Andrew, I don’t agree with everything Nick Cohen says (particularly in those passages where he himself feels obliged to lapse into equivalism) but he’s right about liberalism’s retreat into a cowed quiescence, both in Pakistan and in the heart of the west. By way of a (so far) less bloody example:
A prominent British imam has been forced to retract his claims that Islam is compatible with Darwin’s theory of evolution after receiving death threats from fundamentalists.
This is not in Lahore or Cairo but in London, at what is described as “a prominent mosque which also runs one of the country’s largest sharia courts” – in other words, a religious institution that already enjoys the imprimatur of state approval, albeit not (yet) to the same degree as in Pakistan. The imam, Dr Hasan, has issued a groveling apology – “I seek Allah’s forgiveness for my mistakes” – but they still want to kill him. Note the following line in the story:
Police advised him not to attend after becoming concerned for his safety.
As I’ve written before, “security concerns” are the new black(out) – the means by which those who are meant to enforce the law equally instead pre-emptively reward bullying mobsters who have total contempt for it. In this case, it may even be that this helpful advice was provided by Muslim police officers, who in Britain, Canada and Europe are often happy to serve as state enforcers for Islamic intimidation.
Dr Hasan is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. I wonder if those many western intellectuals eager to heap Himalayas of derision on those (largely apocryphal) American school districts that require creationism to be taught alongside evolution will be equally gung-ho about hooting and jeering at men who are willing to kill for the mildest suggestion that Islam and evolution are not entirely incompatible.
When the west’s bestselling atheists, stand-up comics, transgressive artists and all the rest belittle Christianity but steer clear of Islam, they’re not just engaging in prudent self-protection. They’re objectively advancing the cause of Islamic imperialism – because their selective mockery acts in support of the bullies’ core belief, that Islam is different and must be accorded a special deference: In practical terms, their selectivity comes to the same conclusion as any bigshot Talib in a hardcore madrassah. I said somewhere in America Alone that we’re operating to the same rules as the old Cold War joke: An American tells a Soviet that in America everyone is free to criticize the president. The Soviet replies, “Same in my country. Everyone is free to criticize your president.”
That’s one reason I found the Corner debate on the Westboro Supreme Court decision these last few days faintly surreal. In the rest of the west, Islam grasped very quickly that in some of the oldest free societies in the world the law bends according to the muscle you apply to it, and the Pansy Left (in Orwell’s phrase) will gladly concoct ever more tortured legalisms to explain why selling out core western values and incentivizing the thugs is the right thing to do.
It's hard to tell when NRO reaches a new low - the competition is so fierce and ever-changing - but this is certainly a contender.
You manage to make death threats against a scientist favoring evolution theory, on the part of religious fundamentalists, a mark against liberals.
You claim that creationism-touting US school districts are "apocryphal", when, aside from the numerous court cases that have been litigated over and over against exactly such districts, aside from creationist-supporting statements from legions of Republican politicians (including the crazy Sharon Angle, who just this week stated openly - while making an anti-Democratic political speech during a religious rally to promote a pro-creationism film - that she had actually taught creationism illegally when she was a public school teacher), there are overt and well-documented movements to promote creationism in many states and towns, including by the Board of Education for the entire state of Texas.
You make ominous and fearful reference to "sharia courts" - dutifully pushing one of the hot buttons that pass for ideas among conservatives - without noting that these "courts" in the UK are nothing more than a form of arbitration panel, operating under the same legal provisions that are so beloved of corporations and the right wing in contract law, and are voluntary on the part of participants (in a way that contract arbitration is not).
And of course, after spending two short paragraphs commiserating with the threatened party - whose statement you don't even bother to quote - you spend the rest of the piece excoriating liberals for not focusing on anti-rational trends among Muslims. Why liberals should share your obsession with finding things to complain about among Muslims is not clear; there's quite enough to complain about already. You're right that most complaints by Western liberals about creationists have been focused on Christians, because virtually all Western creationists are Christian - an odd coincidence, I suppose, but there it it. You're wrong that defenders of science have not given attention to Islamic creationists, however - there have been many articles in the pro-science press about the rise of Islamic creationism, particularly out of the Harun Yahya movement in Turkey, which has also been covered in the mainstream press for years.
In short, you are, characteristically, wrong about every factual matter, and you feed this confusion into your obsession with drawing sweeping condemnations of conservative Islam and Western liberals (which in your bizarre delusion you somehow conflate) out of individual incidents that you barely understand and can't describe accurately.
There is a danger here, but you can't seem to comprehend it. Let me help you: conservative religion and irrational anti-science attitudes lead reactionaries to use violence against people whose lifestyles or beliefs they find threatening. For this reason, conservative religion, backward-looking beliefs and attitudes, and mystical anti-science beliefs should be regarded as dangerous, and limited in their public influence. Luckily, there is a political movement that has been saying as much for many years now. Perhaps when you understand things better, you'll join!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFor all their faults, I don't believe it's true that the West's bestselling atheists (Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris) have steered clear of Islam, Just the opposite.
They do focus more on Christianity, but that's because they are from the West, and are addressing predominantly Western audiences, where Christianity is prevalent.
But to say that they ignore Islam is either ignorant or intentionally misleading.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCould you expand on the surreal aspects of the discussion here regarding Phelps? Mostly here I saw HuffPo-esque derision at Sarah Palin's views.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"“security concerns” are the new black(out)"
And legislators fleeing their legislatures rather than participating in them are the new coups d'etat.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell I'm clipping that "Pansy Left" remark for re-use wherever I want to look sharp.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think Mark is going light on leftists by calling them pansies. Surely their track record would warrant much, much harsher condemnation.
Off topic, but Toronto's new mayor Rob Ford fired the first salvo against the leftist parasitic class when he dismissed a group of corrupt Housing Council members. The baby boomer era of ignoring accountability, cost-benefits in favour of feeling good has reached it's long overdue end. My generation is not happy about billion-dollar deficits, combined with poor service/return.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMark,
I am glad you are back. But the more I read you and your humor, the more worried and terrified I am than ever.
(Was Allito's opinion then a blow against the Islamists?)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseVandelay, I don't think anyone is going to question Hitchens' credentials in this fight.
Dawkins did a long interview on the Medved show recently. Fruitful I thought, and good radio. Has Dawkins ever done a show with say, Al Jazeera?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Conservative religion and irrational anti-science attitudes lead reactionaries to use violence against people whose lifestyles or beliefs they find threatening"? What a joke! When have we ever seen creationists acting like the liberal thugs of SEIU and other left-wing rent-a-mobs? And no, I am not a creationist.
One of the essential features of science is that when your actions fail to produce the predicted outcome, you must revise or abandon your theory. By that standard, nothing could be more "anti-science" than Liberalism. You've been stuck on stupid for as long as I can remember.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse1. "...the Pansy Left (in Orwell’s phrase) will gladly concoct ever more tortured legalisms to explain why selling out core western values and incentivizing the thugs is the right thing to do."
What will the Royal Astronomical Society have to say about a member who denies Darwinian evolution? Middlesex University, where Dr. Hasan teaches physics?
I fear that, if the issue is addressed at all, the tortured legalisms will be that Hasan's views on biology do not bear on his expertise in physics and astronomy.
2. 150 years after "The Origin of Species" was published and openly debated in England, Saudi-abetted barbarians are intimidating a UK scientist, in the heart of London, to recant like Galileo.
3. Yet our last two Presidents have held hands with, kissed, and bowed to the Saudi ruler.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseStop calling lefties pansies. It's insulting to the pansies.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think the Westboro decision is good for those who want to resist Islamists' efforts to use the law to suppress their critics. If the S.Ct. had ruled against the Westboro trolls because their speech was too offensive, then that would've cleared the way for Islamists to get whatever they want by claiming emotional distress. So far, AFAIK, they have not gotten any traction for the concept that the first amendment stops at the Koran. That will still be true after this week.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell, Mr. Keith, so "conservative religion" (code for orthodox Christianity?) is dangerous. Tell me, how many millions did "conservative religions" such as Christianity kill in the past century as opposed to such progressive, forward-looking, "scientific" philosophies as communism and Nazism, or the humane and enlightened liberalism that permits the slaughter of millions of unborn children?
Mark is at least right when he contends that all these liberal champions of choice and enlightenment, who are ready to do battle against such forces of oppression as orthodox Christianity or political conservatives fall strangely silent when confronted by the bullying and thuggery of radical Islam, which is the real threat confronting the West. I seem to recall a similar pattern with respect to Mr. Hitler, Mr. Stalin and Chairman Mao.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI usually just ignore posts that start out with gratuitous insults (yes, even those written by my side), but wanted to help out KTK with something: "Conservative religions" aren't dangerous, but people who call for your blood with metronomic regularity are.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Conservative religions" aren't dangerous, but people who call for your blood with metronomic regularity are."
The difference is .... ?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThus spake Kevin T. Keith: "Why liberals should share your obsession with finding things to complain about among Muslims is not clear; there's quite enough to complain about already."
Well, that just about sums it all up now, doesn't it? Why indeed should liberals not stick their heads in the sand and pretend nothing is going on? What better way to enable your confederates, the blood thirsty thugs who bully and murder in Islam's name, than to look the other way?
As for: "...conservative religion and irrational anti-science attitudes lead reactionaries to use violence against people whose lifestyles or beliefs they find threatening", let me help you.
Agreed, there have been conservative religious and (not so conservative) anti-science attitudes that have lead reactionaries to use violence against people, unfortunately. But the whack-jobs on the right have wrought small potatoes compared to the accomplishments of mainstreamers on the left--and still manage. I would remind you--or inform you, if you have not been so educated--that upwards of 70 million have died in the last century to further the cause of the liberal orthodoxy (and many more in the devastating wars spawned thereby).
Liberal orthodoxy: that would be socialism, the hyper-rational (yet failed) science-based political and economic theory so beloved of the left.
And still they die by the thousands, if not millions: babies ("fetuses" in the minds of the clinically deluded) in abortion clinics, anti-government protesters in China--and "enemies" of the paranoid Islamofascists people like you so lovingly coddle. Yet you would be hard pressed these days to find a major religion (beyond Islam and the secular left) that espouses such odious practices.
There is a danger here, Kevin T. Keith, and not only do you not comprehend it, you give blessing to it. Before you chastise those who write for and read NR, you might want to step out of your ivory tower every now and then, get your head out of the echo chamber, wade out of your fever swamp, disperse your legions of straw men, and take a hard look at your own disastrous ideology.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm generally fan of Mark Steyn, but I do do draw the line when he starts making it up as he goes along. To say that "the west’s bestselling atheists... belittle Christianity but steer clear of Islam" is either obtuse or mendacious.
Here is Christopher Hitchens in a generally positive review of Mark Steyn's book (!!): "Some denounced me as cynical for saying at the time that Osama bin Laden had done us a favor by disclosing the nature and urgency of the Islamist threat, but I still think I was right."
Here is Richard Dawkins: "I do feel visceral revulsion at the burka because for me it is a symbol of the oppression of women."
Here is Sam Harris: "Religious sociopaths kill innocents by the hundreds in the capitols of Europe, blow up the offices of the U.N. and the Red Cross, purposefully annihilate crowds of children gathered to collect candy from U.S. soldiers on the streets of Baghdad, kidnap journalists, behead them, and the videos of their butchery become the most popular form of pornography in the Muslim world, and no one utters a word of protest because these atrocities have been perpetrated “in defense of Islam.”
These are three examples picked up very quickly; there are hundreds of others. Careless slander is not a credit to Mr. Steyn.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSeminar callers lead to seminar posters.
"I'm generally a fan of X, but here's where I draw the line..."
Typical.
Here's Nick Cohen, in that famously conservative publication the Guardian, thus Sunday:
"Even the supposedly militant "new atheists," whom genteel commentators darn(edited for the NRO vulgarity censor) for their vulgarity, steer clear of religions that might kill them. Close readers of Richard Dawkins will notice that almost all his examples of clerical folly are drawn from the Catholic and American evangelical churches, whose congregations are unlikely to firebomb his publishers."
I'm supposing Mr. Cohen is also woefully misinformed.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@ Kevin T. Keith: You sure hit the nail on Mark's head ...
Kevin: 'these "courts" in the UK are nothing more than a form of arbitration panel, operating under the same legal provisions that are so beloved of corporations and the right wing in contract law, and are voluntary on the part of participants (in a way that contract arbitration is not).'
Mark: 'ever more tortured legalisms to explain why selling out core western values and incentivizing the thugs is the right thing to do.'
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThank you for the comparison to the Westboro case. Anyone who ranted that it was the wrong decision should read this article. The United States has survived because we have held to our principles.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse