Atlantic piece on college word police and Trump's popularity

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

He said they "share my general concerns". That seems to imply he agrees on some level with their DA MOOSLUMS ARE TAKING OVER spiel. Bat Ye'or and Robert Spencer specifically advocate that the Muslims are going to take over Europe (as does Steyn). Saying they "share his concerns" when their concerns are essentially islam meets the protocols of zion implies that he buys into that twaddle. Channel72 and Batman already explained how Harris is full of garbage.

Can you actually articulate a real argument against Harris? Not "seems to imply...," but a real, actual argument. That's all I want.

Here. Harris' most recent work (with Nawaz), and a short one at that. It was posted mere hours ago, giving you the most immediate, up-to-date articulation of Harris' position with no baggage and no quote-digging. I want you to formulate a coherent argument in response to it.

Daily Beast

We Need to Talk About Islam’s Jihadism Problem
It’s time to confront Islamism head on—without cries of Islamophobia. Holding Islam up to scrutiny, rationally and ethically, must not be confused with anti-Muslim bigotry.

Ours was an inauspicious first meeting. Nawaz, a former Muslim extremist turned liberal reformer, had just participated in a public debate about the nature of Islam. Though he had spent five years in an Egyptian prison for attempting to restore a medieval “caliphate,” Nawaz argued in favor of the motion that night, affirming that Islam is, indeed, “a religion of peace.” Harris, a well-known atheist and strident critic of Islam, had been in the audience. At a dinner later that evening, Harris was asked to comment on the event. He addressed his remarks directly to Nawaz:

Harris: Maajid, it seems to me that you have a problem. You need to convince the world—especially the Muslim world—that Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked by extremists. But the problem is that Islam isn’t a religion of peace, and the so-called extremists are seeking to implement what is arguably the most honest reading of the faith’s actual doctrine. So the path of reform appears to be one of pretense: You seem obliged to pretend that the doctrine is something other than it is—for instance, you must pretend that jihad is just an inner spiritual struggle, whereas it’s primarily a doctrine of holy war. Here, in this room, can’t you just be honest with us? Is the path forward for Islam a matter of pretending certain things are true long enough and hard enough so as to make them true?

Nawaz: Are you calling me a liar?

Harris: What?

Nawaz: Are you calling me a liar?

It was good that we weren’t seated at the same table, because we were now more apes than scholars. The conversation ended abruptly, and with bad feelings. Happily, the room quickly erupted with dozens of parallel conversations, diffusing the tension.

Talking about Islam today is a dangerous business. Disagreements about the role this religion plays in the world have become a wellspring of intolerance and violence. Cartoonists have been massacred in Paris to shouts of “We have avenged the Prophet!” Secular bloggers have been hacked to death in Bangladesh. Embassies have burned over YouTube videos. And young men and women by the thousands have abandoned their lives in free societies to join the apocalyptic savagery of ISIS. For years, Western politicians and commentators have struggled to understand this phenomenon. And many have struggled not to understand it, denying any link between “Muslim extremism” and the religion of Islam.

Honest conversation about the need for reform within Islam has become a necessity. So we began our dialogue anew, and initial doubts about each other’s integrity and motives were soon replaced by mutual trust and respect. Neither of us would have imagined having such a productive conversation with the other 10 years ago. The result is now a short book, Islam and the Future of Tolerance.

What most discussions of “Muslim extremism” miss, and what is obfuscated at every turn by commentators like Glenn Greenwald, Reza Aslan, Karen Armstrong—and even Nicholas Kristof and Ben Affleck—is the power of specific religious ideas such as martyrdom, apostasy, blasphemy, prophecy, and honor. These ideas do not represent the totality of Islam, but neither are they foreign to it. Nor do they exist in precisely the same way in other faiths. There is a reason why no one is losing sleep over the threat posed by Jain and Quaker “extremists.” Specific doctrines matter.

Since 9/11, the whole focus of the international community has been on destroying terrorist organizations like al Qaeda and ISIS, as if they were mere criminal gangs that needed to be disrupted operationally. The briefest survey of the state of the world, from North Africa to the North-West Frontier, demonstrates that this strategy has failed, abysmally.

The underlying ideology—we call it “Islamism”—has metastasized and must be confronted directly. After more than a decade of conventional, physical wars, we must finally wage an effective war of ideas.

Islamism, often referred to as “political Islam,” is the desire to impose a version of Islam on the rest of society. Political Islamists, like the Muslim Brotherhood, generally do not believe in resorting to violence, though there are different attitudes even among Brotherhood franchises toward democratic participation, ranging from post-Islamists like the Ennadha Party in Tunisia, to semi-authoritarian conservatives, like South Asia’s Jamat-e-Islami. “Jihadism,” on the other hand, is the use of force to spread Islamism.

Political Islam is an offshoot of religious Islam and draws much of its inspiration from the Quran and the hadith (the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad). To be sure, it does not represent the faith in all its forms, but unless challenged, the underlying problems of religious literalism, dogmatism, and pious intolerance are left untreated and continue to spread. A poll in 2014, published in the Saudi-owned newspaper al-Hayat, found that 92 percent of Saudis believe that ISIS “conforms to the values of Islam and Islamic law.” Clearly, ISIS has something to do with Islam. That something is borne of a literalist reading of specific texts within the canon, a reading that many Saudi-based Salafists (a literalist movement that forms state-sanctioned Islam in Saudi Arabia) and ISIS share:

“And as for the male and female thief, cut off their hands as recompense for what they have earned, an exemplary punishment from Allah; and Allah is Mighty, Wise.” (al-Qur’an 5:38)

Of course, the Bible contains barbaric passages, as well. But there are historical and theological reasons why Christians and Jews can now easily ignore them. Unfortunately, out of excessive concern not to appear biased, many liberals consider any discussion of the special problem posed by Islamism to be a sign of bigotry. This attitude helps bar the door to reform.

To call ISIS “un-Islamic,” as President Obama has repeatedly done, and as Prime Minister Cameron recently stopped doing, is to play a dangerous game with words. Calling out and combating the ideology of Islamism is the only way that non-Muslims can help those liberal Muslims who wish to reform their faith from within. And failing to do so means abandoning the most vulnerable in Muslim communities—women, gays, apostates, freethinkers, and intellectuals—people like Nobel Peace Prize nominee Raif Badawi, who is being lashed in Saudi Arabia for the “crime” of writing a blog.

We do not entirely agree on how, and how fully, religion should be subjected to criticism in our society, but we both believe that merely repeating platitudes like “Islam is a religion of peace,” despite evidence that many zealots see it as a religion of war, blurs the line between truly peaceful and tolerant Muslims and those who aspire to drag humanity back to the seventh century.

Holding Islam up to scrutiny, rationally and ethically, must not be confused with anti-Muslim bigotry. Cries of “Islamophobia,” which have become ubiquitous on college campuses and in much of the liberal press, have been used to silence legitimate criticism. In an open society, no idea can be above scrutiny, just as no people should be beneath dignity.

We can testify to the power of honest dialogue on these topics. Though we initially met under circumstances that were overtly hostile, we pressed forward with civility and ended in genuine friendship. Without this type of engagement, the only alternative we see is continued intolerance and violence. And we have all seen far too much of that already.

You wandered into this thread, mouthing off baselessly about Harris. I want you to back it up now. This is Harris' most recent work. Go on, tear it up.

[Darth Yan]

He ignores the fact that shia muslims don't practice suicide bombings, or the fact that the reason extremist islam has power is because it has access to a buttload of money. If Christian Extremists had the same resources they would match ISIS in savagery. He doesn't talk about the ethnic cleansing buddhists are trying to do in Myanmar to Muslims. His point that concepts like martyrdom and apostates are somewhat rooted in Islam but he ignores that the quran and hadith are contradictory on the issue and that muslims can easily ignore the violent verses.

You said "All he's saying is that Breivik read a list of authors who wrote critically of Islam, which Harris also does. This does not mean Harris shares any other political views with those authors." That's a lie. He said that he "shares their concerns" and considering that their "concerns" is basically a conspiracy theory about how muslims will take over it's an educated guess that he buys into the same conspiracy theory. You're being overly eager to dismiss the possibility that Sam Harris may in fact have moved beyond legitimate criticism into full on bigotry.

In short, Sam Harris makes a few good points but buries it beneath the assumption that islam is a monolithic block and the assumption that moderate interpretations of the quran can't be valid. I mean when he first met Nawaz he said that "But the problem is that Islam isn’t a religion of peace, and the so-called extremists are seeking to implement what is arguably the most honest reading of the faith’s actual doctrine". That implies he believes that other interpretations that are more peaceful are "less valid." He ignores the fact that certain verses can be interpreted in a less violent way and that there are verses that advocate coexistence. Pointing out that he agrees with people like Bat Ye'or and Robert Spencer is hardly dishonest. I said "imply" because I'm being generous. I wouldn't be surprised if he wholly endorsed their views.

Harris claims that Islam is uniquely violent. It isn't.

Meh... the more I read here, the more I feel that Sam Harris has an extremely underdeveloped understanding of Islam and the Middle East.

I mean, take this quote, which I already commented on:

"Anyone who imagines that terrestrial concerns account for terrorism by Muslims must explain why there are no Palestinian Christian suicide bombers. They, too, suffer the ordeal of the Israeli occupation. Where are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers for that matter? The Tibetans have suffered an occupation far more brutal than any we or the Israelis have imposed on the Muslim world. The truth that we must finally confront is that Islam contains specific doctrines about martyrdom and jihad that directly inspire Muslim terrorism."

Yeah... good question, Sam. Where are all those Palestinian Christian suicide bombers? I guess the doctrine of Jihad in the Koran just inevitably leads to suicide bombing or something. At least, I guess that's Harris' conclusion here.

Here's another question: where are all the Shi'ite Muslim suicide bombers?

Did Harris ever think to ask that? I bet most Westerners never even noticed the glaring lack of Shi'ite suicide bombers. Well, to be fair, there are a few - they're just extremely rare. And yet, the Shia have been oppressed pretty badly in Iraq prior to 2003, and the Shi'ite militant group Hezbollah is constantly fighting against Israel, yet they almost never use this tactic. The few times they supposedly did (like in Beirut in the 80s), they never claimed responsibility and it's still not clear if Hezbollah actually committed all these attacks. To this day, Hezbollah leadership explicitly condemns the practice of suicide bombing.

So where are all the Shi'ite suicide bombers? Well, a few of them have popped up, like in the last few months, in Iraq, in retaliation against Sunni suicide bombers (who regularly use this tactic) - not against "Red Cross" workers or whatever, as Harris suggests is some kind of regular practice amongst all Muslims suicide bombers. Yet still, Shi'ite suicide bombers remain startling rare.

Why is that? It's because it turns out the connection between the Koranic doctrine of Jihad and suicide bombing is tenuous at best. Individual suicide bombers don't strap on the dynamite because they read the Koran and decided this was the best course of action - rather, they were convinced to do so by some Sunni Imam's interpretation of the call to Jihad. As it turns out, Shi'ite clerics, unlike Sunni Imans, rarely endorse suicide bombing as a valid form of Jihad. So how come so many Sunni Imams conclude that suicide bombing is a valid form of Jihad? Because unlike the Shi'ites, most high-profile Sunni imams are a product of the Saudi Madrassah generation - the generation that was educated in fundamentalist Saudi-funded Madrassahs that directly led to things like the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, and ultimately things like Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Yet Harris addresses none of this, at least not that I've seen in these select quotes, or the various clips posted online here. I haven't read his books, so I don't know if he discusses these issues, but from what I see here, at least, his understanding of radical Islam is almost childish.

I mean, I agree it's more likely that something like the doctrine of Jihad in the Koran would result in the idea of suicide bombing than anything found in the New Testament - Harris is correct about that. But that doesn't mean there's some clear, obvious link between Jihad as defined in the Koran and suicide bombing. A very hardline, radical fundamentalist version of Islam, which just happens to have the backing of billions of dollars in oil revenue, is mostly responsible for this connection.

Try giving Fred Phelps 100 billion dollars in oil revenue, and see what it does to mainstream Christianity.

Based on all that I think its safe to assume that Sam Harris does in fact hate muslims.

[Channel72]

I don't think Harris necessarily hates Muslims - he just naively simplifies the motivations of various heterogenous groups throughout the Muslim world to a very basic, straightforward religious motivation based on the actual text of the Koran. It's usually easier to simplify and caricaturize the motivations of other civilizations, whereas when examining your own civilization you're more likely to perceive subtleties and more complicated motivations.

But Harris' argument is very clear and straightforward: Islamic extremists are doing exactly what the Koran says to do. So therefore, we should stop acting like a few bad apples are the problem, and realize that the underlying textual source (and the entire civilization it has produced) is the problem.

He sort of acknowledges that the Bible also presents a similar problem, but then just sort of fails to follow through with that line of reasoning, except for this vague comment: "... the Bible contains barbaric passages, as well. But there are historical and theological reasons why Christians and Jews can now easily ignore them."

So he acknowledges that there are specific historical reasons that affect Christian behavior, apart from what the religious texts actually say. Well, the same can be said for Islam. Has he read the Hadith? Has he read what the Hadith says about Jihad, and how different Sunni and Shi'ite traditions interpret this? Again, consider how there are almost zero Shi'ite suicide bombers (until like, a few months ago). The reason that there are so many radicalized Sunni Islamic movements throughout the Middle East is due to very specific historical events and forces which I've already explained (mostly due to Saudi oil revenue funding widespread Wahhabiist madrassas, combined with European colonialism setting a precedent for suicide bombing as a valid expression of Jihad.)

What's really hilarious is that the "convert-or-die" religious impetus that the Koranic doctrine of Jihad is supposed to engender is actually more easily found in the history of Christian nations, even though the Bible doesn't really have a similar doctrine (unless you count the Great Commission at the end of Matthew, which really shouldn't be anywhere near as violence-inspiring as the doctrine of Jihad). But you want to talk about a fucking convert-or-die mentality? Just look at the French slaughter of the Cathars/Albigensians, or any number of Christian exploits in the "New World". Let's please remember that while hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from Spain and persecuted by Torquemada, Judaism flourished in Baghdad under the Caliphs - yet Harris seems to gloss over these things because the New Testament itself doesn't explicitly demand violence from its followers (unless you decide that it does...).

Well, of course the New Testament doesn't demand violence ... the New Testament doesn't really demand anything except to sit there doing nothing, believing in Jesus and waiting patiently for the fucking parousia. Yet none of this in any way explains the behavior of Christians or Christian polities over the centuries. So why does Harris think that we can so easily reduce the behavior of Muslims or Muslim polities to Koranic doctrine?

The point is, we can't. And different Muslim groups disagree about Jihad and what it means. I mean, just ask fucking Hezbollah. They don't believe in suicide bombing, but they're certainly pretty fucking militant. Or even among Sunnis - look at the Kurds - who rarely if ever use suicide bombing as a tactic.

In order to understand why there are so many radicalized (Sunni Arab) Muslims throughout the Middle East who vote for the Muslim Brotherhood and (perhaps) tacitly approve of extremists, we need to realize that all of this has a lot less to do with the content in the Koran and much more to do with what the local mosques and youtube imams are preaching, and why they're preaching it. Again, they're a product of Saudi Madrassas - and this is a very well understood and very well documented phenomenon. You want to put a stop to radical Sunni Islam? Stop buying oil from Saudi Arabia.

Again, I've said it a hundred times now - look at the Islam prior to the rise of KSA and Wahhabiism. Look at the Islam of the Ottoman Empire and the Islam of the Abbasid Caliphate. You'll find it's much less radicalized, with a much more straightforward interpretation of Jihad that doesn't include things like suicide bombing innocent people.

The point is, Sam Harris' argument seems to be that Islam itself is a serious danger, and we need to start admitting that so we can ... (what, exactly? Start shooting more Muslims I guess? I don't know... ) But while Koranic doctrine certainly doesn't help, and is nothing to admire, religious texts themselves are rarely the entirety of the problem. The problem is the culture, and the environmental factors that enable dangerous interpretations of these texts to go mainstream. It doesn't necessarily even matter how easily the texts themselves can be understood to require violence. I mean, the Torah explicitly requires animal sacrifice, but Jews ignore that because something something Hosea 14, whatever. And Christianity explicitly tells you the world is ending any minute, and women should cover their head at church, but we ignore that because it's stupid. There's nothing in the Koran that can't just as easily be ignored - the problem is that a huge amount of money has been dumped into promoting a particularly insidious version of Islam, and the West has only exacerbated this trend via a century of imperialism and haphazard foreign policy.

And yet, despite all of this - the average Muslim still cares more about the next Man Utd. vs. Chelsea match than anything the Imams are saying.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Thank you for at least rubbing two brain cells together. That's all I was really after. However,

You said "All he's saying is that Breivik read a list of authors who wrote critically of Islam, which Harris also does. This does not mean Harris shares any other political views with those authors." That's a lie. He said that he "shares their concerns" and considering that their "concerns" is basically a conspiracy theory about how muslims will take over it's an educated guess that he buys into the same conspiracy theory. You're being overly eager to dismiss the possibility that Sam Harris may in fact have moved beyond legitimate criticism into full on bigotry.

It's not a lie, it's Logic 101. You cannot just assume A also means B; it's a non sequitur.

Likewise, your interpretation of Harris' words is, at best, questionable. Are you a mind reader now? You have a better idea of what his "concerns" are than he, himself, does? He has quite explicitly laid out his position in many, many places, which can be loosely summarized as "Islam as a religion holds dangerous tenets that are a major (but not the only) factor in Islamist ideology and jihadist terrorist acts, which are clear and present dangers to free societies and further endangers Muslim minorities and secularists within Islamic states." But your ever-so-insightful inference of a single turn of phrase in a 4-year-old blog post clearly trumps the man's statements of his actual position.

Based on all that I think its safe to assume that Sam Harris does in fact hate muslims.

Do you actually think that? Whether you agree with his arguments or not (Channel72 has quite aptly demonstrated how one does this), are you really so blinded by your own bizarre mischaracterizations of someone that you can't even see when someone is acting with good intentions, even if you think his means are misguided?

That's just sad. And goes back to what I was originally saying in this thread; we've gotten so up our own collective ass agitating over whether someone is an evil bigot or not that actual discussion and debate becomes toxic. If you object to someone's criticisms of something, then address those criticisms at face value and stop trying to engage in demagoguery over the Secret Racism you've telepathically deduced they must surely have.

[Darth Yan]

If Harris acknowledged the wide variety of other factors I would believe him. As is he tends to overemphasize the religious element and downplay the other factors (such as the oil money, backing, resentment at the US) while portraying Islam as just one single bloc with no other interpretation