Sort of political Monday
A disturbing trick we can play on ourselves and others is to narrow a question while answering it. Here is a simple example, Caroline is missing eight dollars and comes into the room and asks me did I take her eighty dollars and I reply, "I didn't take any money out of your wallet". That sort of answer would worry her and she'd be entirely justified to be worried.
Phillip Jenkins pulls just such a trick on us in a piece called "9/11: Did the Qur’an really make them do it?" You can see the move in the excerpt below (with some added emphasis from me):
Jenkins is no fool, he knows full well that no text is self interpreting. More to the point, he cannot be so stupid to have noticed that violent interpretation of biblical verses is a fringe phenomenon widely condemned by religious leaders whereas leading Clerics in Islam tend to sometimes support violent interpretations or tend to ignore or condemn violent interpretations in mealy-mouthed fashion.
On a broader scale, Jenkins must also be aware of the plight of women in Muslim countries and of the general lack of success such countries have had in adopting liberal rights and freedoms. These are not matters intelligent people doubt. So why do experts continue to insult our intelligence with moral equivalence?
Experts don't deserve our respect, they have to earn it and they haven't done much to earn it lately.
A disturbing trick we can play on ourselves and others is to narrow a question while answering it. Here is a simple example, Caroline is missing eight dollars and comes into the room and asks me did I take her eighty dollars and I reply, "I didn't take any money out of your wallet". That sort of answer would worry her and she'd be entirely justified to be worried.
Phillip Jenkins pulls just such a trick on us in a piece called "9/11: Did the Qur’an really make them do it?" You can see the move in the excerpt below (with some added emphasis from me):
After 9/11, many commentators went beyond focusing on the particular ideology of the perpetrators to speak in terms of a broad clash of cultures and civilizations. They focused intensely on Islam, trying to determine just what features of that faith led its adherents to violence and bloodshed. Many writers have presented Islam as a stark contrast to Christianity and Judaism, and portrayed a struggle of darkness against light.Notice how he has moved from a general consideration of the culture of Islam to considering the text of the Koran in specific. (By the way, when we are writing in English we can spell "Koran" the English way.)
The Qur’an, in this view, is something like a terrorist manifesto: the book oozes violence, with so many verses about battles, swords and blood. Fanaticism seems hard-wired into the faith. Are the core texts of Islam so repulsive that they will prevent Muslim societies ever evolving to civilized and democratic communities? Why can’t they learn to be like us?
Jenkins is no fool, he knows full well that no text is self interpreting. More to the point, he cannot be so stupid to have noticed that violent interpretation of biblical verses is a fringe phenomenon widely condemned by religious leaders whereas leading Clerics in Islam tend to sometimes support violent interpretations or tend to ignore or condemn violent interpretations in mealy-mouthed fashion.
On a broader scale, Jenkins must also be aware of the plight of women in Muslim countries and of the general lack of success such countries have had in adopting liberal rights and freedoms. These are not matters intelligent people doubt. So why do experts continue to insult our intelligence with moral equivalence?
Experts don't deserve our respect, they have to earn it and they haven't done much to earn it lately.
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