Sam Harris on "Islamophobia"

[Mister Agenda]

And there is the insult.

When calling names doesn't work go for the personal attack.

I've proved my point, that Islam cannot be criticized. Any attempt to do so is shouted down with cries of "Islamophobe and dishonesty."

Especially the dishonesty part. The only thing proven is that if you say something bigoted enough, you'll get called on it. You seem to be a proud member of the large club of bigots who predict that their posts will be seen as bigoted, and think they've made some kind of point when they're actually seen as such. You deliberately said something you knew was bigoted and got exactly the reaction you were trying for. Nothing I haven't seen at Free Republic about blacks. Color me amazed.

 

[Ryokan]

Strange that. Your English seems good enough.

Is that what's called a back handed compliment?

Go ahead and add it up. That's what I asked for.

Well, Bosnia was around 200 000, Rwanda close to a million. How high a number are you looking for?

And are you suggesting South Am terrorists were motivated by Xianity?

No. But nor are all terrorists who happen to the Muslims motivated by Islam. Yet they're all lumped together anyway.

So most South American terrorists are Christian, therefore they are Christian terrorists.

Provide some numbers and we'll have something to discuss. But I doubt it.

Why? Why do you need specific numbers to discuss it? Were the Bosnian death camps any better than the nazi ones, simply because of scale? Was Saddam Hussein any less evil than Hitler, simply because he managed to kill fewer people?

 

[metacristi]

You've cited Huff before. He's hardly the final word on the subject, though (one just needs to read his exchanges with George Saliba to see that). And, as a sociologist, he naturally focuses on cultural factors, but other academics have done quite interesting work on exploring other reasons for why things developed the way that they did in Europe, China, and the Middle East (see, for instance, Ian Morris' Why the West Rules - for Now).

'Why the West rule- for now' - deeply flawed approach on the subject. By ignoring culture and worldviews you arrive, not surprising, at absurd conclusions.

As for Saliba well the history is still there and intellectual honesty shows clearly that science owe indeed a few things to islam but not much (complete fabulation his suggestions which amount basically to saying that all modern science has its roots in islam).

Actually it is the cultural relativist revisionism of history (fuelled by postmodernist nonsense), trying to 'show' that even science was a multicultural endeavour, which let such views to enjoy the fame they have at the moment in the West. Fortunately postmodernist delusions and Saidist (from Edward Said) crusade against rationality in the assessment of islam are nothing more than 'houses build on sand' which cannot stand long in the way of serious rational enquiry. As Ernst Gombrich put it when he answered the postmodernist accusation that he did not mention women before the 20th century in his history of art in the West: he wrote a history of art as it was (and not how some dream to have been, women artists did not feature widely in the West before the 20th century).

For Muslims, however, as Bernard Lewis put it, God was Caesar, the state was God’s state, the army God’s army, the enemy was God’s enemy, and above all, the Law was God’s Law. - ibn Warraq

- largely unchanged, they are not even capable to change fiqh in non trivial ways

 

[A'isha]

'Why the West rule- for now' - deeply flawed approach on the subject. By ignoring culture and worldviews you arrive, not surprising, to absurd conclusions.

Except it doesn't ignore culture and worldviews (which form part of his analysis of social development), instead placing them in context alongside a number of other influential factors.

As for Saliba well the history is still there and intellectual honesty shows clearly that science owe indeed a few things to islam but not much (complete fabulation his suggestions which amount basically to saying that all modern science has its roots islam).

Saliba's cutting criticisms of Huff cannot be handwaved away that easily.

Fortunately postmodernist delusions and Saidist (from Edward Said) crusade against rationality in the assessment of islam are nothing more than 'houses build on sand' which cannot stand long in the way of serious rational enquiry.

That's a pretty severe distortion of Said's thesis.

largely unchanged, they are not even capable to change fiqh in non trivial ways

That's an oversimplication of the relationship between siyasa and shari'a in the history of Islamic governance, to the point of being utterly useless as a statement. But then again, Ibn Warraq is a polemicist and not a historian or academic, after all.

 

[tsig]

The Muslim apologists are ignoring the elephant in the room, rioting over cartoons, beheadings and suicide bombings that happen every day. They also seem to think that knowing a few Muslims makes them experts in all thing Islam.

^^^This will be called Islamophobic.^^^

Especially the dishonesty part. The only thing proven is that if you say something bigoted enough, you'll get called on it. You seem to be a proud member of the large club of bigots who predict that their posts will be seen as bigoted, and think they've made some kind of point when they're actually seen as such. You deliberately said something you knew was bigoted and got exactly the reaction you were trying for. Nothing I haven't seen at Free Republic about blacks. Color me amazed.

What is bigoted and Islamophobic in my post? I merely pointed out than just mentioning anything about Muslims and violence gets you called names which several here promptly proved.

I see you decided to throw racism in as a charge as well.

 

[DC]

What is bigoted and Islamophobic in my post? I merely pointed out than just mentioning anything about Muslims and violence gets you called names which several here promptly proved.

I see you decided to throw racism in as a charge as well.

your claim was a lie from the get go, nobody was ignoring that some moslems do act in the way you describe.
you simply claimed it, and you tried to imply that its not just a minority of moslems doing so.

why do you need such dishonesty ? and do you think people can't read and will not see your dishonesty?

 

[metacristi]

Islam is a **** religion. If every Muslim woke up tomorrow and decided to become atheists, the world would most probably be a much better world. That goes for every other religion as well. Religion poisons everything.

The problem here is that you and metacristi aren't talking about Islam, you're talking about Muslims. Those are two very different things.

Let's put it this way... The largest growing religion in Norway is Christian Catholicism, because of immigrants from Eastern Europe.

If I warned against letting these people into the country, by arguing that Christianity is a special evil because Christians are stoning adulturers, burning homosexuals, repressing women, committ terrorism and try to get political power to enact religious laws, and that the evidence is right there to see, in their religious texts, Breivik's terrorist attack in Norway and all across Africa and South America - would you say that I'm making a good argument?

Say that Islam is ****, and I'll agree with you. Generalize about all Muslims based on the absolute worst of Islam, and you're an Islamophobe. Because my Bosnian neighbour has nothing to do with Al-Qaeda or the Saudi Regime, any more than my Pentecostal neighbour has anything to do with the Lord's Resistance Army or the Ugandan regime.

Actually we are talking about worldviews and doctrines (the attitude toward the value of Reason is one of the most important) and their influence on the mind of people. Not all that is bad is equally evil. Given that all over the muslim world religion (islam) still strongly shape culture and not the other way around (how is in other cultures, have you ever read the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in islam?) is strong reason that Reason and the real liberals are not winning (confirmed by the fact that the Islamic jurisprudence has barely changed since the Middle Ages, liberal reformers like Irshad Manji have to use personal guards to defend them, their followers are few etc).

Maybe there will come a day when a viable liberal islam will appear but at the moment the evidence shows plenty that it is the reactionary forces which are in firm command of the future of islam. We definitely do not advocate giving less rights to muslims but this does not mean we are obliged (for the sake of the 'community cohesion', actually risking the future for a short term goal) to adhere to the delusion of muslims that islam is peace, feminist, equalitarian. melting pot factor etc, and that sharia is fully compatible with Modernity. islamophobia here is as imaginary as the unicorns.

 

[A'isha]

Given that all over the muslim world religion (islam) still strongly shape culture and not the other way around (how is in other cultures)

Say what now? Islam has most definitely been shaped by culture, all throughout its history.

is strong reason that Reason and the real liberals are not winning (confirmed by the fact that the Islamic jurisprudence has barely changed since the Middle Ages.

Not only is this incorrect, it's fairly risible when you look at how the various nations in the Islamic world actually operate in the modern world. Not every place is Afghanistan or even Saudi Arabia.

We definitely do not advocate giving less rights to muslims but this does not mean we are obliged (for the sake of the 'community cohesion', actually risking the future for a short term goal) to adhere to the delusion of muslims that islam is peace, feminist, equalitarian. melting pot factor etc, and that sharia is fully compatible with Modernity.

You know, it makes it kind of hard to take seriously your claim that you're not broad-brushing all Muslims and that you believe that Islam can be "reformed" in a liberal fashion, when you do things like calling those Muslims who already do believe that way "delusional". Particularly when it comes in wrapped in xenophobic nonsense about "for the sake of the 'community cohesion', actually risking the future for a short term goal".

islamophobia here is as imaginary as the unicorns.

On the contrary, it appears to be quite real and tangible here.

 

[mijopaalmc]

On the contrary, it appears to be quite real and tangible here.

Perhaps, in this thread and most of Hume's fork's Islam threads, even palpable.

 

[Ryokan]

We definitely do not advocate giving less rights to muslims but this does not mean we are obliged (for the sake of the 'community cohesion', actually risking the future for a short term goal) to adhere to the delusion of muslims that islam is peace, feminist, equalitarian. melting pot factor etc, and that sharia is fully compatible with Modernity.

So my Bosnian neighbour is destroying community cohesion? Wow, I will never loot at him the same way..

We can agree that sharia is not compatible with modern societies. It would seem most Islamic countries agree with you, as very few of them are under sharia law.

islamophobia here is as imaginary as the unicorns.

Actually, with every post you type, you seem frantically phobic of Islam. It's all right, metacristi... The western world is in absolutely no danger of falling under sharia law, and if you took your Muslim neighbour to the pub and shared a beer or two, I'm sure you would discover that he's as human as you and me.

 

[mijopaalmc]

So my Bosnian neighbour is destroying community cohesion? Wow, I will never loot at him the same way..

 

[metacristi]

Except it doesn't ignore culture and worldviews (which form part of his analysis of social development), instead placing them in context alongside a number of other influential factors.

Obviously I haven't read the book in such a short time but George Walden's review (himself writing books on related subjects) offered me a good hint of what we are dealing with. The premise 'East and West got the thought they needed' is a blatant mistake, in reality some worldviews were conducive to rapid progress others to stagnation (but China was in a much better position than the islamic world for the brakes to progress were way less of a religious nature). Finally I cannot stop to observe the similarity of Huff and Walden's views relative to China.

Saliba's cutting criticisms of Huff cannot be handwaved away that easily.

Huff's answered conclusively here.

Saliba's refusal to deal with any of these questions results in a reduction of Islamic civilization to a colorless simulacrum of Europe or China. The discussion of "Astronomy and Religion" never gets beyond this nice heading, and "religion" becomes an empty placeholder leading the reader to think that the religious aspect to the field is irrelevant. Such a homogenizing falsifies history and social life; any serious effort to understand what happened to scientific activity in the Middle East over the centuries must acknowledge that Muslims had a different orientation to worship, timekeeping, and education than their Christian and Jewish contemporaries.

Furthermore, it is essential to acknowledge that until the end of the tenth century, Muslims were a minority throughout the Middle East. That means that their particular concerns were not the salient ones in Middle Eastern communities. In addition, the distinctive form of Islamic higher education, the madrasa, did not come into existence until the end of the eleventh century. Taken together these basic historical facts suggest that the "golden age" of Islamic civilization took place during a time when Muslims were a minority and Islamic institutions such as madrasas had not yet had a significant impact on educational training.

Saliba reduces the distinctive Islamic modes of education that were designed to preserve the Islamic faith, teach Arabic grammar and genealogy, and so on, to "educational institutions," leaving the reader to imagine that whatever educational process was going on in "Islamic civilization" was the same as in Europe. Very clearly this was not so. Similarly misleading, the author finds "scientists," "fellow scientists," and "tens of scientists," churning out an outstanding if not revolutionary scientific production. Such excess of praise leads to the false conclusion that scientific activity was fully institutionalized in the Muslim world and that it suddenly collapsed at the end of the sixteenth century when in fact scientific inquiry was excluded from the madrasas and gradually declined after the thirteenth century.

That's a pretty severe distortion of Said's thesis.

Is it? Let's think a bit, wasn't Said that who attacked Lewis virulently as 'orientalist' on the ground that he allegedly does not understand the contemporary muslim world and is projecting his biases in his writings about it? And Lewis is extremely mild with islam (he never really tries to answer the question 'why?' the muslim world went in the state it is now). All we see here is the same fraudulent use of words to incriminate serious people as in the 'islamophobia' story and inhibiting free inquiry.

 

[A'isha]

Obviously I haven't read the book in such a short time but George Walden's review (himself writing books on related subjects) offered me a good hint of what we are dealing with.

"The Economist has called it 'an important book—one that challenges, stimulates and entertains. Anyone who does not believe there are lessons to be learned from history should start here.' The book won several literary awards, including the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction, and was named as one of the books of the year by Newsweek, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, and a number of other newspapers."

But suit yourself, I guess.

Huff's answered conclusively here.

That's not an answer to Saliba's criticisms, it's Huff slamming Saliba's own latest book. And I'm curious as to why Huff felt the need to use Daniel Pipes' Islamophobic mouthpiece to do so, rather than publishing his review in a legitimate academic publication.

Is it? Let's think a bit, wasn't Said that who attacked Lewis virulently as 'orientalist' on the ground that he allegedly does not understand the contemporary muslim world and is projecting his biases in his writings about it? .

Yes, which is a massively far cry from a "crusade against rationality in the assessment of islam".

 

[metacristi]

Say what now? Islam has most definitely been shaped by culture, all throughout its history.

What about reading Wafa Sultan 'A God who hates' who 'coined' that phrase. Maybe she can convince you that people are not really in command of islam and how it affect them even in 'liberal' muslim countries. You seem to read only cultural relativist sources and expect us to read only them as well (personally I read enough of Karen Armstrong and Esposito about islam to realize that they are utterly wrong, little in common with a rigorous science).

Not only is this incorrect, it's fairly risible when you look at how the various nations in the Islamic world actually operate in the modern world. Not every place is Afghanistan or even Saudi Arabia.

Go live there then and see if you like. It's easy to talk from America about how great islam is and how nice muslims you met. Unfortunately even in the most liberal muslim countries we see all over the place the results of the discrimination produced by the remnants of the parts of sharia, regulating the 'rights' of non muslims under muslim rule. Personal freedoms are curbed in important ways everywhere and foreign turists learn this every year even in 'liberal' countries like UAE.

You know, it makes it kind of hard to take seriously your claim that you're not broad-brushing all Muslims and that you believe that Islam can be "reformed" in a liberal fashion, when you do things like calling those Muslims who already do believe that way "delusional". Particularly when it comes in wrapped in xenophobic nonsense about "for the sake of the 'community cohesion', actually risking the future for a short term goal".

If you expect me to believe that a religion having many in common with both Bolshevism and Nazism can be reformed via minimal reforms you're mistaken. Islam needs BIG reforms as need all ideologies having huge problems at the basis (in islam even the right to accept that Reason is a valid 'tool' is severely curbed, hence huge problems to enable free critical inquiry of its basis).

On the contrary, it appears to be quite real and tangible here.

I'm afraid this only add new evidence to the fact that fanaticism to be mild is not so uncommon among the apologists of islam. So to be kosher I have to agree with the view that we cannot talk of an essential difference between the different Abrahamic religion. Sorry but intellectual honesty do not let me go on this path. Reason show something else.

 

[Cleon]

Y'know, every time y'all use the phrase "apologists of Islam" it comes across like "****** lovers."

 

[A'isha]

What about reading Wafa Sultan 'A God who hates' who 'coined' that phrase. Maybe she can convince you that people are not really in command of islam and how it affect them even in 'liberal' muslim countries.

Wafa Sultan? This Wafa Sultan?

Really?

You seem to read only cultural relativist sources and expect us to read only them as well (personally I read enough of Karen Armstrong and Esposito about islam to realize that they are utterly wrong, little in common with a rigorous science).

I only own one book by Armstrong and two by Esposito (including his Oxford History of Islam). The vast majority of my library of books and articles about Islam are scholarly works by Andrew Rippin, Denise Spellberg, Angelika Neuwirth,, Kecia Ali, Jonathan A. C. Brown, Patricia Crone, Michael Cook, John Burton, John Wansbrough, Adis Duderija, Hugh Kennedy, Aisha Musa, Wael Hallaq, Salman Hameed, John Renard, Joseph Schacht, Ignaz Goldziher, Bernard Lewis, Gregor Schoeler, Josef Meri, Marvine Howe, Norman Calder, David Bienert, Gordon Newby, Daniel Dennett, Sandra Toenies Keating, Muhammad Ali Khalidi, Alireza Asgharzadeh, and Walid Saleh.

Just to name a few.

Go live there then and see if you like. It's easy to talk from America about how great islam is and how nice muslims you met.

Half my family live in Egypt, and are Muslim.

If you expect me to believe that a religion having many in common with both Bolshevism and Nazism

I'm afraid this only add new evidence to the fact that fanaticism to be mild is not so uncommon among the apologists of islam.

Yeah, well, saying things like Islam is "a religion having many [things] in common with both Bolshevism and Nazism" and recommending Wafa “You know Geert Wilders has said if he becomes Prime Minister of Holland he will ban the Quran, I admire him for that" Sultan to convince me about what Islam is "really" all about kind of makes my conclusion rather inescapable.

 

[Ryokan]

Go live there then and see if you like.

I wouldn't mind retiring in Turkey, when that time comes. I love it there.

 

[Dissolution]

Y'know, every time y'all use the phrase "apologists of Islam" it comes across like "****** lovers."

Does the same apply to Christian apologists?
Is this a general thing or do you mean the contributors to this thread?

 

[DC]

Does the same apply to Christian apologists?
Is this a general thing or do you mean the contributors to this thread?

what do Christian apologists do? and how is that comparable to what the people do that are called Islamic apologists in this thread?

 

[tsig]

Y'know, every time y'all use the phrase "apologists of Islam" it comes across like "****** lovers."

Y'know, every time y'all use the word Islamophobe it comes across like "****** lovers."