I think they're right, I think there needs to be a conversation about what Islam actually teaches, and the media and leaders need to stop pretending the problem isn't Islam - the belief system - because it very much looks like it is.
However, when Benedict XVI touched on Islam in his Regensburg Address, it sparked a bad reaction with Muslims around the world who rioted, burned down churches and killed people. Maybe that's why this conversation is so difficult to have, and that's why it's also essential.
Related link: Robert Spencer and Michael Coren on the London jihad murder and the subsequent whitewash ~ JihadWatch
I find Robert Spencer very credible on Islam. He is criticised as being polemic but he isn't at all.
ReplyDeleteYes the discussion about what Islam teaches needs to be had but secular liberal western minds can't cope with it. Islam is above criticism and for the reason that those who should be criticising it are too frightened. Likewise they attack anyone who does. I think there is a lurking arrogance that if Muslim communities live in the West long enough they will, of course, want to become secular liberal thinkers. But of course they don't. I don't want to be a secular liberal thinker either!
In the end history tells us that either we become Muslim or we restrict immigration and reverse immigration status.
I don't think that's harsh. We can welcome all sorts of people into our society but we don't have to let them change it into their religious political order. I don't think Islam can feel itself to be truly Islam unless Islam is forming the political order of things.
Lindalee says Yes the discussion about what Islam teaches needs to be had but secular liberal western minds can't cope with it.
ReplyDeleteLindalee, would you like to see a list of secular liberal and sometimes western minds that are already having that discussion?
Mine is at the top.
Ed Brayton
Paul Zachary Myers
Maryam Namazie and the rest of the Council of ex-Muslims
Taslima Nasreen
(The late) Christopher Hitchens
Kylie Sturgess
Taner Edis
Daniel Fincke
Sarah Jane Braasch-Joy
Richard Dawkins
Sam Harris
Ophelia Benson
A C Grayling.
I could go on and on, but I hope you'll get the picture.
leftrightout -
ReplyDeleteI'm pleased you can come up with a list. Long may it grow...
But maybe some tend to aim at religion per se, contending that there is some atheist high ground. I'm not comforted by that idea at all.
If your name is at the top of the list - Ed Brayton - then how can you be helpful to anybody with titles like "Old French Bigot Kills Himself at Notre Dame".
Anyway my thoughts on the blindness of western liberals by none other than this writer from a Dawkins page:
http://www.richarddawkins.net/foundation_articles/2013/5/2/are-liberals-going-to-finally-get-it-this-time-about-islam#
I think an Irish (no offence to the Irish)pretty well sums up the efforts of liberal secularists to lead us toward their undescribed future happy place.
"Two Irish men went to a drive in movie. They hated the movie so much they slashed the seats".
Sorry, my mistake, did not mean to mislead, I am NOT Ed Brayton.
ReplyDeleteShould have read - My name is at the top, then:
You Do realise, don't you, that the author of the article you linked to above, Sean Faircloth, is a liberal? As are each of the folks I listed above, who are vehement in their opposition to Islamism. Yes, there are some who could behave better, but being a "liberal" is not some all encompassing faith with a strict adherence to dogma.
"being a "liberal" is not some all encompassing faith with a strict adherence to dogma."
ReplyDeleteIts dogma is individualism and freedom in the power of freedom of choice.
Such adherence to absolute individualism means that there is no reality beyond each individual's perception - there is no requirement to adhere to any truth beyond one self.
The effect socially is that when it comes to ethics there is no common good which of itself requires adherence. What is good and ethical is simply a numbers game. How many people agree with this or that. Endless polls. But polls tell us nothing of the truth of anything.
So of itself the philosophy of modern liberalism means that no one can actually talk to each other. They make things incoherent.
The cultural ethic which prevails like a traffic light is tolerance. Which is defended to the hilt...it implies underlying conflict and of itself becomes intolerant trying to silence those who adhere to any absolute reality.
For what its worth I agree with philosopher Alaisdair MacIntyre.