It sure seems like it is because certain people here simply don’t like having the ideology of Islam portrayed in a negative light in any manner whatsoever. No moderators counseled any of Islam’s defenders in the thread to stick precisely and only to elaborations of what exact actions to take. Of course the discussion of what to do is going to, by definition, involve discussions of the beliefs of Muslims and the doctrinal origins of those beliefs. Only the critics of the ideology are told to “keep the discussion on track” when it wanders into this territory. This is an obvious effort to take the heat off of the ideology.
It’s a nice way to promote the soft bigotry of low expectations bigotry, that’s for sure, by codling an over-sensitive minority.
One answer to the question of “what to do about Islam” is to stop walking on eggshells when discussing it. This just plays into the hands of Islamists and Islamic supremacists who teach that Islam is a special snowflake that deserves it’s own private intellectual space above every other idea. But of course that can’t be added to the discussion, not after the face-saving termination of the debate.
Hank, if you take a look at the forum page for Great Debates, you’ll see a button in the upper left. It’s labeled, “New Thread.” Why didn’t you click this button? How difficult would that have been?
The discussion should have been, “what should be done about a nasty ideology?” Instead, post after post was, “Look how nasty an ideology Islam is!” If your posts had said something along the lines of, “Anti-terrorist resources should be heavily concentrated in Muslim communities, given Mohammad’s espousal of terrorism,” or whatever ignorant belief about Islam you were advocating, you’d have been in the thread’s parameters. But you were rarely, if ever, actually answering the question in the OP.
It was a combination of atrocious moderation, well-poisoning, and the desire to push the thread in two directions at once, all from one mod.
The idea was to take it as given that Islam is evil and ask what to do about it. But “what to do about it” cannot include “point out that it is evil” to anyone.
The same mod who complained about hijacks posted
and
If someone can explain how that relates to “what do we do about Islam, which is assumed to be evil for the purposes of this thread”, it might help me care about non-mods “hijacking” the thread.
Well, I closed it because I thought it had pretty much outlived its useful life. It was time to gain focus by starting a new thread. Hopefully, the problems inherent in the other wouldn’t carry over. I’m an optimist.
Yes. That and stop trying to portray it as just another religion, no better or worse than others. No one buys it.
Oh, and trying to excuse/minimize/rationalize the murderous component of Islam today with stuff in the Old Testament is both laughable. Or wold be if we weren’t talking about the atrocities Muslims commit in 2015.