No, I haven’t read Bawer’s book but I did read this review which as far as I can tell is quite sympathetic to Bawer but has this to say:
If you read the review I think you’ll agree with me that it’s even handed in tone and quite serious; hence my raising the matter of the anecdotes and lack of footnotes with you.
Excellent. But what makes you think that folks posting on this thread aren’t standing up for liberty. What better way to stand up to liberty than to refuse the kind of bigoted infringement of equal treatment and religious freedom which the Swiss minaret ban represents?
Sure–but by the same token let’s hope that countries like Switzerland don’t sell out their liberal principles in the name of liberty.
I do get the context, Valteron–you might want to look at my posts again. Believe, me I would not favor the imposition of Sharia law, voluntary or otherwise.
Why would that be racist?
I don’t think you realize that I (along with many others posting here) am defending equal treatment under the law–Canadian law as well as Swiss.
Gosh Valteron, you’re so sexy when you’re condescending
Of course, but it makes no sense to compare Muslims to the Nazi Party. It might make sense to compare them to Germans.
So here’s the problem with your attitude Valteron. You seem at some level to recognize that
a) not all Muslims are extremists or religious fundamentalists so that
b) if an analogy must be made, Muslims are more like Germans than they are like members of the Nazi Party
And yet you keep insisting on demonizing, as a group, the very people with whom you might make common cause.
According to your own posts you’ve marched alongside “ex-Muslims.” Now I’m not sure exactly how you define that term but could you not imagine yourself finding common cause also with a secular Muslim who did not think of him/herself as an ex-Muslim? With a moderate Muslim?
If the answer is yes than you would probably find common cause with the great majority of Muslims in Switzerland.
So shouldn’t you be the first to say that the Swiss are overreacting–they have no problem with extremism and they are probably inviting it with their own extreme measures?
Could you give an example of a comparable situation? I mean, to my eyes, wanting to have buildings with minarets doesn’t rise to the level of me complaining, to be honest. And I wouldn’t complain about Christians (fundamentalist or otherwise) wanting likewise tall, noticeable structures. I’ll certainly castigate a murder or rape or some such other crime that’s motivated by Islamic belief; likewise, i’ll do the same for some such crime motivated by Christian belief (or, for that matter, atheistic belief). To go with your examples, i’d certainly castigate Muslims pushing Creationism, or opposing birth control (in fact, in the UK currrently, there’s something of a to-do about religious schools of all kinds receiving government money).
That said, I suspect that, on these boards, the number of times I have castigated Christians for pushing creationism is much, much larger than the number of times i’ve castigated Muslims. I’d say largely because the “battlefield” tends to be America when it’s brought up here, and Christians are a vastly more powerful force in American politics, both state-wise and nationally, than are Muslims. Even when we cut down both groups to those extremists or fundamentalists that I would tend to disagree with, there are still many Christian groups with a large stage and considerable support that can, worringly, actually get things done towards their aims. And that’s essentially the issue, when it comes to political crusades; I have very little confidence that any extremist Muslim group can effect widespread change, or that they have the support of a significant part of the population, or that they have the ear of many serving politicians. I can’t say the same for extremist Christian groups. In the theoretical, certainly, I will castigate any group the same for the same actions I dislike. But in the practical, i’m going to focus more of my concern on those groups I think have a greater ability to do harm. That seems reasonable to me.
I don’t sit around knocking Muslims either, until I get in threads like this where it’s “Poor, misunderstood, Muslims. Everyone is picking on them for no reason”. So the Swiss want to ban minarets. I can see how a country with thousands of years of history and beautiful scenery wouldn’t want to see tall structures built that are topped by a symbol associated with misogyny, terrorist violence, and honor killings. The French want to ban McDonalds and that’s OK with me. In the grand scheme of things what the Swiss are doing pales in comparison to Saudi Arabia which bans the importation of Bibles and doesn’t allow women to vote or drive. Saudi Arabia is oppressing 50% of it’s population vs what, 5% of Muslim Swiss?
As opposed to crosses on churches, which have at least as much evil associated with them? As for picking on them for no reason, what have these particular Muslims done?
I see, so religious tolerance isn’t so much a general principle, but rather a tit-for-tat where any religion only has to be tolerated better than the standards to which brutal theocracies of that religion are held?
Or maybe, we shouldn’t blame Turks, Bosnians, and Albanians living in Switzerland for the atrocities of Saudi Arabia. And I won’t try to get my local Catholic Church to lop off its steeple on account of their religion’s role in the Rwandan genocide, among many other things. Heck, the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston (where I live) has undoubtedly behaved more despicably towards the people of this city than all the mosques in Switzerland have towards that country.
In this case, sure. As I said, i’d be just as against someone trying to ban tall, obvious Christian structures. I’m able to draw a difference between some Muslims and some other Muslims. The crimes of some are not the crimes of others.
Well, I too honestly have significant problems with symbols in general, but they pretty much extend to all symbols. There is practically no symbol that doesn’t mean something bad to someone. But that doesn’t mean that I would make manditory that I am convenienced. I’ve been to Switzerland too, and I don’t feel that the view would be horribly spoiled by the odd minaret. So far as banning religiously-linked structures go, my aesthetic sense is not an impressive enough reason in my mind to do so even if I did think the view would be spoiled.
The existence of greater evils does not mean we should forget about the minor ones. That there are undeniably worse crimes doesn’t mean that we can happily forget about the little issues. In the grand scheme of things, a wrong is still a wrong.
Gosh, you’re sexy when you’re condescending, Dorothea. I was wondering what the problem was with my attitude.
I thought it was just my aversion to an authoritarian, highly homophobic, highly sexist, fascistic religion whose very name means “submission”, that has bloody borders and whose adherents are at continuouis war with their neighbours in countries in every corner of the globe, and whose announced and admitted mission is to bring the whole world under Islam, by force if necessary. Sounds a lot like “Heute Deutschland, Morgen die Welt” to me.
Or, as Libyan Leader Khaddafi has said, immigration and the birth-rate among Muslims in Europe may allow for the conquest of that continent without force of arms.
No, Valteron. There’s nothing especially wrong with your aversion to any of that.
The problem with your attitude is that **you still can’t distinguish between the small number of Muslims in the West who support such authoritarianism and the much, much larger number who do not. **
And since you insist on lumping the latter with the former, refusing to recognize how Islam–like most major religions in the modern world–comes in moderate varieties that pose no threat whatsoever to the liberties you value, you are, in this instance, part of the problem rather than the solution.
You would alienate the very people with whom you should be finding common cause.
You claim to stand for liberal principles but you are a close-minded bigot on the subject of Islam–which for you only exists as some kind of fascist continuum.
Look, I’m actually sorry if I sound condescending when I’m saying this to you. I’m not trying to; I’m speaking from the heart.
I really think you should befriend some Muslims and talk to them about your mutual interests in a more harmonious modern world. You need to get past your reflex to project your aversion to authoritarianism into a phobic and irrational aversion to Islam in any form.
Plenty of people will “get on your case” for criticising Christianity. As for killing, ( some ) Christians are perfectly willing to kill people who defy their beliefs. Probably the biggest difference when it comes to killing is that the Christians just aren’t usually as willing to admit what they are doing. But given that we have such things as Christian fanatics pushing for the extermination of homosexuals in places like Uganda, you can’t reasonably claim that Christians aren’t willing to kill for their religion.
Well if you were a doctor who performed abortions and you “criticized” Christian fundamentalists by doing your job you might feel differently about that.
But wouldn’t you say that one significant difference between the two cases is that whereas all Muslims get tarred with the brush of Muslim extremists, relatively few non-extremist Christians get tarred with the brush of Christian fundamentalists?
That is incredibly racist. Most Catholics live in countries where the people have brown skin. Do you think “all” members of the Archdiocese are bad? Have you ever “met” a Catholic person? Is this the sort of thing you do, post anonymously on the internet these sorts of racist comments?
Haven’t we been over this? In our country the extremists are marginalized and the government prosecutes them. Millions of people don’t take to the streets to protest when a cartoon depicting Jesus is published. There was no hit ordered on Dawkins.
Well actually I’m not sure that Christian fundamentalists in the US don’t some times take to the streets in their own way. They’re often a pretty vocal minority, their numbers are pretty large, and yet they also seem to exercise disproportionate influence over the political process. But that’s a different story.
So if what you’re saying is that you think we’re doing a pretty good job in the US of solving our Christian fundamentalist problem and that in Europe (or maybe the US as well?) there is a less good job being done of solving the Muslim fundamentalist problem then, okay, we’re ready to talk.
But how does a prejudicial attitude toward all Muslims help to solve the latter? And how does something like the banning of minarets in Switzerland help?
