Not that I expected much, but this review of Sam Harris’s latest with Maajid Nawaz confirms what little I did expect.
It quickly becomes clear, however, that Sam Harris is illiterate when it comes to history. He has a tendency, both in his online writings and in this book, to reduce all 1,400 years of the Islamic past to jihad. The world, he says, witnessed “a thousand years of jihadism” before Bin Laden sent airliners to mutilate the New York City skyline, and Islam spread “primarily by conquest, not conversation.” The historian Zachary Karabell wrote an entire book refuting this simplistic repackaging of history.
…
At one point, Harris even bizarrely rationalizes the Crusades. Remember, he tells readers, the Crusades “were primarily a response to 300 years of jihad” — the emphasis here is his. The Crusades were a “reaction,” he laments, and in any event, holy war was a “late, peripheral” development within Christianity. This ought to be news to the flayed bodies and burned heretics and massacred dissidents put to death by Christianity’s sword. Muslim empires were authoritarian, as were Christian empires. Muslim clerics gave fatwas declaring jihad, and Pope Urban II gave his own decree explicitly calling on Christian subjects to take up arms and reclaim the Holy Land from the Mohemmadans. Why Sam Harris feels the need to take sides in the fanatical squabbles of our barbaric ancestors eludes me.
All of this can be excused, but only up to a point. What is inexcusable, and what should preclude Sam Harris from participating in any more projects on Islamic Reformation, is his complete lack of awareness about Muslims as they actually live today. He censures American Muslims for paying more attention to the coldblooded massacre of three American Muslims at the University of North Carolina than to the crimes of ISIS — proximity to Raleigh over Raqqa may explain why — before going on to say that hate crimes against American Muslims are “tiny in number, often property-related, and still dwarfed five-fold by similar offenses against Jews.” Reread that sentence and take in the moral callousness of this thinker.
At least I enjoyed the review.
How can you tell what the book is like if you don’t read the whole thing!!!‽?!??
Stop being so mean to Sam Harris!!!
…
There.
That’s taken care of.
I haven’t read it yet, but when/if I do, I’ll do what the reviewer suggests and just read Maajid’s lines.
Chigau,
Also, stop taking Sam Harris out of context! Just because he wrote those words doesn’t mean that’s what he meant to say!
I’m sorry, but I have to be skeptical of that review.
There must be a podcast out there somewhere the reviewer didn’t bother to listen to from beginning to end.
So the self-affirmation loop has started. Based on a (one) review. How very scrutinizing.
Yer too late, Michael.
We already covered that.
So no deviating opinions are allowed? Because you covered it all comprehensively? I beg to differ. Just make up your own mind.
Just being frustrated about this instinctive and intolerant narrow-mindedness around here sometimes. Now please go on; sorry for the interruption.
Michael, tell us all about what is good about Sam Harris’ writings, so we can see his exalted wisdom. Go on, shouldn’t take you long to find some of the good stuff and quote it here.
Racist islamaphobe writes something racist and islamaphobic isn’t really a stretch, Michael.
Deviating opinions are allowed, but the same old Harris apologetics will be mocked. So differ away.
Intolerant of bigotry, stereotyping, profiling, and torture.
Definitely not narrow-minded though. The minute Harris proposes a workable solution to Islamic terrorism that doesn’t dehumanize the 99.9% of Muslims worldwide, I’ll listen with a fully open mind.
Which reminds me… has he put forth any solution at all? I know there’s the ethnic profiling and torture. But besides that I mean.
Offer your counterpoint, Michael. Show us how this opinion is wrong, or at least present a better review.
Not my task and not what I said, condescending Lofty. Maybe others will take the bait though.
“Islam is the motherload of bad ideas”
Sam Harris
Of course, that wasn’t actually a writing, it came out in contemporaneous speaking, but it has a nice combination of concision, accuracy, and snappy delivery.
extemporaneous…writing plus poor self checking
Ben Affleck, please reveal yourself.
Still waiting for the fanbois to supply real evidence SH isn’t an ignorant paranoid islamophobic bigot. I’ve been waiting for many years, ever since SH first showed his paranoid bigotry. And I don’t expect to see that evidence in the near future.
Sure is digging his heels in on this one isn’t he? I would say that he should go back to what he does best but I don’t know what that is. Demonizing Islam while giving Judaism and Christianity a pass?
Are we obliged to read books from authors whose previous works we have disliked in order to avoid being “narrow-minded”? My default at this stage is not to buy Harris books but good reviews of this one might have persuaded me to have a look.
dude is living proof of the failure of his own notion that reason alone can create good morals.
^tho maybe he’d get different results if his reason wasn’t blatantly motivated?
Hmm…I am not aware of any paranoid bigotry from Sam Harris, nor has he remotely given Judaism or Christianity a pass. In fact, he has characterized the books attributed to Moses as even worse than the Qur’an. The fact is the core behavioral message from the words attributed to Jesus is pacifism, which is just the opposite of Muhammad, who exhorted his followers to fight, conquer, extort, and enslave.
Moses directed his followers to steal what we now call Palestine or Israel by means of genocide. He also laid down over 600 commandments, largely of the most barbaric and brutal sort.
Sam Harris has said essentially those points very consistently over many years.
As for the books, to save time and money just listen to the lectures and debates. The authors summarize their main points for free. If you really want the full elaboration then go buy the book.
Matthew 10:34-36 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”
Jesus also did not say anything against the practice of slavery.
The paranoid bigotry part comes in where Harris said anyone who looks muslim should be subject to intensive scrutiny/profiling. Yet in the US we are FAR more likely to face death at the hands of white christian males.
Nova Conceptum, #22
How come?
Yes. Yes, he has. That’s kind of the problem, isn’t it?
Yes, that passage is often mistaken for a call to violence, but just read a bit further
37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
38 And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
So, Jesus is not intent on dividing families just for the sake of fomenting violence or unrest, rather, he is saying god must be followed above all else, and if you love your family more than you love god then you are not worthy of god’s grace and salvation.
The sword is metaphorical. Jesus never took up the sword, nor did he lead his men into battle or rebeliion. Rather, he said to obey government (render unto ceaser), and for slaves to serve their masters, and to give a second time that which is stolen from you, and to expose yourself to further attack if attacked (turn the other cheek).
His message was pacifism.
What Harris said was that at security check points we should spend more of our efforts on people who fit a profile than those who do not.
No, we do not have a big threat of white christian males hijacking planes and turning them into suicide bombs.
Do we have a huge threat of planes being hijacked still? Because the TSA is a giant-ass failure at actually preventing dangerous objects from getting on planes. It’s called Security Theatre for a *reason*. It’s not real, just make-believe so that people can *feel* they are safe, when in reality it does nothing but make us leap when they tell us to.
Nova Conceptum
You do know that “Jesus” didn’t actually exist.
Right?
Leaving aside the realpolitik of the Crusades, they were just another name for Holy War. Those were the days of Christendom.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Crusades
I hope a lot of Sam Harris fanboys show up to explain how everyone constantly gets him wrong. I like that. It gives me an excuse not to read.
Nova Conceptum @ # 26: … Jesus is not intent on dividing families just for the sake of fomenting violence or unrest, rather, he is saying god must be followed above all else, and if you love your family more than you love god then you are not worthy of god’s grace and salvation.
IOW, the exact same shit preached by every cult which tries to separate its recruits from their families and the rest of society. See Unification Church, Scientology, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc, etc, etc.
Gee, you haven’t paid any attention. That’s been common knowledge for years. Unless you have conclusive evidence you care to share? I’m not holding my breath.
Nerd
Do you think you could make a comment without making a demand for ?
Hi chigau, yes, I realized after I posted I kinda sounded like a Christian apologist, thanks for asking.
I an an anti theist and skeptic and rationalist and pragmatist and…well, I will stop there for now.
Yes Rowan, we have a continual threat of planes being hijacked. The fact you would even ask that question is a testament to the success of our security agencies in foiling plot after plot after plot of all sorts.
There are lots of guys who would love hijack a plane, but it has gotten very difficult to do because of what you call a theatre.
I can’t help williamgeorge to show everyone constantly gets Harris wrong, but valid criticisms of Harris are rare. Do you think you have one?
Nova C:
Nice that the USA and its allies don’t need to hijack planes to rain destruction on populated areas — they have warplanes, UAVs, cruise missiles etc to do that. This is the other side of asymmetrical warfare.
(What do you imagine the ratio of civilian casualties has been?)
—
Yeah, I know… the one is a reaction to the other.
Hi John. The ratio has been high. With the drone campaign far more bystanders have been killed than targets.
About 75% of ordinance comes back (does not get dropped) on patrol in Iraq. Obama has not gone after the oil largely out of concern for casualties. When he finally decided to step up attacks we leafleted the oil truck assembly area before we sent in the gunships.
So, we have come a long way since the days of carpet bombing cities, but still a lot of innocent people are killed by our bombs.
Nova Conceptum
Worked like a dream on AirMalaysia and Germanwings.
Nova Conceptum
When you use the word “we”, to whom are you referring?
Hi Pierce, sorry if I sounded like a Christian apologist, I am an anti theist, but I kind of slipped into tongues there, my bad.
There can be cultish behaviors in Christianity, of course. Fortunately, my parents were Lutheran and disconnection is not an official policy of most major denominations nor did they feel any need to disown me or separate from me at all, so I was lucky that way. A lot of people do have families that disconnect anyhow so that is pretty sad.
The cults you mention actively use disconnection as part of their doctrine, so that is really disgusting, I agree.
Just, ick…
@Michael
5
Why yes people who have seen the same thing that bothered them before will tend to communicate in a supportive manner. Since this is typical human behavior you will need to add something of significance to change the dynamic.
This is about as mindless as “hivemind” which is just the negative emotional characterization of strategic group cohesion. Please be more imindful.
7
Allowed sure, but if they remain opinion things will mostly likely get nowhere, you came here. I see you have not covered what PZ covered comprehensively to this point so you seem to have the characteristic hypocrisy. Perhaps you will do better so that we feel like offering more than mere opinion in return.
Rational intolerance. I personally find nothing wrong with rational intolerance become some things are not worth tolerating. You have been negligent in describing reasons for the intolerance.
14
It’s also pure opinion. The amount of damage done to the world by people claiming to act on christianity is plenty awful, and I’m not personally under as much threat by islam when it comes to ideas inciting violence.
Frankly I fail to see what it is about religion that makes it the primary threat as we have seen these problems out of secular systems before. Plenty of groups both religious and secular have caused motivated reasoning driven tragedy fueled by narratives inconsistent with reality, but believed and acted upon when convenient.
Chigau, “we” as nations participating with the USA in the wars in the middle east of the last few decades.
I am a US citizen, I vote, so I don’t feel I can disassociate myself or absolve myself of responsibility for the actions of my government I helped to install.
I sense you might be leading up to pointing out those who protest “not in my name”, voted for a minority candidate, or did not vote, or those who are citizens of countries that are not militarily engaged on the US side. So it would be wrong to include such folks in “we”.
I also hear some crackpots calling for carpet bombing, so they are out of the “we” also, but for different reasons.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
NC” …I am not aware of any paranoid bigotry from Sam Harris, ”
… That’s been common knowledge for years. Unless you have conclusive evidence you care to share? I’m not holding my breath.
So, first you cite “common knowledge”, then you ask for evidence. Your approach seems inconsistent.
How about some evidence for your “common knowledge”?
I have not seen any yet.
Nova C:
Sam Harris: “We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.”
Anyone could conceivably be a Muslim.
(e.g. Bosniaks couldn’t look more Muslim, right? Nordic, they)
Nova Conceptum #41
Believe me when I tell you that you “sense” sweet fuck all from me.
and
Your “we”, is unique.
It is about “you”.
Do not include me.
Pascal’s Pager @18,
Yes exactly. Sam Harris apparently has had practically nothing negative at all to say about other religions like Christianity. But he just can’t crank out enough anti-Islam rhetoric to satiate the appetites of his legion of fanbois can he?
Nova Conceptum @36,
Yet people like Sam Harris rail on and on against Islam and not against the U.S. killing innocents with what are essentially flying terminator robots. Relatively speaking which is more of a threat?
@41,
How about the lived experience of Muslims (and others) who would discriminated against under Sam Harris style profiling? How about the tangible effects of targeting “Muslims or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim?” Does that count as evidence?
Also piggybacking off chigau’s comment @28:
In case you didn’t know that you should check Dr. Carrier’s book On the Historicity of Jesus. If you’re looking for an authoritative peer reviewed academic source that is.
Plethora:
Demonstrably untrue (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_to_a_Christian_Nation).
Thing is, he holds that Islam is singularly pernicious, thus ignoring historical reality and future potential.
Hi John,
Yes, and that includes himself.
He is fully prepared to be profiled.
Muslim fundamentalists are shooting, bombing, kidnapping, and conducting jihad operations in multiple countries every day. Our security services are continually foiling plots on our own soil (the USA, just to clarify for our friends around the globe).
Islamic Jihad is conducted by a particular group, Muslims. Muslims often have outwardly recognizable physical characteristics. Profiling for people who appear to be likely to be Muslim is a tool for directing limited security resources to individuals with a higher likelihood of being a threat at a security checkpoint.
If you want to call Sam Harris, me, or anybody else a bigot for pointing out reality to you, well, ok, go ahead.
I still have not seen any valid criticisms of Sam Harris here, but thank you for the attempt.
Example:
Prima facie evidence of SH’s Islamophobia/bigotry. His profiling is bigoted and he cannot/will not define how to do it, and the only thing that comes to mind when you look at the world-wide distribution of Islam is skin color. And professionals have debunked his idiocy.
Look up the professional security expert who debunked SH. Expert or SH’s paranoia? The expert wins the rationality contest, and did an expert job in doing so.
Between this idiocy at #48, and the comments on another thread, it’s safe to say Nova Conceptum is a fucking twit. I’m preemptively banning him before he fills up this thread with crap overnight.
John Morales @47,
Touche thanks very much for the correction. That “he holds that Islam is singularly pernicious” seems like a good way to put it.
Dang, I wanted some evidence for
Saad wrote:
Well, there was his “thought experiment” suggesting a preemptive nuclear genocide…
Yeah, I wonder what outwardly recognisable physical characteristics a Lebanese Muslim doesn’t share with a Lebanese Christian. A Hindu Indian with a Muslim Indian. A Christian Indonesian with a Muslim Indonesian. A Nigerian Muslim with a Nigerian Christian. A Serb with a Bosnian. Me and Richard Thompson(other than I’ve got more hair than he does).
@Nova Conceptum
Hey, there weren’t many hijackings *BEFORE* 9/11, so security was working perfectly as well?
(“My magic rock keeps tigers away….”)
the Crusades “were primarily a response to 300 years of jihad” — the emphasis here is his
Why doesn’t Harris just cut to the chase and write a book entitled “Sam Harris Is Right About Everything”??
Of course, he’d be wrong about that, too.
I wonder if Harris does a good treatment of the relationship between islam and the mongols. Because the Khwarazmians had some interactions there. So to speak. I mean, if he justifies the crusades surely he’s got some plaudits for the mongols, too, right? (clutches temples to prevent head explodey)
We are Plethora @46:
Peer reviewed it may be, but where do you get “authoritative” from?
Lofty@#52:
Muslims often have outwardly recognizable physical characteristics.
Beards. And they carry signs. And have big noses. Or some shit like that. Oh yeah, and they wear little caps.
Never mind that the 9/11 killers weren’t dressed in “ethnic” clothing and were clean-shaven when they went through security. They didn’t look outwardly recognizable unless you were looking for “yuppies” and had a hard-on for briefcases, pleated khakis, and loafers. Sam Harris has never done a very good job of explaining how these guys look “muslim”:
http://www.toledoblade.com/image/2011/09/09/800x_b1_cCM_z/hijackers-Dulles-Airport-video-image.jpg
It’s been commented on before here: profiling makes security worse, not better, because it’s easy to subvert. Random checks and good intelligence are better and more effective.
Rob Grigjanis @58,
Basically got it from Dr. Carrier’s extensive research on this topic plus his academic credentials and qualifications and general writing history.
By authoritative meaning:
1. able to be trusted as being accurate or true; reliable
2. commanding and self-confident; likely to be respected
3. clearly accurate or knowledgeable
Do you think the term “authoritative” is inappropriate in this context?
That would be more than peace, then. Sounds like a real asshole, but in any case, you fail at thinking.
What the fuck does anyone need with grace or salvation?
A pacifist would’ve told masters to free their slaves. It also doesn’t come packaged with blind obedience to authority figures (real or imagined).
Was that one “profiling” or “anti-profiling”? I can never remember.
We also didn’t have a big threat of white christian males doing other highly specific things. But bad things generally, sure, they do that, of course. Why would that be worth mentioning — am I right or am I right (or am I Sam Harris)?
If only you had actually stopped…. Well, I’d still conclude you’re an idiot. So, no harm done, I guess.
Just in general
Are any of these people female?
Can you {general} determine which female with a head-scarf belongs to which cult?
If so, how?
and how likely are they to have a bomb?
I know this asshole has been banned, but I think they’re probably still reading and I just feel like arguing anyway.
Oh what a brave and noble sacrifice that generic white man is making. Also, I’m even more generically white than Harris and I still am not prepared to condone such profiling, but then again, I’m not a terrible person.
If you recommend racial profiling to increase safety, you’re a piece of shit. If you recommend that and you aren’t at all likely to fall into the group of people who will be profiled, you’re a bad person.
So are white people. In America (OUR OWN SOIL!!!!!!!), white people commit more crimes and more acts of terrorism and shootings than Muslims. But white guy Sam Harris isn’t suggesting that our government profile and torture white people. And I don’t think he suggested- er I mean “thought experimented” about preemptive nuking of white countries. I wonder why….
How many have been foiled by the TSA? How many were stopped because of profiling Muslims? How many have actually been foiled, as opposed to plots that were encouraged by one of our nations agencies that is then busted once it has become serious? They miss a hell of a lot of mass killings of all varieties and most of the ones they bust seem to be the ones they helped along.
Also, it is worth pointing out that Israel doesn’t go “That guy looks Muslim, frisk him!” at airports, because that is a stupid policy only a Serious Thinker like Sam Harris can come up with. The Israelis apparently have really good terrorist profiling techniques and skills, and they don’t start and end with “looks Muslim.” I don’t think “looks Muslim” is even in the criteria, but I haven’t looked into that in a long while.
Common knowledge and asking for evidence aren’t in conflict at all. Common knowledge is stuff that is widely and generally known. Also, this statement is an attempt to deflect you from having to defend what you said with evidence. It is a sneaky and dishonest arguing tactic.
This is still fucking repulsive. If someone walked up to you and demanded that you love them more than your children or your significant other, then they are a fucking asshole, especially if they torture you if don’t fall head over heels in love with them.
What has Sam Harris done to deserve such rabid and insipid fandom? He’s not an interesting person (actually VERY dull from my experience) and as far as I can tell not very smart. I get the Dawkins fanboyism to an extent, because he was sharp and hit hard before he decided to live with his feet in his mouth.
If Trump were to get elected Muslims would be easy to spot because he’s going to put them on a list and make them all wear armbands.
The Christian nuns’ wimple* is now deprecated. The burqa, however, is a cultural thing now particular to Islamists*. So, yeah,you can.
Which is where Harris has a point: Islam has in recent decades been driven to conflate the cultural with the political and with the religious, historically-contingent as that is.
—
* same as the hijab.
* as is infibulation, which once was also only cultural.
@We are Plethora 65
If that kind of shit actually happened I would seriously consider finding ways of “looking Muslim” to demonstrate the uselessness of what they are doing. (if Muslims actually welcomed such a thing)
I suspect that one of the core features of this problem that the Harrises of the world have is that they are resistant to identifying objective features of behavior and thought necessary to prevent and identify terrorism independent of group because that would make it too hard to ignore their own bigoted bullshit. Becoming able to separate belief, thought, behavior and communication from group identity comes at a price.
(1) “Islam was generally not spread by the sword…In both North Africa and Spain, ordinary people sometimes converted, hoping for access to wealth and status.”
This a jewel in the crown of Islamic apologetics. I noticed that the author failed to mention the Muslim conquest of India, a genocide.
(2) “Often the conversions were sincere. They were welcomed within limits, but they were very rarely forced.” Really?
The Muslims invaded and conquered regions from Spain to India and reduced non-Muslims to subservient status, they were subject to many minor and major legal and social oppressions. Not surprisingly many converted, similarly to infidels living in Christian societies. Whether or not Christians have a more barbarous record is not really relevant to the threat of Islamic terrorism or prejudice against Muslims in the West. As to “justifying the Crusades”, or resistance to Muslim attacks, remember Gibbons’ speculation on the battle of Tours. If Charles Martel had lost the battle there would be no atheists proclaiming their lack of faith on this site, or any other, and no liberal democracy.
rjw1:
Such stupidity! You pretend to know history’s evolution over centuries.
Bah.
(You have no idea how many variables and how many degrees of freedom are present in the world, do ya?)
@Nova Conceptum
“The fact you would even ask that question is a testament to the success of our security agencies in foiling plot after plot after plot of all sorts.”
Yes, and Odin promised he’d get rid of the frost giants. No frost giants means that Odin must both be real and to have succeeded.
You can’t possibly take that type of reasoning seriously? I mean, please, how many plane hijackings were there prior to all this security theater? If I recall this wasn’t ever a particularly common event, nor can I find any stats that suggest such behavior was widespread. We’re looking at fairly anomalous events where the failure seemed to be less about airport security and more an intelligence failure than anything else. I mean, how many planes were hijacked from 1970 to 1990? During that time nothing like 9/11 happened, therefore by your “logic” we should adopt whatever was done then?
To take an analogy, any number of abuses of civil liberties have been defended by ‘think of how high crime would be if the cops didn’t engage in stop and frisk!’ or ‘if we legalized marijuana, imagine how crime would skyrocket!’ The danger of this negative consequence precludes experimenting with a change in public policy, and the necessity of secrecy in some of these prevents any real stats from coming out as to how many plots have been foiled.
There’s also the fact that TSA has been shown over and over again to employ measures which are at the level of what mall security wannabe cops would come up with. These people are not experts on anything – they’re security goons. In proud US tradition, the idea is to give the appearance of doing something productive and anyone who questions it is automatically unpatroitic.
Another thing is that people should have some input into what type of security they want. I’m sure that if the cops decided to ignore all civil liberties entirely they could catch more crooks, but do we really want to live in a police state? If stop and frisk ‘worked’ would it then be justified, or do we just piss all over the bill of rights?
@69 John Morales,
I see you’re still still adopting the pompous intellectual pose, congratulations, you’ve managed to get half of the formula correct.
All you have to do to refute my claim is to cite a liberal democratic, industrialised, advanced Muslim-majority nation. Even those promoters of the idea of Islam’s Golden Age, Prof Al Khalili for example, will conceded that Muslim cultures were very slow to adopt those innovations that transformed the West, even printing, paper and Arabic numbers.
We are Plethora @61:
Yes. Apart from (3) (appearing in the full definition as (1)b. (1)a uses “official”, (2) says “dictatorial”), I’m not seeing your definition in the link you provide, but never mind that. The connotation is that this person’s opinion can be trusted, and is in some sense official. By all means say you like/agree with someone’s argument, but using “authoritative” for that is bullshit.
rjw1:
I grant that if things had been different then, things might be different now — but, not being an idiot, I merely have to note that a counter-factual cannot be refuted by something factual, only called as counter-factual.
Point is, you cannot even in principle prove your speculative contention.
(You might as well claim that if Fleming hadn’t stumbled onto penicillin’s properties, there’d be no antibiotics industry today)
…. in eighth-century France?
@64 DBP:
“What has Sam Harris done to deserve such rabid and insipid fandom?” He serves as a Legitimate Smart Authority Man for racists, a la Donald Trump but more eloquent.
@74 consciousness razor:
Hahahahahaha :)
Not really relevant, but from what I’ve read of Sam Harris, he tends to use a lot of purple prose. His writing style isn’t much of a step above that of fanfiction.net.
@75 More eloquent than Trump, maybe at the level of Justice Scalia.
It doesn’t elude me in the least.
Sam Harris, like many right-wingers, views himself as a white patrician, regards Islam as a brown-skinned plebeians’ religion and perceive the aforementioned brown-skinned plebeians’ as uppity inferior beings who must be beaten back into their intended subservient place, his anti-religion rhetoric being little more than an attempt to makes his heinous racism and class contempt appear principled.
***
When the killer is a suicidal blond haired white guy, it doesn’t count.
***
He claims to be fully prepared.
The thing is, one just has to look at Dawkins to see what really happens when wealthy white dudes are treated with a sliver of the callousness that’s usually reserved to minorities.
***
And, unless millions acted like you, you’d be quickly identified by the new regime’s pretorian guard as a “troublemaker” (that is “uppity plebs who doesn’t know their place”) and at best become the target of a nasty campaign of harassment and at worse forced to watch you children being raped to death by the aforementioned pretorian guards.
The problem with fascists (and that’s what Trump’s followers are) is that they don’t give a shit about debate and arguments: their endgame is to be the biggest bullies in the room: they don’t care if you demonstrate the inanity of their politics: all they want is that you cravenly obey their every whim, and if you’re not, you’re an enemy to be crushed and made an example of.
***
Charles Arnulfing
1. Didn’t win the Battle of Tours: Odo the Great did
2. Was the very reason the Battle of Tours happened in the first place.
See, the thing is that Odo, Duke of Aquitaine was by far the better frankish leader. And Charles hated that since his goal was to establish the supremacy of His dynasty over the frankish nobility.
Odo, being the smarter and more far-seeing ruler, had no problem with having muslim neighbors, and kept his animosity focused on the utterly loathsome Umayyad regime, so when the Muslim berber lord, Munuza, rebelled against the (ethnocentric and nepotistic) caliphate, Odo was quick to enter an alliance with him: Charles, who had a signed non-aggression with Odo, used the alliance as an excuse to launch a surprise attack against Odo, and plundered every city and village in Aquitaine his troops entered, twice thus crippling southern France.
Predictably, Munuza was soon after defeated since his ally’s state was not able to send troops to assist him, and that -the fall of Munuza and the crippling of Aquitaine- is the reason the Umayyad armies were able to go so far north in the first place.
The battle of Tours itself was eventually won only because Odo -who had rebuilt his army in record time but sadly not fast enough to save his berber ally- decided that he still despised the Umayyads marginally more than his treacherous cousin and sent his troops as reinforcement, allowing Charles so save his head and proclaim himself the victor of a battle he caused and could never have won on his own.
Had that fucking little backstabbing feudal lordling not tried to impose his dynasty’s supremacy at the expense of everybody else, Europe would have had a shot at a lasting alliance between Christians and Muslims instead of having its Western half’s dominant dynasty cement its rule by pretending that they have saved Rome from an invasion They had caused in the first place, rendering the whole “Our faith are intrinsically incompatible so let’s try to enslave or slaughter the other side because if we don’t they will” bullshit used over the centuries to justify centuries of war and oppression moot. So don’t you fucking bring the Charles Martel apologetics: the only reason that guy is not on top of my top five evil french guys my compatriots should be ashamed of is that the collaboration happened during WWII.
***
With the added bonus that countries were abuses are less frequent and drug consumption isn’t illegal have lower criminality. In these case the experimenting has already been done and the inanity of the authoritarian position already demonstrated, although as I said higher, it matters not to the authoritarians.
***
When I was a kid, that accusation was often leveled at the Soviet Union.
Sam Harris earned a reputation for being smart by debunking Creationist claims. it never occurred to us, though, that debunking Creationist claims only means you’re smarter than a Creationist. And Sam…so’s yeast.
Saad
I tried to think of some “we don’t need to extra profile cute muslim 3 yo”, but IIRC, he also thinks that there are just hundreds of thousands of muslim parents who’d happily strap explosives to their toddlers…
NOva Conceptum
from the OP
The evil muslims made the christians invade their countries and kill them*
*Not surprising since that is the same argument we keep hearing about the murderous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Yet somehow that doesn’t make christianity or Judaism the motherload of bad ideas…
Funny thing, many muslims tell me the very same about those “kill all infidels” passages in the Q’ran (and indeed many apply to ONE specific point and situation). And they are also able to quote all those “nice” passages about love and charity…
Define the profile. And since you people insist that Islam is not a race and that this is not racist youa re not allowed to mention skin colour or ethnic origin.
I’ll challenge Nerd: Evidence, please.(DRAT, too late) The last three planes destroyed willfully that come to my mind were: bomb inside (Russian plane in Egypt, which somehow din’t all turn us into Russians), shot from the groun (Ukraine, Russian seperatists) and crashed by the pilot, only possible because of anti terror meassures (German pilot in France)
Tell me the difference to the USA
Do tell. And white supremacist terrorism is conducted by white people. And US imperialistic terroirism is practised by the USA. That’s second grader reasoning, albeit not by a particularly smart second grader.
Lofty @52
Yep, that’s what got me racist slurs hurled at me when leaving a Turkish supermarket.
chigau
Also, not all muslim women do wear any form of headscarf. As far as I know they’re also not glued to their heads and can be easily removed…
rjw1
Yes, and still they were usually allowed to keep their faith and practise their religion freely. But I guess the Inquisition, la limpieza de sangre, the exodus of the Sefardies and all that shit was just a reaction. Now we only need to explain how muslims are responsible for the conquest and genocide in Las Americas…
No, the muslim empires were not pinacles of freedom in a modern sense. They were definitly much better than what christian countries were offering at that time (while conquering, murdering, raping etc.)
Oh, I bet you have a time machine and something that show us this alternative history of earth, right? Because from any sensible point of view such speculations are more than bullshit. You cannot know what would have happened. It’s the same utterly naive worldview that makes you think killing baby Hitler would have prevented WWII, or that WWI wouldn’t have happened if Franz Ferdinand had stayed in bed hat day…
Apart of course from the ahistoricity demonstrated by laurentweppe
@79 Gilliel,
“No, the muslim empires were not pinacles of freedom in a modern sense. They were definitly much better than what christian countries were offering at that time (while conquering, murdering, raping etc.)
Nonsense, where did you get that ridiculous idea? For centuries the Ottomans plundered and massacred Eastern Europeans, millions were enslaved. A million Europeans were enslaved by North African pirates. Muslims aren’t and weren’t intrinsically more peaceful than the West, the fact is that they were simply not as advanced technologically and unable to threaten Europe from the 18th century onwards.
“I bet you have a time machine and something that show us this alternative history of earth, right?”
You missed the point of completely and have presented a straw man argument, no time machine or alternative history is required all that is required is that we contrast the history and development of Islamic and Western civilisations, you could try that yourself.
“It’s the same utterly naive worldview that makes you think killing baby Hitler would have prevented WWII,”
Wrong again, of course it’s impossible to be certain, but anyone who has studied the history of the early Nazi party would consider that if Hitler had indeed decided to be a plumber,or not survived WW1,the history of Germany would have been remarkably different. Your attitude is regrettably common these days, but not unprecedented, during the Vietnam War elements of the “left” eulogised some rather nasty Communist regimes because they were opponents of US intervention.
The other mistake people who who lack an historical perspective make, is to project the current Western hegemony back to the Medieval period, that is ahistorical.
Is the term “ahistoricity” your invention, do you mean “ahistorical”?
@68 rjw1
Ah yes, Spain has been plundered and conquered by a multitude of cultures, but the muslims, those were the worst…
If at least they had had the decency of conquering while being white, like the romans slaughtered the celts, or like the visigoths slaughtered romans…now that’s civilised and proper.
You know, while not condoning in any way the barbaric act of conquering through violence (yeah, not even if you are american), at least the muslims brought us advancements in math and astronomy as well as extraordinary architecture. The visigoths, not so much…
Yeah, what about a few centuries before then?
If you only count the times when the coin shows heads, it’s easy to pretend you have powers.
Going off on a tangent:
“Islamic State Issues Fatwa On How To Properly Rape Enslaved Women, Girls” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/islamic-state-rape-fatwa_568237e7e4b0b958f65a55ae
I know IS does not represent a majority, or even a lar ge minority of muslims.
You know IS does not represent a majority, or even a large minority of muslims.
But a million ignoramuses will claim “this is typical for the darkies/mooslems.”.
And they will not be gainsaid by Fox.
rjw1
1. Learn to spell my nym
2. Learn how to blockquote
So, when they were bad, they were about the same as the Christian Europeans. That’s a serious thing, I admit. But there was also the Kingdom of Granada etc.
You still have not brought forth any argument why we should believe that the Renaissance and Enlightenment (which is also a muslim tradition, which you’d know if you’d read the whole review) would not have taken place in a predominantly muslim Europe. The same goes, of course, for colonialism, imperialism and all the crimes committed by the christian Europeans. I don’t assume they wouldn’t have happened if they’d been muslim….
Which was totally NOT shaped by anything the west did to them, right? Colonialism never happened, right? Not to dismiss their agency to do horrible things, but seriously, to view the predominantly muslim world as something solely shaped by Islam is horribly naive at best.
@77, laurentweppe: Sam Harris, like many right-wingers, views himself as a white patrician, regards Islam as a brown-skinned plebeians’ religion and perceive the aforementioned brown-skinned plebeians’ as uppity inferior beings who must be beaten back into their intended subservient place,
That’s just ridiculous. I don’t like Harris at all but he’s not racist against “brown people”; he is bigoted against *Muslims*. I hate it when clueless westerns like you confuse Muslims with brown people.
My fanboi sense are tingling. Someone must be criticizing the Exalted Leader.
TO THE INTERNET!!
Ooops, I failed italics at 84.
But anyways, as much as I enjoyed reading the parts of the review that trashed Harris, I did not enjoy it as much as I thought I would.
The starting paragraph is a big let down. What is his problem with people writing about reforming Islam? For example he writes, “Lest you be accused of nuance, the more vague and generic these are, the better. ” Really? So saying that “killing apostates”, “stoning women” and “killing gays and lesbians” should stop would be avoiding nuance and being vague and generic?
Compressed into its 128 pages is the entire Reformation Project, except that the book’s contents are as thin as its subject is grand.
Again, he seems to think that reforming Islam would need an encyclopedic amount of text. It does not. One can shave off a few tenets here and there and be done with it. 128 pages is more than sufficient.
I also take an issue with his refutation of “spreading Islam by the sword”. It is technically true that Muslims did not hold Jews and Christians by the sword and demanded life or conversion. But they held them as 2nd class citizen who could convert and become first class. Technically, yes, that is better than conversion by the sword but not by much.
The conversation that Nawaz needs to be having is around the dinner table with conservative Muslim families, not with Sam Harris or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who have precisely zero influence over Muslims and are considered prejudiced, dishonest interlocutors at best.
Except that same thing is happening to Maajid.
But he is completely right on Harris though.
@84 lotharloo
Then you should hate it when Harris does, because he certainly doesn’t have someone from Borneo in mind, or for that matter a white convert, when he advocates for profiling.
Harris equates “muslim” with “brown male”, so he is very much racist about it…
Turkey.
Iran before the Brits overthrew it. I expect they’ll recover soon enough.
Pakistan, after throwing out the Brits, though they have a history of coups.
Indonesia, since Suharto.
Lebanon before the war.
Egypt, very briefly.
Funny thing: the most successful of those is the one that was least recently invaded by Christian-majority powers. I’m sure it’s a complete coincidence.
@87 Dreaming of an Atheistic Newtopia:
Unless you claim to read his mind, that’s not what he says. He says he himself could be a potential muslim. He says he wants to give US citizenship to muslim apostates. He does not have any problem with Christian refugees from Syria. Well, if he has no problem with brown atheists, or brown Christians but he wants to discriminate against brown Muslims, then he is not racists against brown people, he is bigoted against Muslims.
@89
Aha….aha….all that’s great, but then how exactly are you supossed to identify middleeastern muslims? Sure, he sayd he could be a potential muslim, what a nice and completely empty concession. US citinzenship to muslim apostates, christian refugees from Syria, great, but only after they have been harassed to make sure they aren’t muslim….on other words, after having been profiled based on their appearance.
All of those things come AFTER the racial profiling…you profile them first, then sort them out based on other criteria…but only after you’ve made sure that the brown dude is not also a muslim…
LotharlooAt risk of repeating myself: Harris wants to profile “muslims”. Define the profile. And since you people insist that Islam is not a race and that this is not racist youa re not allowed to mention skin colour or ethnic origin.
And since we’re at it: Design a test of faith where Syrians can prove they are actually not muslim. That’ll be interesting….
#78:
Harris has never been active in the anti-creationist movement.
Design a test of faith where Syrians can prove they are actually not muslim.
Ooh! Ooh! Pick me! Pick me!
Have them eat a piece of ham! It’s perfect!! Except for the jews and vegans and any weirdos like sam-i-am.
And it’s been tried. The inquisition supposedly used that as one of their screening tricks.
Btw – I understand the reasoning behind the “go back in time, kill Hitler” idea but really it should be “go back in time and put some ambien in Gavrilo Princip’s tea” thereby untriggering WWI, which was the trigger for WWII and at least partially what formed Hitler, and definitely the armistice treaty terms ending WWI set the stage for Hitler’s rise to power. WWI may have been inevitable, unless you could go back in time and kill Kaiser Wilhelm…
This game of “go back in time and kill political leaders…” Is compelling. The holocaust could have been avoided if someone had gone back on the Ides of March and warned Caesar…
Harris has never been active in the anti-creationist movement.
Neither has yeast!!! Even though the package says “active dry” on it!
Marcus, #94
Well, that proves it.
We could have a test to prove Syrian refugees are not Muslim if only we hadn’t kicked Dick Cheney out of office, and if we were willing to listen to John Yoo. There are many time-tested strategies for questioning people’s faith effectively.
@92
Hasn’t he debated William Lane Craig? I might be misremembering because I tend to not watch Harris debates ever, because his delivery annoys me.
@91, Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
First, it’s not my problem that Harris is a lousy thinker. But we are talking about what he has been advocating and it is intellectually dishonest to deviate from what has clearly been his position: he wants to profile anyone who could potentially be a Muslim and in his shallow thoughts, he has not gone further than that. All his arguments for “beliefs leading to actions”, “Jihadism”, wanting to give US citizenship to muslim apostates, etc. etc. all indicate a religious bigotry not a racial one.
Two, what the hell? Did you just imply that Islam is a race and that Muslim are brown? I thought we were beyond that by this point.
Three, just because a bigotry is not racism does not make it ok. Religious bigotry is pretty bad too. You don’t have to paint Harris a racist to show that his ideas are problematic.
@91
The only other idea I could possibly have is “Wears Islamic religious garb”, but that seems like an idiotic thing to profile based on the fact that the 9/11 hijackers we’re wearing religious garb during the attack. (at least iirc, I seem to recall they even drank alcohol.) Or speaks arabic, which in that case you don’t while carrying out the attack to blend in (and not all Muslims speak Arabic). Or it’s possible he meant profile literally everyone, in which case normal people would take that to mean profile no one, in which case Sam Harris is an incompetent writer.
I jokingly created the following trilemma:
Sam Harris: racist, idiot, or bad writer.
Harris debated Craig on god and morality. These are different questions than creation vs. evolution, which requires a pretty solid background in the science of evolution…something Harris has never demonstrated.
I’ve probably said this like 4 times now, because every time Sam Harris comes up, his fanbois come up too.
Harris is a cissexist. I don’t need to justify why I consider his material to be repulsive, because it is inherently against my interest to pay credence to a person who uses their platform to signal boost cissexism.
It’s not that I never engage in transphobic material–I ought to know who opposes my rights and “why”*–but doing so is work and not leisure.
So the fanbois are asking me, “why don’t I spent more of my leisure time engaging with a cissexist asshat?” Well, for the same reason I don’t give any serious credence to Creationists–there are layers of incorrect to peel back, and I don’t have the fucking time for that. Fanbois might be saying I should engage in Harris’ material, but what they actually mean is that I should be a good scapegoat and be silent so that Harris and his authoritarian cult have a doormat on which to keep their shoes clean.
Of course, the fanbois won’t give a shit if Harris is cissexist, because they are also cissexist. That’s why you can’t argue to the fanbois that Harris is racist, because racists seldom recognise that they are themselves racist. It’s easy to assume Harris is unquestionable when you share every shade of bigotry with him; he doesn’t challenge your world view and is therefore “correct,” regardless of what arguments are presented to the contrary.
TL;DR Every Harris fanboi, and by extension every authoritarian, can go fuck a wood-chipper.
—
*There is seldom a cogent reason regarding why.
lotharloo
1. No, Islam is a religion.
2. most muslims are, indeed, brown
That’s why a Brazilian carpenter was murdered by London cops for hurrying to the Tube. That’s why Sikhs are regularly attacked.
Do you seriously want to claim that a lot of hatred against muslims is NOT linked to racism?*
Now that we have established that while most muslims are indeed brown, but not all, profiling anybody who “looks muslim” is either complete bullshit or a dogwhistle for “brown people”.
You know, if you paid attention to politics, racism and xenophobia before 9/11 you’d have noted that about 90+% of those who are now concerned about “muslims” used to be concerned about “brown foreigners”. here’s a beautiful example of the reinforcement of racial links between white and christian and brown and muslim.
*I mean, you could click to that video of the woman who accuses three Brazilian men of being muslim terrorists who suck cock**
**I have no idea of what those particular dudes dig sexually, but I’m pretty sure that “you love to suck dick” isn’t a well-founded theological argument against Islam.
Adding to Giliell@102: The people I know personally who’ve been picked up by the TSA or customs and harassed on suspicion of being muslim are both atheists with hindu parents. One born in the US, the other in Canada.
I believe the wording he used was to profile anybody who “looks like” they could be Muslim. The “looks like” means he’s talking ethnicity (whether he means to or not), because he knows full well that terrorists in the West do not attack dressed like King Abdullah (the 9/11 hijackers did not have kufiyas wrapped around their heads when they did the hijacking).
The order to “profile anyone who looks like they could be Muslim” can only be carried out in a racist way. He’s supposed to be a thinker. He should realize this. Of course, admitting to that would mean he’d have to abandon his whole profiling standpoint altogether.
lotharloo @98
For the love of a non-existent god, will one of you yahoos please tell us how to do this? Imagine you’re a TSA agent working a line of passengers at an airport. Tell us which ones are more likely to be Muslim than the others.
Saad
Oh, I’m giving him credit to be fully aware of this. It tells you something about his fanbois that they don’t
Since it hasn’t been posted yet in this thread –
To Profile or Not to Profile?: A Debate between Sam Harris and Bruce Schneier
Harris just isn’t a rigorous thinker. When pressed, he tends to resort to pure rhetoric rather than reason, and the dialogue between Harris and Schneier is a perfect example.
Is it me or could the picture be read as implying that your eyes change color if you convert to Islam?
***
Oh, I for one am willing to believe his fanboys aren’t dupe: they just
1. Approve the racist approach
2. Believe themselves cunning enough to hide their heinous intent behind a handful of liberal soundbites
Rob Grigjanis @72,
Well we don’t consider it controversial in the least to assert that Dr. Carrier’s opinion (backed by his research and scholarship) can be trusted.
But it’s certainly your right to disagree with that if you feel otherwise.
In any case thanks for the clarification and the feedback. We sometimes struggle with language and it’s helpful to know that “authoritative” was not the best word to use here.
@103 numerobis
Oh, but they were simply singled out for their appearance, made to submit to whatever kind of scrutiny and then released after it was determined they weren’t dangerous. All for the good of society.
A small price to pay…and certainly not involving any racial profiling whatsoever….oh no…just a little “intelligent distribution of efforts” a.k.a antiprofiling…*wink* *wink*
The American one gets “randomly” searched almost every single flight.
The Canadian one got refused entry to the US on the basis that he needed a visa for a business trip (which is false, but that doesn’t matter). So now, for the next several years at least, he needs to get a visa to visit the US.
We Are Plethora@109,
Carrier is a crank, whose views are rejected by the overwhelming majority of relevant experts (and no, they are by no means all Christians). Mythicism has no more academic respectability or intellectual plausibility than creationism.
I feel like picking at the irrationality and illogic some more. There are genuinely important things to be discussed but it’s just not going to happen when the thought processes going in are not useful.
First a correction.
In my first comment I attributed Nova Conceptum to Michael when they quoted harris saying,
Re: Nova Conceptum 22
Bullshit. If you have a reason to suggest that someone buy and read a book in a specific argument you should be ready to actually present the substance that addresses the specific thing you have a problem with. There is limited time for all of us and you will be ignored AT BEST, actually act like an advocate. One thing I learned from graduate school is that proposing a “fishing expedition” is a bad idea.
@rjw1
Just, no. The author was making a comparison between two religiously themed civilizations over time which despite the difficulty of making, requires a response that addressed the whole “swath of time” part and contextualizes within that time period and the other events. Your favorite pet example is not an actual rebuttal unless properly contextualized. The same response goes for #2 in that comment. Because muslims did X does not mean that the period between A to G has changed when comparing the two civilizations. And this does not help,
Actually yes it fucking is. Despite other negative comments against other religions and religion in general Harris has tried to separate islam as somehow special when it comes to its awfulness, the whole “motherload of bad ideas” dreck. I am personally more threatened by christianity and don’t actually believe that religion is at the heart of the threat here so do your damn work.
I would love to learn something new but I simply can’t do so with such garbage. Seriously, it’s a really important question, WHY IS RELIGION THE THREAT HERE? Religion has just been around longer but we have Stalin and Mao to show us that is not the real threat. (The use that creationists had for Stalin and Mao was fallacious, but the harm caused remains).
@111 numerobis
But the people who don’t have to pay that price, at all, have determined that that is a small price to pay for safety.
Also complaining about it makes you unamerican or something…
Referring to my previous comment, here is a fucking clue, the unrestrained use and application of authority and authoritative instinct in a group context. That requires some really serious changes to society to address.
Why is Trump able to sway people that seem to settle on “he is going to get things done” as a reason for support?
Why was Obama able to abuse whistle-blowers and qualify for investigation and charges under the UN Convention on Torture? Relatedly why has the Obama justice department refused to prosecute powerful people on Wall Street while throwing the book at others?
Why were/are Catholic priests, football coaches and football players able to abuse people and get protected by society? Why is rape so neglected as a crime against people? Relatedly why did addressing the problem of rape and harassment get so much push back in the atheist community if religion is not a factor?
Stop focusing on religion, the problem has to do with places where atheists and the religious are the same. Places that let people propose terrible things and the rest of us go along with it because it has to do with “them” and not “us”. Fuck that.
Just to get it out of the way because I can imagine the objection coming up, the reason the use and abuse of authoritative instinct in a group context matters when it comes to rape matters because:
1) Society tends to suppress female people expressing authority and support male people expressing authority.
2) This social emphasis on “male + authority” is likely to have a big impact on the motivated reasoning at every level of the process that gives us the piss poor results on dealing with rape that we have. People who can and do use authority have an advantage at every level.
On this specific point I will simply let critics say what they will and absorb and think since my connection to this issue is being a male masculine person.
Nick Gotts @112,
Wow that’s very harsh. That wasn’t the impression we had gotten at all. Though admittedly we’re coming at this from a lay perspective and without the requisite background expertise.
Are there any references you would recommend as being particularly strong and persuasive as refutations?
Brony@113:
Religion *is* a threat. I prefer to think of it as religion not having a monopoly on murderous ideology.
@numerobis
^
Works for me. I hear that religion is “the” problem very often though. I’m still waiting on why other than historical contingency.
Like being vaguely brown and having a beard. Too bad for the multiple Sikhs, Brazilians etc. who have been mistaken for a Muslim stereotype and attacked by yahoos who were thinking just like Harris.
Major organized religion demands unthinking obedience. Unthinking obedience seems to me to be closer to the root of the problem. You can get it from other sources than religion of course.
@81Dreaming….
“Ah yes, Spain has been plundered and conquered by a multitude of cultures, but the muslims, those were the worst…”
Where did I make that claim? More straw man arguments and ad hominem attacks, many commenters here really don’t need an interlocutor, they invent opposing arguments.
“…at least the muslims brought us advancements in math and astronomy as well as extraordinary architecture.”
Agreed, however, what’s the origin of that architecture, or the mathematics? Were they pulled out of a hat?
“Yeah, what about a few centuries before then?”
What point are you making? I’ve never disputed that Islamic cultures were more developed than the West, during the Middle Ages, although Europeans were not as ‘backward’ as popularly supposed, many modern institutions have their origins in Medieval Europe. My point was that it was just superior Western technology that reduced the Muslim threat, otherwise the slave raids and attacks on Eastern Europe could have continued indefinitely.
And you haven’t even been called stupid…
I’d be willing to jettison Harris except as far as I can tell, we still need him. We will be able to do without him as soon as someone else forthrightly puts forward the following essential points, which as far as I can tell, nobody is doing.
– Ideas, including nutty religious ideas, motivate actions.
– Islam, as a belief system, is full of barbaric, violent ideas incompatible with enlightened civilizations.
– Those ideas are embraced by legitimate leaders of Islam, including those who run countries, and according to the best data we have, by significant proportions of all Muslims.
– The immediately prior point is not true of other major religions on a global basis, although there is a comparable Christian phenomenon in the U.S.
– Islam, meaning real Islam and not some perversion of it, is therefore part of the cause of our terrorism problem and it is where we should focus both for the roots of the problem and for some way out of it.
None of this is rocket science (I was going to say brain surgery but, you know, Carson). Who else is going to say these things? It ain’t gonna be PZ or any other gainfully employed academic in the current American university culture. It’s Sam, Douglas Murray, and a few other freelance enfants terrible who come with some unfortunate ideological baggage. Find me the good and pure person willing to stand up for these points and I’ll throw Sam away with the bathwater.
It also isn’t going to be somebody like me, as I don’t have the hatred/fear/paranoia about Islam required to make those statements. And that is also why any atheists who makes those statements will be branded like SH and RD have been.
I fear the local Xians much more than the local Muslims. They are the ones killing folks here on a regular basis.
k5083, simple people have simple ideas, like you and the demagogue you admire.
The reason that terrorism exists is that terrorisation works.
(It’s worked on you)
So… your prior points are just as applicable to christianity as they are to islam.
@#127
Holms
No!! Because white tech superiority or something.
Duce’s Law:
Nothing illustrates the truth of Duce’s Law quite so much as …well, absolutely any criticism of Harris, no matter how minor.
@124:
I’d be willing to jettison Harris except as far as I can tell, we still need him.
Um, no. While Harris sometimes makes valid points regarding Islam, all those points, and more, are made in a much more competent way by various ex-muslims, without making numerous gaffes: Harris’s podcast with Douglas Murray was an embarrassment from many points of view, his implicit approval of bigoted statements on trans people, his bigotry towards Muslims, his support of Ben Carson and nutty right-wing politics, to his bizarre statement that somehow it makes sense to consider normal Christian beliefs more plausible than those of Morons (both have 0 practical plausibility), and his misplaced priorities by calling “global Jihad” the trying issue of our times (or something to that effect) above Global Warming, environmental issues, or Christian nutjobs with political powers in US, just show how clueless he is.
@123 Gilliel,
“And you haven’t even been called stupid…”
Yes, that’s surprising, usually when people lack coherent arguments they resort to that tactic. I’ve noticed some arrogant and extremely ignorant comments here but I’m too polite to call anyone a ‘useful idiot’.
@k5083, #124:
First, you’re full of shit. Lots of people are promoting these points, each and every one of them. There are a significant number even promoting the collective of points as a unity, though I won’t go so far as to try and quantify that number.
But more than that,
1. how do you define “barbaric” other than “incompatible with enlightened civilizations”.
2. how do you define “enlightened civilizations” other than “we don’t do that barbaric, violent shit”.
3. After you’re done with coming up with some excuse for why the first rule of the nation-state chapter of the Tautology Club is a feature and not a bug, please explain how any definition of “violent” as applied to nation-states would make the USA anything other than the single most violent nation state – by a large margin … without using a qualifier equivalent “barbaric”.
4a. If religious nations are barbaric if they are violent, and not violent if they are barbaric, explain to me how Sam Harris’ writings justifying further violence by the most violent nation-state on earth are anything other than equivalent to the not-legally-binding,-but-considered-morally-suasive fatwahs issued by influential mullahs and imams around the muslim world.
4b. If religious nations are violent if they are barbaric, and not barbaric if they are violent, please explain to me what, precisely, causes the USA to be so damn violent?
5. [Bonus] If ideas motivate behavior, as it seems we both agree, what idea or ideas motivate the various Presidents of the USA to consistently and explicitly reject the call to end the use of cluster munitions and land mines? Super Extra Bonus Points if you remember and address the point that on the international land mine treaty the US declared that it would abide by the treaty except on the Korean peninsula…but then took or omitted action in other parts of the world that would constitute severe violations of the treaty.
I think that’s about all we need to go on for now.
lotharloo @130
So, as I asked several posts back — given a line of passengers at an airport, how do we decide which of them are “most likely” to be Muslim? Please. You have no idea how much I’d like to know how to spot the Muslim in a line of people.
ajb47 @ 133:
And as I wrote earlier, it is not my problem that Harris is a lousy thinker, so you should ask him. And most likely, the answer will be somewhere between “we don’t know” and “let’s profile everyone except the particular grandma that Harris saw that day in the airport”. But if you are saying that he means to profile only “brown people”, then he has said no and that he himself would be a target of such profiling.
Lotharloo, you’ve made some good statements, but take a step back for a moment. If Harris is proposing X with few qualifications, and is unwilling or unable to define how to successfully execute X, does it matter that he has said that he will himself submit to X? It is entirely his burden to show how “muslim-looking persons” can be screened, and that is setting aside the fact that there is no categorically “muslim-looking person.” His generous offer rings rather hollow, eh? Now consider, since I gather you’re American, why are you so afraid of Muslim terrorists? You really need to think about that, IMHO.
I fear the local fascists, whose endgame is the establishment of an autocracy where they are the barons of the new regime while everyone who’s not them has been either subjugated or killed.
These are as nearly as likely to be Atheists as they are to be Christians.
lauentweppe
Yep.
The German equivalent of the Front National istal king openly about the “positive term “Volksgemeinschaft”. Though I note that there are paticular christian notes like “defense of the christian occident” and “christian values*”
*which are interestingly not shared by the Pope. It has become a great pasttime of left politicians to quote the Bible or the Pope at the nominally christian parties…
it always cracks me up that some nitwit comes here and complains that no differing ideas can be spoken because echo chamber or hive mind or some such phrase. I mean really that is absolutely not the case anyone can within reason and the guidelines set forth say anything the thing is no one is obliged to agree with you about anything you say. Everyone is free to pick your “ideas” and position’s to pieces tn any way they like. so what I here is a complaint about not being agreed with without any rational questions nor any vigorous defense of their ideas just a wordy whine instead.
I learn a lot in the exchanges that do occur here often about how I think.
uncle frogy
It’s interesting how the christian countries in Africa where gays are threatened with the death penalty and women still get killed as witches are never mentioned in that context. I cannot decide if that’s due to
-ignorance
-usual racism where Africa is ignored except when it’s about white people or lions
-no true christian christian exceptionalism
-all of the above
Equally funny when atheists proclaim that there is One True Version of a given religion
well, there’s your problem.
you must have your head entirely shoved up your ass to think that nobody but Harris has addressed the things in your list.
easy solution:
-pull head out of ass
-read more
hmm, I wonder what Mark Cohen would say to that….
man, your ignorance of all things related to these issues and the people involved is just too great to deal with.
run along and play. that’s more your speed.
No, they were pulled out of the minds of very intelligent and capable mathematicians, engineers and artists. But i suspect you are thinking more on the lines of “stolen from europeans” or something…
Because Eastern Europe has only known peace and quite since then. By superior Western technology, you mean our superior capacity for wholesale slaughter.
I’m obviously not defending the atrocities committed by muslim majority nations in the past or present, i fully condemn them, but i do no different for the ones committed by any other nation under any other religion or lack of it.
You, on the other hand, seem quite happy to consider atrocities done against Teh Mooslem Threat to be justified and good.
Is it only a threat if muslims are doing it? Because europeans have been slaughtering, slaving and pillaging other europeans (and have you heard what they still do to non-europeans?) since there have been europeans. But i suposse those are all internal affairs or something…
Usually, when people lack coherent arguments they resort to crying wolf about non-existent attacks, fallacies and how terrible their adversary is to have the temerity to disagree. You know, just like you do.
Oy…pssssssst….you realise we can tell that you managed to call someone a useful idiot while pretending to be too polite to do so, right? I, personally, can’t be bothered with such cheap tricks, i’ll just call you a fucking ignorant idiot.
k5083, #124
That’s a tired old stupid tactic: trying to switch seamlessly between talking about Islam and talking about Muslims.
Muslims are not the same thing as Islam.
Also, it’s impossible for 1.2 billion people to be monolithic and bad. That’s way too large a number for there not to be mind-blowing amount of diversity of thoughts and viewpoints.
There are Muslims who wear skirts and strapless dresses and drink alcohol (and not in secret or rebellion). They’re also legitimate Muslims. There are also Muslims who are quite ignorant of Islam and global politics. They just identify as Muslims simply because they’re born into the system and aren’t interested in or don’t care to give religion much thought outside of a culture to belong to. You know… just like Christianity.
man, you must get really confused when you visit India and see the reality.
oh wait, that’s assuming you leave your basement.
k5083, #124
Harris’s early writing and debates did personally help me shake off the religion I was brought up in. But that was because his arguments against religion and faith helped me feel secure that I was onto something good with my doubts. It had a sort of legitimizing effect and gave me confidence to be able to back up my objections to religion. But this was all before I became aware of his views on Muslims.
How is he helping the struggle against Islamic extremism? Which of his viewpoints on Muslims, when put into practice, will actually help secularize Islamic societies and countries? Because that’s what’s needed to counter Islamic extremism, not profiling or bombs or torture. And reform like that doesn’t happen by an outsider’s criticism. Dawkins can write as much as he wants against genital mutilation in Africa. The people who engage in the practice will respond to it with stubborn resistance. Anti-LGBT attitudes in America won’t go away if a Chinese activist in China starts writing blogs. The bigots will absolutely not respond positively to an outsider.
Who is the “we” in “we still need him”? We ex-Muslims certainly don’t need people like him or Dawkins. Their detached-from-reality criticisms and stereotyping of Muslims is counterproductive to legitimate criticism of Muslim culture in the West. The main Islamic problem in the U.S. is the same as the main non-Islamic problem in the US: social justice. Sexism, anti-LGBT prejudices, discrimination towards apostates, and imposition of strict cultural practices on the youth which alienates them and leads to broken families. Those are the religious issues with American Muslims, not terrorism. Just like those are the religious issues with American Christians. Muslims in America are not some special problem. Just look at the figures.
k5083, @ #124:
Do several Islamic nations have a terrorism problem when (majority Christian) nations are using explosives and other methods to kill their citizens?
What do you suggest they do about it?
How – and why – does your solution differ from what the west should do about it’s terrorism problem?
We Are Plethora@117,
I’d recommend checking out some of the articles here. The blogger, James McGrath, identifies as a Christian, but doesn’t credit any of the supernatural events narrated in the Bible. Also worth reading some other stuff on the historical Jesus, e.g. books by Geza Vermes (a religious Jew) and Bart Ehrman (an agnostic). There’s a review of Carrier’s (mis)use of Bayesian reasoning, by an actual mathematician, here.
Hmm. A bit disappointed by the responses to my post. I expected better. Of course I figured I’d be afflecked with empty childish insults and name calling, and thanks Redhead, Morales, Ichthyic for not disappointing me there. But nobody really strung together a coherent response, just some word salad.
FWIW, I am not a Harris fan. I consider him an ordinary intellect who says some sensible but not brilliant things, and also some not-sensible things. Pretty much like PZ or any of the other atheist iMouths out there.
And I am not terrorized by Islamic terrorism, merely concerned about it, since after all it does kill some folks. If you insist that I say “Christianity too!” whenever I criticize Islam then, although you are an idiot, I will pay the courtesy of doing so. I will even concede that in America, you are more rational to be worried about Christianity, which manifests both random grass-roots terrorism and elected officials, some running for president, who would love for America to be a repressive Christian theocracy. It is especially rational to be more concerned about Christians if you live in a backwater like Wisconsin that is of no interest to foreign terrorists but is a plausible target of opportunity for local fanatics. Outside of America, though, where there are actual repressive Islamic theocracies enthusiastically exporting barbaric ideas, it is more rational to be worried about Islam.
It doesn’t really matter which way you define true Islam (the ideas in the books, the example of the life of Mohammed, the beliefs preached and practiced today), it is pretty awful unless you define it circularly as “harmless Islam = true Islam,” as the apologists do. Oh, I almost forgot – “Christianity too!” Although, you could do quite a bit worse in general than to live following the example of the life of Jesus, as represented in the gospels, whereas you couldn’t do much worse than to live like Mohammed as represented in the Hadith. Really quite a vile man.
Now, to psychoanalyze Harris a bit, he clearly has a hang-up with personal security. You can see this in his interest in firearms and martial arts, and maybe also in his retreat to the safe space of mediation. This leads to his silly views about profiling, which I agree wouldn’t work and would unacceptably infringe civil rights even if it did work a little. He has no particular education and insight on geopolitics, and Chomsky is right to brush him aside like a yapping small dog on those subjects. No interest in defending him there, so knock yourselves out.
From those of you who say there are others out there hitting all the points I listed in #124, and specially willing to tag Islam for its bad and harmful ideas without [being accused of] bigotry against Muslims, I’d sincerely appreciate some names. Thanks!
k5083 #148
spoing
I gave you one response where I didn’t call you a name. Just pointed out why I don’t see your concerns as anything other than what they are.
Your concern seems to lead you down the path toward bigotry. You need to lose the overwhelming concern, and back up a large bit.
My concern is with the local Xians with guns. They are closer, they are mad, and a much, much bigger threat to harming me. It’s called context. You lost that once the concern took over.
Oh nooooo….they are disappointed!
Who the fuck has ever said that Islam is harmless or defended it around here….ever?
k5083, #148
Who are you even debating with here? Who is saying following in the steps of Muhammad is a good thing or that Islam is a nice religion?
You’re talking down to us about incoherence and word salading, when all you’re doing is creating strawmen to argue against.
Yup. It is more rational to be worried about Islam for marginalized people living in Islamic societies. It’s weird for Sam Harris and you to do it.
some nitwit comes here and complains that no differing ideas can be spoken because echo chamber or hive mind or some such phrase
Yup, because obviously they were incapable of speaking, due to the closed nature of the site. Which is why nobody ever sees any postings like theirs. Oh, wait.
Numerobis in #88:
> > All you have to do to refute my claim is to cite a liberal democratic, industrialised, advanced Muslim-majority nation.
> …
> Indonesia, since Suharto.
Today’s headline out of Banda Aceh, Indonesia is about two Muslim students being publicly caned by the authorities for being seen in “close proximity” to each other, as well as four additional men publicly caned for gambling. H/t Friendly Athiest.
Oooh – bad timing for the apologist!
Um, let’s see: “Christianity too!” Hmm, nope, doesn’t work.
August
It’s a good thing those poor kids are getting canned so that you can falsely feel like you’ve made a point on the internet, uh?
Yeah, abandoning everything and everyone because fuck it, the end times are coming. And since this character Jesus is reported to have said:
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.…”
We can reasonable expect that includes stoning gay people, forcing raped women to marry the man that raped them, etc, etc…Not seeing how that’s any better than following Mohammed, to be honest…
Agreed. This is basic.
Sure, and so is every other religion, and yes, including christianity, absolutely.
Which ideas…? I feel like you are implying things like “kill the infidel”, which is not an idea as widely held by muslims as you are trying to imply.
False. Every single religion contains ideas that are incompatible with enlightened civilization, dangerous ideas, absurd ideas, terrible ideas…
Ignoring for a moment the tremendous absurdity of “real Islam”, sure, Islam is one of the many elements involved in Islamic terrorism which is one of the many problems the world faces today. Fight terrorism, fight every religion on the planet, including Islam, fight every bad idea there is. But can we do that without othering muslims and treating them like second class citizens?
k5083, #154
Islamic societies are just further back on the theocratic-secular spectrum. That’s plain as day. There’s nothing terrible inherently about Muslims or Islam relative to Christians or Christianity.
Don’t forget that until just a few months ago the enlightened civilization of the United States of America was officially prohibiting a man from marrying a man.
And don’t forget that currently as we speak, places in this glorious civilization are keeping it perfectly legal to discriminate against transgender people.
Oh, and the American religious prohibition of women exercising control over their healthcare. Can’t forget that.
So, yeah. Christianity too! :D
Uganda
You missed that point up there, right?
There are also people living in Germany now who’ve been jailed for being gay in the supposedly modern western Germany. Men who’ve been castrated in Belgium. Also after WWII…
k5083:
@124:
@148:
Heh.
reading comprehension is clearly not your forte.
chigau’s response is on target, so I’ll just repeat it:
spoing
you forgot to add:
“…so long as it doesn’t conflict with my ignorance of it.”
all too common to see the ignorant parading their ignorance these days, sadly.
hope you don’t have kids.
LOL you’re as good at “psychoanalyzing” as you are at everything else, it seems.
Although sometimes it’s also rational for those same people to be even more worried about the US military.
lotharloo Waaaay back in 84
This is your first comment on this blog post. Having read the rest of your comments, I can’t for the life of me figure out what you think you are arguing for or against in regards to the original blog post by PZ.
Do you think Harris is correct in his views of Muslims and how we in the west should deal with them?
Well, heck, I guess in pointing out that using bombs to attack people is only considered terrorism when there aren’t aircraft involved – and using aircraft to attack people is only terrorism when there aren’t bombs involved (except when someone attacks people on an aircraft with a bomb – that’s the only bomb-aircraft combo that’s actually terrorism, y’see) is just word salad.
Oh, well, now I know.
k5083 @148
Yeah, you mean like how Crip Dyke @132 dismantled everything you tried to say? Which you then prominently ignored?
Anton Mates wrote:
I can’t imagine why.. The U.S. uses such nice sterile phrases to describe its actions (crimes). Collateral damage (indiscriminate bombing of civilians), extraordinary rendition (abduction and torture by proxy), enhanced interrogation (torture), detention (imprisonment without charges), etc. Surely, these mean the U.S. government only has everyone’s best interests in mind.