabbits. Why would a white person fear being outnumbered by brown people? Are you afraid that they will take over and treat you like you are less than human because of some trivial difference? Isn’t that exactly what you deserve? Turnabout is fair play IMO.
@dereksmear
Talk about a one-sided intellectually dishonest understanding.
That’s an implied conditional, asshat. It’s “If we go in, we should go in together”. Of course that’s true. Sam continues on right after and says if the US acts alone, the US would look like a deranged theocracy in the making, which is why if we go in, we should go in together. PS: Oh look. He’s attacking Christianity in the US too.
The dishonesty lies you with dereksmear. Or lack of intellectual honesty which inhibits listening and comprehension skills.
…
@vaiyt
What’s wrong with that? The same is also true of Christians who follow the bible. Not all Christians are my enemy. All Christians who follow the bible are my enemy. For example, the bible is very clear that slavery is allowed and condoned, and anyone who allows and condones slavery is my enemy.
…
@David Marjanović
Thank you. Will do.
Also, until the late 17th, early 18th century, it was the Ottoman empire which was the advanced, enlightened nation, at least compared to its other european neighbors.
***
Indeed, but let’s not play dumb here: the “sharia threat” is an phantasm originally invented by european upper-class men frightened at the prospect of plebeian immigrants trying to retaliate against them.
***
Which is why when France legalized gay marriage, the people who protested against it where christian bourgeois while those who used it as an excuse to indulge in violence and assaut gays where skinheads, while french Muslims looked at the conundrum while sardonically noting that for once, the right-wing fuckers where no spitting at them.
***
The plebs are Outbreeding Us! The plebs are Outbreeding Us! don’t you hears? The plebs are Outbreeding Us!. Of course, these claim ignore basic things like intermarriage: Christians with muslim ancestors on one side of the family have become quite common place (as well as irreligious people descended from Muslims): I should now: some of them are my fucking relatives: the outbreeding claims is built upon the notion that Muslims form a closed off, incestuous, unchanging, monolithic community, which frankly, creepily looks like an attempt to project one’s own preferences for inbreeding over one’s neighbours.
Citation proving this asinine claim desperately needed.
Check massive increase in rape over the years in Sweden.
I am not in agreement with any of the bullshit you have strewn about this thread, so refrain from using the word we. I do not believe that there are any social issues that are inherently Muslim, nor do I fear that my Muslim neighbors are dangerous people.
I didn’t say they were any, or that your neighbours are dangerous.
Drone strikes are not a social problem, they are a death problem that is being deployed by those who wish to protect their power and oil supplies against a population that has very good reasons to despise the western white christians who have destroyed their homes and families.
So you disagree with treating those problems separately but you want to treat those problems separately?
Oh do fuck off you disgusting racist fool. I bet you think they eat babies too, when they aren’t breeding like rabbits. Why would a white person fear being outnumbered by brown people?
Not brown people but religious fundamentalist.
Are you afraid that they will take over and treat you like you are less than human because of some trivial difference? Isn’t that exactly what you deserve? Turnabout is fair play IMO.
I didn’t treat anybody as less then human, what are you talking about? I don’t want to live under sharia law or be harassed or attacked by religious loons, that makes a bigot now?
wtf?
so religion is genetic now huh? Well, that’s certainly news.
The plebs are Outbreeding Us! The plebs are Outbreeding Us! don’t you hears? The plebs are Outbreeding Us!. Of course, these claim ignore basic things like intermarriage: Christians with muslim ancestors on one side of the family have become quite common place (as well as irreligious people descended from Muslims): I should now: some of them are my fucking relatives: the outbreeding claims is built upon the notion that Muslims form a closed off, incestuous, unchanging, monolithic community, which frankly, creepily looks like an attempt to project one’s own preferences for inbreeding over one’s neighbours.
No it isn’t, but there are clear statistical differences in they social views, especially between families with the most kids are the most conservative. Ex muslims are relatively small % now when it will be more accepted to be ex muslims the numbers can move pretty fast. It is still dangerous when you poll views of muslims, and when you consider that it doesn’t take very long time for muslims to become majority, and big % of Muslims live in ghettos.
OK, let’s take your position as stated.
it’s NOT what Harris is saying though, so it’s rather irrelevant.
Masek,
Nope, what makes you a bigot is pretending there is a serious threat of Sharia law in Sweden ( I presume that’s where you are from) just because there are Muslim immigrants there, daring to live, work and have children in “your” country.
… among other things that make you a bigot.
project much?
jesus christ, why is anybody even bothering with “enlightenment liberal” any more?
they don’t actually have the slightest clue what they are talking about.
none.
bullshit. you can be born to a family of hippies and still easily become a murderer. circumstances dictate far more than ideology ever does.
Masek,
Using blockquotes won’t make your comments any less stupid, but they will at least be marginally more readable:
<blockquote> insert quote here </blockquote>
gives you:
Citation needed, and it shouldn’t be to a paranoid site. Try google scholar. I think you have been reading the bigots in England, who see phantasms behind every rose and fog bank.
@Ichthyic
So, what you’re actually saying is that the beliefs of the child are not wholly determined by the beliefs of the parents? I completely agree.
Your example doesn’t really address the central dispute though: That the beliefs of an individual affect how they behave, and someone who holds the belief of Muslim martyrdom or Christian dominionism is more likely to violently act on their beliefs than someone who doesn’t hold those beliefs or equivalently evil beliefs.
Masek
There are clear statistical differences in the social views between generations, too. Cultures change over generations. Do you actually not understand that, or are you just looking for excuses to be bigoted?
But yeah, go ahead. The descendants of immigrants to the UK from Pakistan will have the same exact cultural and social views as current Pakistanis. Unlike white people, who have dynamic and changing cultures. /s
@Ichthyic
Let me borrow a line from Harris. Do you believe that someone has ever blown themselves up with the expectation they will arrive in paradise with 72 virgins?
I understand that this may be a mistranslation or misunderstanding of the text of the Koran. That’s not my question. I’m not making any implications w.r.t. “True Muslims”. That would miss the entire point of my argument and position.
I hope your answer is yes. If yes, please imagine a similar situation where they did not have the belief that blowing themselves up would be rewarded in a magical afterlife. Do you think the likelihood or odds of them blowing themselves up would be any different?
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/jan/10/rise-british-muslim-birthrate-the-times-census
Young Muslim students:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/dec/22/1
“How supportive, if at all, would you be of the official introduction of Shari’ah Law into British law for Muslims in Britain?”
Very supportive – 21%
Fairly supportive – 19%”
Citation needed, and it shouldn’t be to a paranoid site. Try google scholar. I think you have been reading the bigots in England, who see phantasms behind every rose and fog bank.
Citation needed. In fact, start providing a link to every claim you make.
Your bigotry is loud and clear.
We are intolerant of those who espouse far right bigotry. Poor lad, so upset that he can write scary fearmongering racist comments on the internet and the bombs won’t fall anywhere near his home. Clearly he is oppressed.
Out breeding, in UK there is 5% muslim population, and 10% of newborns have muslim parents, it will be between
I had already did that:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/dec/22/1
Masek
Which does not indicate what their descendants growing up in the UK will believe. Those stats also give no indication of how many of those young Muslims are 1st generation UK citizens or not. Why do you accept as default the position that UK Muslim culture will not change over generations?
Um, Masek, have you actually read the article you cite in #154?
… because the article is pointing out that study is, to put it mildly, dodgy.
Yes ridiculous apologetics, but the numbers speak for themselves.
Most of them are already next generation that had grown up in UK. Vast majority of Muslim students were born in UK.
This is what polls show.
Per the link in Masek’s 154:
70% say they are more liberal than their parents. And from this, you get that they are just as conservative as their parents, and their children after them will be too? You are an idiot, and you aren’t even reading the links you are citing as evidence for your claims.
Pro tip
Don’t argue your point using articles that make the exact opposite point you are trying to make.
The poll does not say this. How do you know?
The poll literally says the exact opposite of that. “70% say they are more liberal than their parents.”
Nah, he claims that interpretation of the poll was dodgy not the pull itself.
“The headline conveniently drops the clause “for Muslims”, and in 2008 the clause was buried from the article completely. 2010’s reporting is fractionally better, but still implies a black & white debate when in reality the question accomodates a range of views – what does “fairly supportive” mean, for example? ”
He questions something that is stand in every polling question, Very supportive, and fairly supported is normally interpreted as “yes”, and there are 2 equivalent for “no”.
Masek,
Actually, their speaking ability gets magically unlocked combined with answers to questions those numbers correspond to. When there is dodgy bullshit on the other side, numbers start speaking whatever the author of the study wants them to speak..
IN this case, it’s fluent ZOMG MUslims!!!!
… or in this case when the interpretation changes the original language of the poll, and ignores parts of the results, numbers speal fluent ZOMG Muslims!!! thanks to the author of the article who wrote about the study.
Lies, damned lies….
Polls? You do realize that a poll is not a magical peek into the future? As an uncouth American, I sneer at your racist ideas about people from other cultures, religions, and countries. Peaceful coexistence is easy when you treat all of the people as equals.
I would like to see the original poll now, now throwing those numbers seems dodgy. I had read exactly the same article on theguardian before, and there were no addition of that information then.
Thanks, but I rather be wrong on that one anyway. I will also not hide information that goes against what I think.
When people ask you for evidence for your point, and you give us an article that says you are wrong and argues the opposite point you are making, you look like a dumbass.
And I like how now the poll seems dodgy when it doesn’t support your bigotry. The questions were in the same exact poll. Read the whole article this time, and look at the results of other questions, not just the headline.
I think that this is a pretty naive rule, take women, and homosexuals as an example, according to your logic gay feminazi had to be really horrible to cause thousands of years of oppression.
You will find plenty of examples of groups of people who were persecuted despite doing nothing to deserve that.
That was a poll done on young people so in the short term it is.
I had read exactly the same article on guardian before, but back then they didn’t add additional information from the poll. Now the poll is not accessible, and the additional info from the poll is added, that is what makes is dodgy.
They had added that paragraph to the article, what is so hard about that to understand?
But you were just freaking out over the scary population growth of Muslims. That has to do with long term results, not short term. Your bigoted fear is incredibly incoherent.
And the poll says young Muslims are more liberal than their parents, and most accept women as equals and do not have a problem with gay people.
The numbers say 60% of the students defintely do not want Sharia law to apply for themselves, 68% do not think killing in the name of religion is acceptable in any way (with at least 96% not believing in proselytism by war),
Mind you, thanks to jackasses like Masek and toska they’d have every reason to resent secular society, but they still think they have a better shot even as you treat them like second class citizens.
Sorry, toska, I think I might have gotten some posts mixed up. I guess the volume of this conversation is too much for me.
Um…. I’m arguing against Masek. Maybe you misread me. If not, what did I say that was problematic?
And polling young Muslims isn’t a predictor on what they views will be like? Seems pretty rational to me, especially if you consider that Muslims don’t leave they religion like Christians do.
Interesting how nobody was reporting that when the poll was online, including theguardian.
Vaiyt #174,
No problem.
It is not a predictor of what their children and grandchildren’s views will be, especially when the poll clearly states that the majority have different views than their own parents.
Oh my fucking god, Masek. You are a garbled, fumbling, goal post swinging clown.
I mean, for fuck’s sake, you keep insisting that some article proves your point and call the information in it that doesn’t currently supporting your point “dodgy” because you don’t remember it being there. The only dodging I see around here is your’s exclusively, Masek. And it ain’t very good dodging. And, somehow, magically, you seem to spending half of your efforts dodging your own dodges. It’s a fucking sight to behold. It’s like the world’s crappiest circus, right before our eyes.
The “naive rule” is a founding principle of the USA. complete with religious overtones. It is a self-evident truth that all
menpeople are created equal. We certainly don’t live up to that ideal in a consistent or perfect manner, but it is still important to strive IMO as a humanist.WTF!? First you splatter racist Muslim fearmongering all over the thread, and now you are going to start in with gay feminazi bullshit? Fuck you very much you bigoted arsehole. Do you also fear that zombie vampires with huge ovipositors are going to lay eggs in your chest? Meteors from the government are targeting you for death? Are all your hats lined with aluminium foil?
I really doubt that since nobody was reporting on that, even the liberal PC media had somehow omit that information when the report was online.
This is ridiculous, can you tell me how I had treated them as second class citizens?
It was a sarcasm, your claim was that treating others as equal guarantees peaceful coexistence so the only logical conclusions is that gays, and women had to be horrible to end up being oppressed.
Maybe it will be easier for you to understand if you take different group as an example, pagans were killed by Christians because they didn’t want to treat others as equals as well?
It wasn’t there, do you know how computers, and internet work?
Equality is forced by law.
Masek, still not seeing why you are paranoid, unless it is your own bigotry, and you see everything through that lens. Think about that before your next illogical and self-refuting post;.
I bet you actually believe that, don’t you? Do people look equal to you in the US? Have you been following the American news for the past 24 hours?
A superficial facade is “equality by law”. Reality depends on a lot on the privileged class making sure they stay that way. Not too many folks do blatant racism these days, but it shows up in mini- and micro aggressions to help keep the status quo.
I work in a business where trying to maintain the status quo gets your company heavily fined, as you are supposed to constantly improving. What are you improving, so that it isn’t “equality by law”, but rather equality of result in practice?
Masek
The word guarantees was not used. “Is easy” is not a guarantee.
In addition, this doesn’t make a lick of sense as a counter because it ignores that the gay people and women are NOT treated as equal. That’s the entire fucking point.
Did you ever consider the possibility that you are too stupid to have any meaningful conversation here?
Prove. It. Asshole.
What the fuck are you talking about? Do you REALLY think that there is anything meaningfully called “equality” currently working in the United States? You have no fucking idea what you are talking about.
As long as they treat others as equals it should be easy for them to be treated as equals, at least according to Tethys.
Here is a poll with the same finding:
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/living%20apart%20together%20-%20jan%2007.pdf
According to it over 37% of Muslism aged 16-24 want sharia law, and from those 71% think that homosexuals should be killed under sharia law. This alone gives over 25% that want homosexuality killed. I wouldn’t be surprised if theguardian would twist such info to claim that only 25% have problem with homosexuality.
Masek,
We have no evidence that the poll results are made up except your insistence that they were different before. Why should we believe you? You’ve already shown poor reading comprehension of the article. Why should we believe that you read it super carefully the first time and there was only one single poll question in it? Your wacky conspiracy theory that the guardian decided to show faked poll questions and numbers is ridiculous. I guess the guardian is infiltrated by Muslims who want to take over the UK with all of their scary babies?
now go to Uganda and run the same poll on the majority xians there.
Oh, by the way, person declaring how much they know about computers and the internets who links to an article that unfairly changed on them and that is in no ways incompetent at all:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120401090828/http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk/files/1231525079_1.pdf
Oh look, the poll can be retrieved via magic and sorcery! Oh my, oh word! I am sure the article in question is still “dodgy” though, insofar as it doesn’t support whatever asinine point Masek believes they are making at the moment.
*gasp*, a bigot not understanding what evidence means, and the implications therein????
say, this reminds me. anyone if Scott Lively’s trial for crimes against humanity has started yet? thought it was supposed to be sometime around now.
they’re just mad they can’t legally discriminate against blacks in public businesses any more.
well, unless they have a religious exemption…
It clearly doesn’t support the 25% figure you can check for yourself the manipulation that they had made. Only 53% had said that they have the same respect for homosexuals as they do for others, and 0% had said that they are gay or lesbian.
anteprepro
It’s all part of the conspiracy! They made that after they already reported the one question poll that said Muslims are ebil and scary and so are their babies!!!111!!!!1
Better then Uganda isn’t exactly a great achievement.
My point about equality being forced by law, was that you can just treat others equally to be treated equally. This is what I had called a naive view, and I think that equality would be worse without law in USA, it doesn’t mean that I think that the situation is perfect there.
You apparently don’t know what “coexistence” means. Hint: The prefix “co” involves more than one party.
It says nothing about killing them, you dishonest fuckwit. Also, Policy Exchange is a right-wing think tank. So at least now you are at least doing what you actually wanted to do from the start: Find unreliable sources that suit your biases.
Same was true of the Center for Social Cohesion as well.
Yet here is the irony: you mock the Guardian for saying, in your imagination, that only 25% of Muslim students are inimical to homosexuality. Surprise fucking surprise, that is EXACTLY what your precious first poll said: 25% of Muslim students said they had little respect for homosexuality, while 53% said they had the same respect for gays and lesbians as everyone else, and 9% said they had a lot of respect.
You are just ten pounds of fail in a two pound bag.
Page 6 of anteprepro’s link shows that only 6% of polled Muslims believe apostates should be punished according to Shari’a Law.
wanstronian
A) Note that ‘Islamic Extremists’ is not the same thing as ‘all Muslims’.
B) Note that extremist Christians say exactly the same fucking thing. (It’s not hearsay, it’s straight from the horse’s mouth, I’ve heard it myself)
A) Citation badly needed
B) I bet I can find as many polls showing Christians in general have these beliefs as you can polls that show it about Muslims.
No it’s not. See, you know what ‘extremist Islam’ (insofar as there is such a thing; in fact there are many flavors of Muslim extremism, and they’re typically not any fonder of each other than they are of non-Muslims. Christians are the same way) hasn’t got? I’ll give you a hint, it rhymes with ‘a significant military or an industrial base capable of gearing up to produce same’. You know what a bunch of Christian Domionionists have got? Significant control of about the biggest, baddest, best-equipped military force on the planet. And they’re using it to murder shit-tons of people. In fact, during any given year of the Iraq war, the U.S. military killed ~4 times more people than ISIS has in the ~1 year they’ve been active (I will also note here that the vast, vast majority of people killed by ISIS are, in fact, Muslims.) Now, if you want to claim that right-wing extremism, or authoritarianism, is a major global threat, then that’s a truthful claim, but it’s far from being limited to Islam.
Please knock this bullshit off; the thread is fucking full of counterarguments.
Masek, Enlightenment Liberal
Just go away already, you pathetic assheads.
I have a list started back at #156 that documents your viles beliefs that Mooslims are evil raping, sharia law wielding, rampaging murderous, violent, immoral, illiterate science hating baby machines who kill homoseckuals and are a threat to your white racist pasty ass. Did I miss any of the key points of your hysterical whinging hatred?
It doesn’t support the 25% figure? ARE YOU FUCKING ILLITERATE!!!?
It’s right on the fucking graph you are referencing, you fucking moron. Page 60, first graph, fourth of five categories on vertical axis, pretty blue bar representing Muslim students. 25% fucking exactly, right there. It’s not complicated reading. Doesn’t involve any logic or math. It is right fucking there.
We might as well be talking to a fucking brick. It is less frustrating at least.
toska: Think it was page 47 (?)
anteprepro
It is page 47! I mistyped while thinking about the 6% figure. My bad. Sorry, all.
Protip: if you are a defender of Harris coming here to defend him against allegations of him being a racist, you might consider going a bit soft on the extreme right-wing talking points spouted by all the Euro-fascists. It might not reflect well on the hero you are trying to defend.
25+53+9=87% so that is very misleading to say that only 25% have problems with homosexuality. 13% didn’t want to answer, and 0% had said that they are homosexual that seems to point to a pretty big problem. Only 25% have problems with homosexuality, yet nobody can even admit that they are, makes sense.
And 36% think that nothing should happen to them, you see being misleading about polls isn’t hard.
“45% of Muslim students polled said that apostates should be encouraged to reconsider their decision by Muslim elders and people that care about them. ”
This in practice goes from mildly annoying to being forced into “treatment.”, at least socially solicited into it.
are you sure you shouldn’t instead be posting in the “smug and stupid” thread, Masek?
your posts would certainly fit the title, if not the actually subject matter of that thread. And frankly, they’d make about as much sense there.
Interesting! So, on page 69, it shows that 33% did not think men and women were treated equally or mostly equally (the figures were 25% “not really” and 8% “not at all”) in their local communities. But on page 71, it shows that 89% believe men and women should be treated equally.
It sounds like quite a few young Muslims would like to see social changes in their community.
Trollus rumpelstilkensis can be recognized by the enormous quantities of straw that it employs as they perform feats of obfuscation. May also engage in cherry picking, and other logical failures. Prone to irrational fears due to it’s very tiny brain. Diagnostic features are the stench and the straw that never turns to gold.
…point missing is a particular forte of yours I see.
someone must have sat on your head as a child.
Citation mother fucking needed, that even with the laws in place, people are treated equally. They aren’t. Just read Dawkin’s tweets about women. He doesn’t treat them equally to his exalted privilege.
I was never defending Christianity, and it is dying out in UK anyway. You would have a point if there would be plenty of Christians fundamentalist, and young people with sympathize with them, but that simply isn’t the case.
Masek,
And you think Christians would not have been as supportive of that answer?
But you were so worried about them imposing Shari’a Law. Only 6% would use Shari’a to punish apostates. This directly refutes your Shari’a fears. Which figures support your position that they are super duper scary and all of their babies are going to try to impose Shari’a Law on everybody? I haven’t seen one yet.
Masek
Maybe you can dig up some statistics and misrepresent the hell out of them prove your point?
So Masek,
What do you propose people do about the scary Muslims and their babies and their magically unchanging social views?
You are an utter idiot if you think that the christian fundamentalists aren’t a hazard far more immediate to the entire planet than any danger from any Muslim. Atheism was the official party line in the USSR, but somehow it was not a paradise of peaceful co-existence and equality for all citizens. As has been stated, authoritarian fascism is always very bad for the poorest and weakest in a society.
People with the most religious conservative views often claim that they treat women equally. I wouldn’t put too much stock in that.
Ah, but that’s not the actual claim that some of them made. The fact that many students answered that men and women were not treated equally in their local communities and then answered the later question saying women and men should be treated equally suggests they think a change should be made.
But seriously, like I said in my last comment, what do you think should be done about Muslims? What do you want to happen to them?
Masek, you are an idiot. That is all. Debating you would be like trying to logically argue with a man who only shouts out “Hamster”. You are a vile mismash of lack of understanding with a deliberate and fervent desire to misrepresent. You are fucking pathetic.
@Masek
So, if some men are doctors, and some doctors are tall, does it follow that some men are tall?
You seem to assume that the 71% subsumes the 37% for no explicable reason.
In this specific case, you are ignoring the very real possibility that a lot of the 71% who think that sharia law demands the death of homosexuals also think that this is abhorrent and sharia law is abhorrent.
You’re also doing an equivocation on “sharia law”. Very likely, people who answer the questions have a (slightly) different formulation of what “sharia law” means in those two different contexts.
…
@Ichthyic
Sorry. I need a brief legal refresher. I missed the memo that says speech and political advocacy can ever be a crime against humanity. Seriously, what you said is just as bad as when Sam Harris writes that it was morally justifiable to kill bin Laden just because of his mere political advocacy (as opposed to money laundering, conspiracy to commit murder, aiding and abetting murder, etc.). The hell is wrong with both of you? Do I need to remind you of the highest principle of the Enlightenment and a free society? “I might not agree with what you have to say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.” If any speech needs to be legally protected, it is the political advocacy speech that Lively engaged-in, in Uganda. Of course, please criticize him all to hell, demonize him, and make his views anathema.
…
@toska
Depends on the country. Worldwide, it’s in the neighborhood of 40% average from what I can tell.
…
@Dalillama, Schmott Guy
I don’t even recall you trying to engage me in this thread, so no apologies when I also tell you to fuck off.
EL,
The survey is for UK students. The results of that particular survey are what we have been discussing.
@toska
Mmm, yes. Sorry. I’ve been mostly ignoring Masek. (I was skimming and I saw that atrociously bad use of numbers which no one else commented on, and I had to comment.)
EL,
Probably a good decision.
EL is aware that the statistic they claim is false applies to the scary UK muslim people ze is so terrified of, thus the need for pulling the 40% statistic out of thin air. “No, according to my ass it is 40 worldwide who want me to die a horrible death…for realz!! mooslims are scary arglbarg boogiemen who breed like rabbitsl!!
@Tethys
Pew polls. One sec.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/10/09/ben-affleck-you-are-not-helping/
I do some basic math to support my “neighborhood of 40%” number.
Hrmm. Direct link:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/10/09/ben-affleck-you-are-not-helping/comment-page-1/#comment-866522
Fuck the enlightenment if it gets you piss all when powerful men use their wealth and influence to advocate for the slaughter of a Geneva-protected minority, which is exactly as Lively wanted from his advocacy.
@throwaway
So, who do you think is going to be in charge deciding what political advocacy is and is not a crime against humanity? Those same wealthy and influential people. Gonna trust them to decide what advocacy is and is not illegal? Come on. Take a moment and think.
I’m all happy and glad that in your imaginary utopia where only nice people are in charge that you want to punish Lively. I live in the real world where humans are not angels, and where we need a limited-powers government.
I would expect almost all to answer “nothing”.
You question that Christianity is dying out? Just look at census data, and heck even most that say that they are Christian don’t even believe in God.
In western Europe they aren’t.
I didn’t claim that Islam is the only bad ideology in the world, but it is the most threatening to Europe in the near future.
Law equality, you can’t have hate speech law that is only imposed on non religious people.
No more citizenship for Pakistanis that get married unless she at least speak English, and can get a job, then temporary job visa, after 3 working years citizenship, there is a big problem with arranged, and sometimes forced marriages to females that then stay at home, and think that they live under sharia law in UK. Also limiting welfare for kids, 2 max.
Banning the Burka, it is a security hazard, and it doesn’t allow for normal socialization.
Closing religious schools. I would generally like to see education that focuses more on understanding scientific method, and theories, now many people just see science as set of facts that were said by an scientific authority to be memorized so it can seem similar to religion. Teaching history of the world, now students learn very biased sample of overall history. I am sure that education system can be improved but I will not get into it.
EL
Even if the basic math was correct, I am 100% positive that a poll did not ask every single Muslim their opinion on whether EL is a atheist infidel who is an abomination before Allah who deserves death. Also, even if 40 % actually do think you are racist scum, that means that a large majority do not think you are racist scum.
Because letting the innocent kids starve and suffer is so much better? Amiright? Asshat.
I can at least get fullheartedly behind this. I am strongly in favor of enacting Dan Dennett’s policy proposal. (His only one AFAIK.) Specifically, mandatory comparative religion classes for all the children in the world, on all of the world’s modern religions.
Source: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_s_response_to_rick_warren
I cannot think of a better, more honest, and more morally defensible way to destroy religion (or in Dennett’s words temper them to be nonharmful). It’s absolutely brilliant.
What does any of that have to do with social views? All it does is target a specific nationality to have special rules. And women who don’t work can’t have citizenship. That’s ridiculous. Your proposed citizenship law is sexist and racist.
@Tethys
I’m confused. You asked for citations for my number. I provided citations for my number. Last I checked, Pew Polls are trustworthy and reliable.
Do you dispute my 6th grade math? Do you dispute the reliability and accuracy of the Pew Polls in question?
The facts of the world that we both live in are that about 40% of people worldwide who identify as Muslim also report on Pew Polls that apostates should be put to death.
Is it racist to state incontrovertible facts about the world we both live in?
Are you accusing me of being a racist for other reasons? If so, what are those reasons?
Well, DUH. M couldn’t do real equality if they had to. I always pity someone like M so pitiful the only way they can feel good about themselves it sneer at those lower on the privilege scale. Must be afraid of competing in a fair run world.
Masek,
Have you even taken a second to think about how your laws would affect women fleeing from Shari’a Law? Your laws would target Malala Yousafzai, who is a hell of a lot more socially conscious than you.
EL
Oh, there is nothing imaginary about Minnesota nice. Be kind to everyone is culturally an absolutely expected behavior, and it is strictly socially enforced. Nobody would say publicly say anything undiplomatic to racists like you, you would just be the subject of mass arched eyebrows and side-eyes, followed by social marginalization and shunning until you could play nice with others.
@Tethys
Right. You’re so polite that you call me a racist without attacking the ideas too. I mean, that might allow me to grow and learn. Rather, you are keeping me a prisoner to my own opinions by not challenging them. So polite.
Asshat.
Prof. Can’tsleepmuslimswilleatme, sez, way upthread:
LOL, reminds me of my own community of small-town South American lapsed Catholics. I guess we should be included in the list of threats against the West.
Mind you, I’d be scared shitless if university decided I had to disclose my sexuality — like employees have to do — and my supervisor is a Dawkins-reading atheist!
In any case, there’s some grim irony that this “Mooslems are taking over the UK” makes me feel more unsafe than the supposed direct threat of death by homophobic Islamists. Because, somehow, when the UK police gets all paranoid about Muslim terrorists, it’s the unarmed Brazilian who gets shot in the head.
EnlightenmentLiberal:
Those in the poll who were asked the question about apostasy were only the subset of Muslims who answered that it should be the law of the land. So, without checking your math and assuming ~40% is correct, that is not 40% of all Muslims. Also, as the commentary about the law of the land question says:
So take those who support it, then reduce it to the minority who think it should in any sense at all be applied to non-Muslims, and only then take a roughly 40% minority of that group.
The math that shows that 60% of Muslims do not support sharia?
I pointed out the racism inherent in ignoring the majority of Muslims while you fear monger about creeping sharia. I’m so glad you noticed that I am politely insulting you to your face.
The 6% number was for Muslims in Britain. The number also holds (if you do what consciousness razor said in 239 and note that the numbers on the chart are a percentage of a different percentage) for Muslims in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. There is a substantially larger number who support death penalty for apostates in the Middle East, North Africa, and in South/Southeast Asia. But then that only leads to the question: What the fuck is the issue that we are concerning ourselves with here? The original concern was, I was led to believe, that even Muslims in privileged first world societies are objectively more barbaric than civilized non-Muslims. That was at least what Masek was trying to get at, ineptly. But now that point is supposedly irrelevant, because the majority of Muslims live in third world countries and are overly eager to use the death penalty? Is that the logic we are using here?
@consciousness razor
Well, shit. Down to around 20%. I have some math to do.
Now you’re being unreasonable. What does it mean to restrict the death penalty for apostasy to Muslims only when apostasy is the act of no longer being a Muslim? What you say makes no sense, and is obviously not a reasonable reading of the survey results.
…
@Tethys
Is all fearmongering bad? Is all fear bad? I guess it depends on your definition of fear.
Imagine the apocryphal story of Paul Revere who shouted “The British Are Coming!” That’s fearmongering by my understanding of the word. He is spreading fear, but not needlessly. It’s a justifiable spreading of fear. Fear is not always bad. Fear is a “rational” response to danger. We generally call someone without fear a fool, and they are quick to die.
I think it’s a very serious concern that there is an extremely active cultural movement in the world which amounts to … 1.5 billion Muslims times 20% … about 300 million people who answer on Pew Polls that they want to execute people who try to leave their group. Similar numbers would report that they are in favor of the death of the Danish cartooners, and various other blasphemers. This is very, very unhealthy.
This is a direct result of the religion. Without the religion, we would not have this problem. Had they had a different religion which lacked the text which commands deaths to apostates and blasphemers, then we would not have this problem. I know that’s a radical and ridiculous concept for many, but they’re just being silly (and wrong).
I fail to see how this is racism. Xenophobia perhaps. Or perhaps you think that I am a racist and I’m using this as codewords despite IMHO no reasonable indication for you to believe that. Regardless, your way seems to be that it is taboo to talk about the very real differences of belief of different cultures and the effect those differences of belief have on violent behavior. I think that’s unacceptable, so call me a racist if you want. I don’t care.
What else is racism other than xenophobia, the fear of those not like yourself?
@Nerd
Forgive me. I sometimes forget that some people argue that race is entirely a social construct, and religion is a race. I don’t accept those usages of those terms.
I do recognize that what constitutes a “race” is mostly a social construct, and perhaps even entirely a social construct in some cases. Even then, I think there is an important and meaningful difference between the terms “race group” and “religious group”, and I think it’s a disservice to confuse them.
It is not voluntary to be a member of a race group. A race group has no required beliefs and prohibited beliefs.
It is voluntary to be a member of a religious group. (Well, the duress that Muslims are under from the threat of death from about 300 million people worldwide, approx.) A religious group has required beliefs and prohibited beliefs.
We should be free to appropriately criticize and spread fear about any group of people identified by their beliefs. I regularly try to spread fear and loathing of Republicans. I do the same for Catholics because they support an international child rape ring. I do the same for Muslims because as far as I can tell, the near universality of modern clergy and scholars support the death penalty for apostasy. “That doesn’t represent my views” is just as lame coming from a Catholic as it is from most Muslims.
I have yet had the pleasure of someone pointing out to me a sizeable Muslim sect with religious scholars and clergy who have a consensus that apostates should not be put to death. I’ve been asking and looking for a while, and I have not found it yet.
Enlightenment Liberal, are you really gonna start the handwringing word games about whether Islamophobia is technically racism or not?
If it is a direct result of their religion, why do opinions vary so much regionally? It is almost like culture is a thing! And it is bigger than “Muslim” v. “Not Muslim”!
Also:
http://biblehub.com/exodus/22-20.htm
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy%2013:6-10
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+17%3A2-7%2CDeuteronomy+29%3A18&version=NASB
Whoops. Details, details, amirite?
Nor was I. Bigot = Racist in common usage. Only a pedant engaged in sophistry to avoid having their poor fee-fees upset with being a bigot.
Anybody who expresses othering in any form is a bigot. The type may be up for argument depending on the manifestion, but it can all be under the term racist = bigot.
@anteprepro
Yes. Racism is bad for many reasons. One is that it’s not voluntary to be a member of a particular race group. It is voluntary to be a member of a particular religious group.
I’ve said exactly that numerous times, here and in the linked-to thread. I’m in complete agreement. There is no “True Muslim”. There is a wide variety of Muslim cultures, and within those cultures there is a wide variety of opinions on even such things as “death to apostates”.
Now, among the modern clergy and scholars of Islam, as far as I can tell, much less diversity.
Testing. Hopefully not a duplicate post. Sorry. First and only try for a while.
@Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
What’s the proper response to organizations like N.A.M.B.L.A.? Shouldn’t we marginalize the organization and its members, stigmatize them, and so forth?
What’s the proper response to Catholics? Merely identifying as a Catholic gives support to and condones the behavior of the international child rape organization known as the Roman Catholic Church. Shouldn’t we marginalize the organization and its members, stigmatize them, and so forth?
EL:
I would’ve said “that’s good” and found something better to do with my life.
What the fuck? Aren’t you supposed to be doing some math right now?
Stop this. You’re still implicitly considering only the death-penalty-for-apostasy Muslims, but there are many other kinds out there, corresponding to many other ways of interpreting (and possibly rejecting) sharia. People could say it expresses some kind of judgment that their deity will deliver, instead of them doing it physically. Or they could reject that part of it while keeping the rest. And on and on to many other possibilities that I frankly don’t care about as an atheist. In any case, there’s nothing stopping us (or anyone else) from coming up with all sorts of elaborate ways of interpreting and justifying some notion of “sharia” that doesn’t have anything to do with your preconceived notions which are meant to support the conclusion you’re hunting for that Muslims are super-scary and the worst thing ever.
Ask yourself something like this: do you honestly believe there’s a significant contingent of people who think both that (1) apostates should be executed because of some sacred rule, and that (2) as soon as one stops being a Muslim the rule doesn’t apply? Indeed, what would that mean in practice, and why would you interpret the poll that way? If you accept the logic I already gave, which is why you’re going to fuck off to do some math to prop up the same conclusion you’ve been driving, then how the fuck do you interpret the polls? What do you think these diverse groups of people are saying?
No, it is a direct result of authoritarianism since the majority of the worlds Muslims do not condone violence. The USSR was big on death to apostates too even though they banned religion.
No asshole, my immigrant forebears were forced from their homesteads by the Russian Revolution and Stalins pograms against the Ukraine. We see othering entire populations of people based on trivial differences like religion as clear signs of bigotry and irrational hate because that’s precisely what led to Stalin murdering an entire population via starvation. History is a much better gauge for predicting human behavior than any poll.
@consciousness razor
“Shit” as in “well, I made a huge and fundamental mistake”.
I fail to see what this has to do with the survey result. You are engaged in Muslim apologetics which has nothing to do with the survey question (assuming it is being honestly reported).
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/#_ftn6
at least half of those who favor making Islamic law the official law also support executing apostates.
I think the only reasonable reading of this Pew Poll question is in the context of Earthly penalties, not penalties after death.
I am very hopeful that apologetics like that catch on, and that the number of Muslims who want death to apostates will decrease.
That’s the question I asked you. I thought that was your position.
Rather, it seems eminently more likely that the “yes” responders to those particular questions felt that “once a Muslim, always a Muslim”, and it’s entirely logically compatible to say that sharia should apply only to Muslims, and if someone purports to leave the Muslim faith then they should be put to death.
Blithering nitwit @244
Race is entirely a social construct, you halfwitted bigot. Religion is also a social construct, but it is a different social construct from race. The reason people describe Islamophobia/anti-Muslim bigotry as racist is that the actual targets of such bigotry always seem to be people with ancestry from certain parts of the world, and is directed at them regardless of their actual religion. See, for example, hate crimes against Sikhs, dipshits like you and Macek whinging about the ebil North African immigrants and their devil Muslim threatening white Europe but not Eastern European muslims, the American Right wing bloviating about how Dearborn Michigan has been taken over by Sharia law, because the population is ~40% of Arabic extraction, despite the fact that most of the Arab immigrants to Dearborn are and always have been Coptic Christians from Lebanon, etc. etc. etc. In other words, we call you a racist because you’re saying a whole bunch of really racist shit, and defending it endlessly when called on it.
@Tethys
Ok. I believe that people’s behavior are influenced to by their beliefs. (What else would influence their behavior?) I believe that many people across the world take their religion seriously. I believe many people across the world who take their religion seriously also happen to believe that their religion commands certain immoral things. I also believe that many of those particular people who do behave badly as a result of their particular religious beliefs would behave much better if they lacked those particular religious beliefs, and especially if replaced with some better beliefs such as secular humanism.
Strawman. I never said Islam is the only source of violence. I never said religion is the only source of violence.
Trivial differences? Religion is the biggest cause of evil in this world, at least it’s very high up there. It’s specifically the idea of faith, that’s it’s acceptable and good to believe things for no good reason that is the heart of much evil in the world today. I’m sorry that you cannot see this problem.
You fail to dig your head out of your ass, in other words.
No, I am not. I was stating, descriptively, what form the apologetics take — in reality, not in the figments of your imagination that you call “Muslims” which must “think” just as you do.
@Dalillama, Schmott Guy
Can you attack me instead of someone else? Where exactly did I do this? Where did I complain about immigration? Rather, I also attack Macek for being a dipshit on this issue and others.
Even a stopped clock is right twice per day. You’re basically doing an association fallacy, similar to an ad hominem: because you have these associations between X and racists, I must be a racist. Sorry, truth doesn’t work that way. I haven’t said a single racist thing yet, or if I had and it’s pointed out, I’ll apologize profusely. I have no plans to stop (verbally) attacking people for their noxious beliefs, whether they are Catholics, Muslims, or whatever. I also plan on opposing anyone who would try to set up legal systematic discrimination for their mere beliefs, as that is a violation of the highest principle of the Enlightenment.
No, you said that the religion caused the violence. I repeat that authoritarianism is the common denominator between Muslims killed for apostacy and Russian intellectuals killed for apostacy. Perhaps eventually you will notice that the USSR was officially atheist in addition to being a fascist murdering regime? History shows that creating secular laws and governments that protect the civil rights and religious freedoms of all citizens have better results than either governments that try to ban or control religions, or non-secular government.. Your insistence that Muslims or Islam are a special menace even though your proof shows the opposite is proof that you are a bigot. *shrug*
For those who wish to pretend that only Muslims express desires to exterminate non-adherents, I present to you Exhibit A: Here’s a man who is the chairman of a county Republican Party in Minnesota, who has publically declared Muslims to be parasites that should either be forced to convert to Christianity or be killed. “[…] we know millions of these parasites travel to Mecca every year and when…FRAG ‘EM!” I didn’t even have to look back further than this fucking week to find this one.
Be very, very, very careful when you claim that violence and a desire to exterminate are a unique characteristic of Islam, or that Christians with such a desire have no power, because it’s entirely false.
Or how about this one, Exhibit B: Ted Cruz’s father is basically openly calling for an American Christian theocracy. Again, only this week.
If I’m going to be worried about international religious politics, I think I’m going to worry about the country with the world’s largest military budget. I’m not arguing that Muslim hyper-conservatism isn’t a problem. I’m arguing that if you think a powerless minority is a bigger threat than a group that already enjoys power and influence, you’re deluding yourself.
Further unhinged opinions of a rural minnesota bigot from CK’s link
Golly gee, it’s almost like bigots everywhere express the same hateful violent rhetoric about these evil other people, especially if they are already members of an oppressed minority. I predict that the GOP chair for Big Stone county will soon be relieved of his volunteer position.
The bigot from Big Stone county is getting an education in Minnesota nice, he has already been fired from his job at the local hardware store, http://www.startribune.com/local/blogs/283728451.html and there are demands for his resignation as county GOP chair.
You are completely wrong, it is hard to immigrate from Pakistan, unless you get married. Arranged marriages often to cousins is a big problem in Pakistani community (also in pakistan not only in UK), they take women that they can keep at home, and they take them to sharia courts, many of them have no idea that they don’t live under sharia law, and they don’t speak English. I don’t see how else you solve that problem.
I am not paranoid about theorist I rather worry about political Islam, and how big % of muslims population will change society.
I guess you got a good dose of American propaganda abut USSR. The problems had nothing to do with USSR being officially atheist, many communist countries had freedom of religion, it didn’t stop the oppression that was part of the communist system, it likely was in big part caused by failing economy, it was hard to keep people from revolting against communism when they lacked food, and common goods.
Also Stalin had even reversed his stance on religion, and he left Russia with more orthodox churches then had existed before USSR.
Also Europe did go out dark ages partly because of secular dictatorship that didn’t believe in religious freedom, so it is much more complex then your logic of Stalin bad, controlling religion bad. Napoleon who was a bloody dictator had given rights to common people. Also religious freedoms collide with other laws. I have nothing against religious freedom if they don’t mean law exceptions for religion as is the case now, but part of religious fundamentalism is forcing your religion on others so from they point of view secular laws take away they religious freedoms. I don’t see the problem going away without religious fundamentalism going away.
Heck there were even good parts of what USSR had forced, they had vastly improved equality for women.
holy fuck are you good at missing the point.
that’s NOT what they said.
read again.
oh hell, don’t. why is anyone bothering with you? your reading comprehension is so poor you need to hire a translator for your brain.
Greenwald has a more recent post about this, even if he doesn’t name names. But it does go into detail on the lives lost because of our Western, “better” civilization’s insatiable need to bomb Muslims:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/06/many-countries-islamic-world-u-s-bombed-occupied-since-1980/
You don’t understand what I write because you miss the point. Just because you can have atheist fascist dictator, or fairly liberal place where most people claim to be religious it doesn’t mean that religion overall doesn’t have a negative impact. My proof doesn’t show the opposite, it shows that Islam makes people more bigoted. Christians in Europe aren’t affected by what Ugandans think, and Muslims in Europe are affected by what Saudi Arabia, and other muslim countries promote. There are many mosques that are financed by SA in Europe. There is multiple things that are at play here, so being reductions in the sense of giving example of one place where there was atheism, and oppression doesn’t prove that religion isn’t an oppressive ideology as well.
Using your logic Nazism doesn’t have negative influence because USRR was fighting with Nazist, and it was an oppressive regime. So Nazism doesn’t cause violence.
Also saying that oppressive regime is a problem is just tautology, because you will consider oppressive regime any country that have laws that you strongly oppose. It gives you no insight on why the regime is oppressive or why people support it, or had supported it when it formed. Democratically elected government can be as oppressive as a dictator or more, in middle east democracy only leads to forcing more religion on people.
You are confusing social attitude with bombing Islamic countries. Both of those are separate problems, and seeing problems with Islam doesn’t lead to bombing those countries, Obama is bombing those countries, and he is a PC liberal. Drone strikes don’t make people exmuslims afaik.
He claims that demonizing muslims (aka pointing out facts) somehow magically leads to attacking those countries, and he critizes Bill Maher for it, despite the fact that Bill Maher had said many that we shouldn’t bomb muslim countries, and he is anty interventionist. The idea that pointing facts about muslims leads to bombing them doesn’t make any logical sense, but it is true that hiding facts about muslims to “not feed the racist” causes big problems in Europe.
This more leftist idiocy, first of all check how many muslims kill other muslims in terrorist attacks alone. Also no shit armies that can bomb other countries, bomb more then countries that don’t have military that could do it. This is even more ridiculous when people complain that Israel kills more Palestinians then Palestinians kill Jews in they attacks, so Jews should turn off they defence systems so they could get more even death toll? Country that is more advanced military will have less casualties on they side, it doesn’t make them evil. I don’t want Palestinians to be bombed, and live under embargo (not only by Israel muslim majority countries don’t want them either, but liberals somehow don’t complain about it), but I had never seen any rational solution to Israel conflict, calling Israel evil, and saying that it is fine that gay people in Gaza are killed doesn’t offer any solution to this conflict.
I also think that social problems can be worse then war, it all depends on how long those social problems will continue, but that is beside the point since bombing muslim countries don’t turn them into humanist so that is a separate problem.
Two terms come to mind when I see Masek “argue”: Gish Gallop and Not Even Wrong.
Motor mouth also comes to mind–a bannable offense.
anteprepro @268
Agree.
You people will not even admit that “only 25% of muslim students have problems with homosexuality” was a misleading manipulation from theguardian. You people can’t even admit that facts that you don’t like are true.
Which people?
Good first steps would be:
– remove all of the ridiculous land-grab settlements, and
– tear down the massive ridiculous walls which are naked land-grabs, and
– stop the policies with the design and intent of slowly forcing out Palestinian families from their homes, and
– agree in principle with a two-state solution, and
– agree to split Jerusalem or agree that Jerusalem should be some kind of weird separate sovereign city ruled by some sort of compromise government or something.
Alternative to some of the above proposals:
– agree that Israel is not a Jewish state. Pass the necessary reforms in a formal process. Make it into a secular government and state, and run with a single unified government where Palestinians have full citizenship.
Those are all actions which Israel could take unilaterally right now. If Israel did, then I might actually support Israel as clearly being in the right, as opposed to the current situation where I blame both sides with about equal measure.
I clearly wrote fleeing the country because of violent pograms , disingenuous twit. I didn’t imagine that our agricultural settlements were seized and the native populations starved after we were forced to flee. Holodomor
Most of the Auswanderern had left Russian territory by the time Hitler and the Nazis came to power. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact allowed Hitler to evacuate the remaining German settlers ahead of soviet invasion. One branch of my family is still alive in Germany because of Hitler. (also because they were ethnic Germans who moved to Russia in 1757 because of their freaky Christian religious fundamentalist ideas aka Lutheranism and Mennonites) All relatives that remained in the Ukraine were executed by red soviet russia, along with the Jews, the Ottomans, and all those other undesirable people with other religions and valuable property. My own GG Grandfather spent some time in Siberia for refusing to be drafted, before escaping to Canada and the US. I hardly need an ignoramus such as Masek to tell me that the records that catalog the mass murders and the types of property that was confiscated are US propaganda. tl;dr fuck off bigot.