I used to think American liberals were more intellectually sophisticated than conservatives. Perhaps that was once true. At any rate, it is no longer the case. There is a lot of bad reasoning in the progressive criticisms of my criticism of Islam. It is a litany of informal fallacies. Let's review some. Some interlocutors simply made an appeal to the stone and dismissed my argument outright without consideration or presentation of the slightest shred of countervailing proof. Others resorted to ad hominem and accused me of bigotry or Islamophobia (although Islamophobia is a rational fear, as there is much to fear about Islam).
A few tried to intimidate me by flagging the post. It's easy to see how tools designed to prevent offense can almost always in some way be diverted to the cause of silencing speech for dishonorable motivations. Some threw out a red herring and brought up the right wing evangelical Christian instigation of homophobic barbarism in Uganda. This is a severe crime and is worth independent exploring and at length condemning in no uncertain terms (and can be connected to the doctrinal prose of Christianity). In addition to having nothing to do with a discussion about Islamic terrorism, it also does not stand up as a defense of Islam. It's a non sequitur to call for circumspection in criticizing Islam because other religions have monstrous pasts, presents, or likely futures. Islam still deserves all the same criticisms. It just shows Islam is one bad religion among many others. One wonders if there are any good religions.
When criticizing child rape should one also criticize murder and all other roughly morally equivalent evils in the same breath in all instances? This is a sort of discontinuum fallacy in that it calls for an unreasonable degree of generality when criticizing religion. Religious violence occurred on November 13th. Specifically, Islamic religious violence. My criticisms of Islamic terrorism and the beliefs that motivate it stands alone as a topic of discussion and are closed to a critique of Christianity and Judaism. There was enough ground to cover for one blog post. Others accused me of shilling for neocons, Teabaggers, and other failed right wing programs. I agree with much that is found in their critiques of Islam, but that establishes no further connection between them and myself. It is a position that I could've arrived at independently.
Some had more excusable logical mistakes, such as (we'll be charitable here as assume it was unintentionally) misunderstanding my argument. Criticizing Islam is not dehumanization of Muslims. Muslims are not inherently evil. I hope no one believes they are. They are evil Muslims if and only if they set about to act on the basis of the evils in their dogmas or evil misconstrual of benign doctrines, and not when they act on the basis of the good in the Qur'an or the good in their own conscience.
Crucial to my argument is the observation that the combination of canonical Islamic prose and the vile logical and practical consequences is the source of the problem. I am not quoting Islamic passages, which admit of different translations, as pure and sufficient evidence its wickedness. I'm not saying simply read my "King James version" interpretation of the disputed passages and hear it from the horse's mouth. If believes precipitate action, then beliefs that can reasonably invite motivation to a particular class of action and are cited as motivations for said class of action, say terrorism, can be inferred to be causally related to the action. It's almost certainly false in any case to infer they are the sole cause. Human motivations are complex and multifaceted. But their presence is part of a multifactorial antecedent sufficient to cause the action. When this manifold is in situ, as it is in the case of Islamic terrorism (the modifier here is both descriptive and partially explanatory) then we have to discuss the causal predicate if we are going to seriously discuss the matter at hand. We have evidence that the terrorism that occurred in France, the most lethal assault on French soil since WWII, was motivated by Islam and that this occurred is something a serious person cannot implacably refute without sacrificing credibility. This is worth having a self-contained discussion about. It's time for focus because the threat of Islamic assault is not remote. Furthermore, I'm not going to let my discussion of a major current event be deflected into a discussion of the history of colonialism and white imperialism. I've discussed and condemned both colonialism and white imperialism cogently and separately.
Why would a progressive try to run to the middle on the issue of Islamic extremism and the religious tradition that, along with environmental conditions, foment it? This should be something it is easy for American liberals to condemn. One should not let the spirit of contrarianism lead one to defend all causes of the Other. Sometimes enemies are just enemies and no more nuance or sophistication must be signaled on the understanding and articulation of this basic fact. Nuance and sophisticated are called for in solving the problem, and free energies should be mustered to the cause of solving the problem. Let the established facts of the illiberalism and savagery that is far too much of contemporary Islam be conquered ground that doesn't have to be rehashed and parsed at each outing. Radical Islam is a complex and multivariate entity that resists pigeonholing, as has been intimated in other posts. We need solutions (which I'd love to discuss). Not a redefinition of the problem. Lives are literally on the line.