Fantastic piece. I worry that those who need to read it most are legitimately incapable of doing so, due to the risk of shattering the simple heuristic of "oppressor bad, oppressed good" on which their entire worldview is based.
Brilliant piece, Alan, thanks a lot for this! Really needs to be stated as clear and explicitly as you do here - this moral incoherence is harmful, but ‚progressives‘ don’t want to see, it’s obviously ever so convenient to be ‚on the good side‘ without giving it any further thought. Such a paradox :(
Black and white thinking and being right is so comforting. Because it’s easier to believe you are good if you know the other guy is bad. Much harder all around when you see the grey.
Thank you once again for such a thoughtful, eloquent piece. Feels like we are living in an alternate reality where critical thought and logic is no longer the norm. And woe betide anyone that dares even whisper a word that challenges these ideas …. you stand to be ostracised or ‘cancelled’. It’s such a joke. I would laugh if it wasn’t so sad and ridiculous. We are playing a dangerous game where we stand to loose more than we can ever imagine. I just hope that somehow the tide will turn before it’s too late.
If I could raise one question though, it would be in getting your opinion on the unique difficulty in seperating Islam as a religion from Islamism as a "socio-cultural-political ideology"?
The founder was, after all, not only a prophet but a military conqueror who after moving from Mecca to Medina spread the religion by force and who is held up as the ideal example for all Muslims to follow. (Within 100 years of Muhammad's death in 632, for example, most of what was once Christendom across the Middle East and Africa had been conquered and Islamic armies were fighting the French at the battle of Tours in 732). The other major world religions do not face this kind of challenge.
And to query your example, Russian identity is not inextricably tied to the totalitarianism downstream of Bolshevik success in 1917. But Islamic identity is inextricably tied to the specific sociopolitical teachings and biographical details of Muhammad which bear fruit with 1400 years of things like "dhimmitude", murdered apostates, "taqiyya", polygamy, and a slave trade which far surpassed the transatlantic trade in scale, etc. This presents quite a challenge to those even within Islam who seek to reconcile their religion with Western concepts like the rule of law or democratic error correction or universal human rights.
Am I missing something here? This may well be a blindspot of mine. How do you view this kind of concern?
Fantastic piece. I worry that those who need to read it most are legitimately incapable of doing so, due to the risk of shattering the simple heuristic of "oppressor bad, oppressed good" on which their entire worldview is based.
Brilliant piece, Alan, thanks a lot for this! Really needs to be stated as clear and explicitly as you do here - this moral incoherence is harmful, but ‚progressives‘ don’t want to see, it’s obviously ever so convenient to be ‚on the good side‘ without giving it any further thought. Such a paradox :(
Black and white thinking and being right is so comforting. Because it’s easier to believe you are good if you know the other guy is bad. Much harder all around when you see the grey.
Bravo 👏
Thank you!
Thank you once again for such a thoughtful, eloquent piece. Feels like we are living in an alternate reality where critical thought and logic is no longer the norm. And woe betide anyone that dares even whisper a word that challenges these ideas …. you stand to be ostracised or ‘cancelled’. It’s such a joke. I would laugh if it wasn’t so sad and ridiculous. We are playing a dangerous game where we stand to loose more than we can ever imagine. I just hope that somehow the tide will turn before it’s too late.
Very good Alan.
If I could raise one question though, it would be in getting your opinion on the unique difficulty in seperating Islam as a religion from Islamism as a "socio-cultural-political ideology"?
The founder was, after all, not only a prophet but a military conqueror who after moving from Mecca to Medina spread the religion by force and who is held up as the ideal example for all Muslims to follow. (Within 100 years of Muhammad's death in 632, for example, most of what was once Christendom across the Middle East and Africa had been conquered and Islamic armies were fighting the French at the battle of Tours in 732). The other major world religions do not face this kind of challenge.
And to query your example, Russian identity is not inextricably tied to the totalitarianism downstream of Bolshevik success in 1917. But Islamic identity is inextricably tied to the specific sociopolitical teachings and biographical details of Muhammad which bear fruit with 1400 years of things like "dhimmitude", murdered apostates, "taqiyya", polygamy, and a slave trade which far surpassed the transatlantic trade in scale, etc. This presents quite a challenge to those even within Islam who seek to reconcile their religion with Western concepts like the rule of law or democratic error correction or universal human rights.
Am I missing something here? This may well be a blindspot of mine. How do you view this kind of concern?
A breath of fresh air, and the perfect tonic to the nonsense I have just listened to from Rory Stewart on the most recent Rest is Politics!
I screamed at the last line.