Okay lets start with the obvious:
Given that I had never written about Sam Harris, I found it odd that I had become the symbol of Harris-bashing for some of his faithful followers. Tweeting a link to an Al Jazeera column about Harris and saying I find one of his quotes revealing does not make me responsible for every claim in that column. I tweet literally thousands of columns and articles for people to read. I'm responsible for what I say, not for every sentence in every article to which I link on Twitter. The space constraints of Twitter have made this precept a basic convention of the medium: tweeting a link to a column or article or re-tweeting it does not mean you endorse all of it (or even any of it).
Notice how while tweeting this article he also then distances himself from this article. It is because Hussain basically smeared Sam throughout it. The Hussain article is basically slander. I could go into that but then I would be responding to two completely different articles, so I am just going to stick to this one.
I will mention however that the quote Glenn chose from the article is out of context.
"the people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists."
He actually then went on to say:
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.
to present the quote the way both Hussain and Greenwald did was deeply dishonest. They were presenting sam as siding with Fascists, when he wasn't doing that at all. To the contrary, he found it alarming as the rest of what he wrote shows. The actual point Sam was making was that the way Liberals were silent on Islam or Islamism and attacking those who dare speak out about it, inadvertantly ceded the ground to fascists who are actually making more sense on this issue. He didn't see this as a good thing, he saw it as a danger.
Now i must say, this article goes on about a whole lot of nothing that is irrelevant to what Sam harris has actually said.
This is where he actually starts to speak about his issues with Sam Harris. Again, there is a whole bunch of quotes that do not take into account at all the argument actually being made by Sam.
The key point is that Harris does far, far more than voice criticisms of Islam as part of a general critique of religion. He has repeatedly made clear that he thinks Islam is uniquely threatening: "While the other major world religions have been fertile sources of intolerance, it is clear that the doctrine of Islam poses unique problems for the emergence of a global civilization." He has insisted that there are unique dangers from Muslims possessing nuclear weapons, as opposed to nice western Christians (the only ones to ever use them) or those kind Israeli Jews: "It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of devout Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence." In his 2005 "End of Faith", he claimed that "Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death."
I will chime in on the argument that Islam is uniquely threatening. It is uniquely threatening because of the way it sees martyrdom and Jihad as a means of achieving salvation. It's true that a lot of Muslims see things like 'Jihad' as just an inner struggle, but there are also plenty of Muslims that don't.
You know, it's interesting. Some Muslim apologists have mentioned that suicide is forbidden in Islam, so what groups like Isis or Al-Qaeda are doing is unIslamic. It is not actually quite so simple as that. You see, these people don't actually consider it 'suicide bombing' that is a western term for it, they see it as 'martyrdom'. The question is, is that interpretation of martyrdom plausible? Not that it is the only interpretation simply whether it is a plausible interpretation. And the answer it seems is yes.
I remember reading an article actually titled, "Suicide attacks are un-Islamic" by Mehdi Hasan. There is one small problem with this article however:
Modern Islamic scholars have equivocated on this issue for too long. Even the so-called moderates of the Muslim world, such as the Sunni cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and the Shia ayatollah Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who have been outspoken in their criticisms of al-Qaeda and who denounced the 11 September suicide attacks, are also on record supporting the use of "human bombs" in a Palestinian context.
https://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2009/11/mehdi-hasan--islam-suicideIf you even have 'moderate' Muslim clerics that say it is sometimes justified, well that is
kind of a problem. Doesn't that give credence to the idea that it is a plausible interpretation?
And the truth is, no, not all religions are exactly equal. Christianity sure has had a bloody past, but aspects of it fortunately made it malleable enough for liberal values to take hold in Europe. For example, "He who is without sin throw the first stone" Is an argument for tolerance when you think about it. What's more, if you go to the Old Testament you will see a passage where it says the punishment for adultery is death. In other words, the fact that Jesus ignored a specific Jewish law, or at least the punishment for violating that law, allows you to make the argument for not following those practices.
In the Koran unfortunately it is not so simple. Muhammad was not Jesus. Muhammad was a warlord who expanded Islam by the sword.
Not all muslims follow Islam the same way of course, but concepts like Jihad and Martyrdom, while they are interpreted by a number of Muslims in a more benign way, can also be interpreted in the more extreme way and does throughout the Muslim world also. What's more, the life of Muhammed helps to give the more extreme way credence. It is this aspect of Islam that is unique to Islam.
You know, I was going to comment on other things, but I have written far too much already, so I will leave it at that for now.
