In FrontPage today I respond to Nicholas Kristof’s bizarre recent column in the New York Times about the glories of Islam. Kristof, of course, will not see this or respond to it in any way if he does — or to any other critique of his column by anyone else who doesn’t share his world view. The Leftist intelligentsia speaks only to the Leftist intelligentsia — and to Islamic supremacists. The notion that there is a free and open public debate in America today is, to put it mildly, naive.
Only thirteen years after 9/11, the Bill Maher/Ben Affleck kerfuffle has broken the media logjam preventing open discussion of whether Islam is a uniquely violent religion, and finally brought that question into the mainstream of the public discourse. The mainstream media and Leftist intelligentsia, badly rattled by Maher’s defection, is circling the wagons with a series of articles about how Maher is wrong, ignorant, bigoted, and after all just a comedian anyway – including a New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof (a bit player in the Maher/Affleck brawl), predictably entitled “The Diversity of Islam.”
Islam’s glorious diversity, of course, is something that we are all supposed to acknowledge and celebrate, on pain of charges of “Islamophobia” and “bigotry.” For Leftists and Islamic supremacists, it is a cardinal sin to essentialize Islam – that is, to dare to suggest that it actually teaches and stands for anything in particular. It is even worse to say anything that might give anyone the impression that Islam is a monolith. The political and media elites insist that we must see Islam as a marvelously diverse, multifaceted thing – as long as we don’t whisper anything to the effect that its diversity includes mass murderers and rapists acting in accord with mainstream understandings of its texts and teachings.
One irony (among many) of all this is that Islam is, in point of fact, one of the least diverse entities on the planet. A few years I came across a group photo of a summit meeting of Southeast Asian government officials. The Vietnamese, Thai, Laotian, Cambodian, Thai, Burmese and Chinese officials all had names indigenous to their nations; the Malaysian and Indonesian ministers had names like Muhammad and Abdullah – names indigenous to Arabia. Converts to Islam the world over give up a bit of their cultural diversity to take on Arabic names, and in many cases feel compelled to adopt the dress of a seventh-century Arab. This is not diversity, it’s homogeneity.
Nor is there, despite numerous claims to the contrary, significant diversity in the understanding of Islamic law, Sharia. Wherever Sharia is fully implemented around the world today, from Sudan to Saudi Arabia to Iran, it looks largely the same: freedom of speech is restricted, women and non-Muslims are denied basic rights, apostates from Islam are ostracized or even killed, “heretics” and “blasphemers” are hounded by legal authorities and/or lynch mobs. The four major Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree on 75% of all rulings, and those matters upon which they differ are not central to Islamic faith or practice.
Nonetheless, the diversity of Islam is a key number in the liberal hymnbook, and Kristof gives it a game rendition in last Wednesday’s Times. The goal, of course, is to buttress Affleck’s claim that it is “gross” and “racist” to suggest that there is anything particularly violent about Islam – well, there are those jihad terrorists, yes, but the whole thing is so diverse, you see.
Kristof attempts to illustrate this by asserting that “historically, Islam was not particularly intolerant, and it initially elevated the status of women.” This is a common myth; that Kristof would retail it indicates he is unaware of, or unwilling to confront, the unpleasant facts of the institutionalized oppression of dhimmitude that made for the violent oppression of religious minorities in the Islamic world until they were abolished in the mid-nineteenth century.
But what about tolerant, pluralistic al-Andalus? The philosopher Maimonides, a Jew who lived for a time in Muslim Spain and then fled that supposedly tolerant and pluralistic land, remarked,
You know, my brethren, that on account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael, who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us….No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have….We have borne their imposed degradation, their lies, and absurdities, which are beyond human power to bear.
Kristof follows up this wishful thinking with a frankly bizarre sentence: “Anybody looking at the history even of the 20th century would not single out Islam as the bloodthirsty religion; it was Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe and Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu/atheist Asia that set records for mass slaughter.” “Christian/Nazi/Communist”? “Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu/atheist”? These conflations render Kristof’s argument utterly incoherent. Islam is not “the bloodthirsty religion,” but “Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe” is? Is “Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe” a religion? Is it any single thing at all?
The real question is whether Islamic teachings are uniquely “bloodthirsty,” as opposed to “Christian/Nazi/Communist” teachings or anything else. And so Kristof addresses that point: “Likewise, it is true that the Quran has passages hailing violence, but so does the Bible, which recounts God ordering genocides, such as the one against the Amalekites.” Kristof doesn’t mention that this command is not an open-ended one directed to all believers (such as is found in the Qur’an), but is, rather, a specific directive given to Saul regarding one group only, the Amalekites. If you are neither Saul nor an Amalekite, it doesn’t concern you. Nor can Kristof adduce even a single example of a Jew or a Christian committing an act of violence and justifying it by referring to the order given against the Amalekites.
Nor does Kristof mention that neither Judaism nor Christianity, in any of their forms, have now or have ever had any doctrines equivalent to the Islamic doctrine that the Muslim community “makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians …until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax” (‘Umdat al-Salik O9.8). The quotation comes from a manual of Islamic law certified by the most prestigious and influential institution in Sunni Islam, al-Azhar, as conforming “to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community.”
I challenge Nicholas Kristof to provide a quotation from any Jewish or Christian authority comparable to al-Azhar, calling upon believers to make war against and subjugate non-believers. He does not do so in this article; instead, he spends the balance of his article retailing anecdotes about non-Muslims who were scoundrels and Muslims who were wonderful people, which proves exactly nothing about the teachings of Islam and whether they have any unique capacity to incite believers to violence. Human beings all have a variety of influences and priorities; Christian villains and Muslim heroes indicate nothing about Christianity or Islam unless their actions are related to their religion’s teachings; Kristof makes no attempt to do so.
Kristof concludes by asserting that “the great divide is not between faiths, but one between intolerant zealots of any tradition and the large numbers of decent, peaceful believers likewise found in each tradition.” Times readers who read this ringing phrase with satisfaction over their morning lattes doubtless didn’t pause to try to name any Jewish or Christian intolerant zealots who committed mass murder on the scale of 9/11 and justified it by pointing to their scriptures. Mere details. Islam is diverse, Islam is peaceful, and stubborn skeptics can always be silenced with shouts of “Tim McVeigh” and “the Crusades” as the great march of tolerance and diversity moves confidently forward.
jihad3tracker says
For those of you who want to make Mr. Kristof aware of RS’s Front Page posting — so at least he will have a choice of whether to respond — here is a contact path :
https://twitter.com/NickKristof
Nonbeliever says
I’m saddened to see that this foolish Islamodefender has over 1 million followers on Twitter. I’m guessing that his publisher/editor has paid to advertise his account. Meanwhile, those telling the truth about only get a tens of thousands of followers, if that.
cassandra says
I am sure he bought them, are there even 1 million readers of the New York Slimes??
Everyday I get ppl offering me 30,000 new followers on twitter, so it wouldnt take long…
cassandra says
Here is his whining muslim-style response:
Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof · Oct 9
I’m being denounced for my Islam column, http://nyti.ms/1xqRtWj , by Islamophobic fanatics whose intolerance reminds me of Muslim fanatics.
nacazo says
I tweeted a scathing attack to kristof :
“@NickKristof Robert Spencer has comments regarding your Times column. Care to address?” plus the webaddress.
/sarc off
jihad3tracker says
I am launching a huge “thanks” toward your slice of the solar system, nacazo ! !
Oliver says
But, Mr. Spencer,
Islam is diverse.
JUST LOOK at the people ISISI (AKA IS, ISSL, ETC) HAVE CRUCIFIED AND/OR BEHEADED.
There was an American /Israeli Jew (male); American (I guess Christian or Catholic) male; Syrian soldiers (Muslims, of a different branch of Islam); some women the other day-I did not-I admit-read the story–but one was a doctor-did not see their nationalities- but the women were obviously females; and the list goes on.
In Pakistan, there is killing against atheists; blasphemers; Muslims of different faiths; Hindus; etc.
See, they are diverse–if only in whom they murder and torture.
(I know, i left out the Yazdis; Coptics; etc; )
jihad3tracker says
Yes, Oliver — in much the same way as omnivorous reptiles.
Oliver says
In an article on Yahoo/AP news yesterday, there was mention that INDIA will not put up with Pakistan shooting missiles and rockets into Indian territory.
In the comments, there was some Muslim slime, who seemingly (this POS indicated the same) lives in the US, and talks that the Muslims here will kill Hindus, here–if India dares retaliate, etc.
Another example of the Religion of Piss and their diversity.
Kepha says
Much as I hate idolatry, this American Christian hopes to God that the minute the slimeball whom Oliver describes starts acting on his threat, that our law enforcement will deport his sorry keester all the way back Pethologicalstan.
zulu says
OT
We sold Yazidi women and children as sex slaves because it’s God’s law says ISIS: Terror group says Sharia allows them to enslave ‘pagans’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2790131/Islamic-State-magazine-says-group-enslaved-Yazidis.html#ixzz3G2zxd1mm
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
zulu says
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11158797/Thousands-of-Yazidi-women-sold-as-sex-slaves-for-theological-reasons-says-Isil.html
Thousands of Yazidi women sold as sex slaves ‘for theological reasons’, says Isil
Article in Islamic State’s English-language online magazine Dabiq not only admits selling Yazidi women into sex slavery but justifies it according to the theological rulings of early Islam
Custos Custodum says
Falsely connecting the atheist/socialist mass murders of the 20th century to “Christian” beliefs has been one of the foundational BIG LIES since World War II.
In fact, neither Hitler’s National Socialists nor Stalin’s Communists ever claimed to be committing murders in the name of Christian beliefs, and both worked vigorously to suppress and demean Christianity in their respective empires.
By contrast, acts of murder, rape, enslavement and degradation by Islamic supremacist are invariably accompanied by loud proclamations of their Islamic motivation both by the perpetrators and their co-religionists, often citing specific chapters (suras) and verses of Muhammad’s “Holy Qur’an.”
The National Socialists’ murder of Edith Stein – a prominent Catholic theologian and Carmelite nun from a Jewish background – at Auschwitz demonstrates the Socialists’ real view of Christianity.
UneasyOne says
Sam Harris was also involved. He is, in fact, a prominent leftest.
lebel says
“The philosopher Maimonides, a Jew who lived for a time in Muslim Spain and then fled that supposedly tolerant and pluralistic land, ”
One account does not indicate that much, even if it Maimonides. It is also interesting that he left for another Muslim country rather than fleeing into the tolerant Christian lands. It is also important to note that he left only after the Almohads came, and everyone knows that they were considered extremists.
nacazo says
There are also the martyrs of Cordoba in peaceful al-andalus. yes there were some enlightened rulers who put a Jewish wazir or two but right away the muslim clerics pointed how the quran does not permit kuffar to rule over muslims, the ensuing riots occurred where Jews were killed to satisfy the blood-thirsty mob.
In 1066, Yusuf ibn Nagrila, the ‘Arabized’ son of a Jewish rabbi and poet, was serving as wazir to Badis al-Muzaffar, the ruler of Muslim Granada. In December of that year, riots broke out in which the Muslim majority of the population attacked and killed its Jewish minority – Ibn Nagrila himself was crucified. Estimates for the casualties range as high as 4,000 persons.
Beagle says
Kristof from the NYT column:
“Our conversation degenerated into something close to a shouting match and went viral on the web.”
— —
Another example of the deceit-out-of-the-gate strategy employed by many opinion makers who can get away with it. Though honestly here I don’t see how Kristof thinks he can get away with it. Force of habit perhaps. Viewing the video shows Affleck sticks his nose into a one-on-one interview segment between Maher and Harris. Affleck’s criticisms are sarcastically accusing Harris of knowing little about Islam in addition by the quoted “racist” and “gross” accusations. From a formal debate standpoint, Affleck should want a do-over. That’s about as poor of an opening argument as can be made other than disoriented obscenity.
Off to a slow start by quoting Affleck’s “gross” gambit, Kristof, as one must, breaks his argument into three sections and then opines:
“First, historically, Islam was not particularly intolerant, and it initially elevated the status of women. Anybody looking at the history even of the 20th century would not single out Islam as the bloodthirsty religion; it was Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe and Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu/atheist Asia that set records for mass slaughter.”
— —
Fantastic use of a weasel words: “historically” and “particularly”. This allows Kristof to later backtrack into an early medieval Seventh Century worldview where beheading Jews by the hundreds and butchering or enslaving entire peoples, leaving behind pyramids of human heads, was not as unusual as it is today. But there is the matter of making this argument in 2014 when we hold no other religion, nation, or people to a similarly low standard. If it is done in reality, nobody would use it as an argument. You (probably, but I’ve learned to never underestimate human irrationality) won’t read: “Historically, North Korea is not particularly bad compared to Stalin, Pol Pot, or Mao’s Communist dictatorships.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/05/the_greatest_murder_machine_in_history.html
http://themuslimissue.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/the-religion-of-genocide-and-hate-more-people-are-killed-by-islamists-each-year-than-in-all-350-years-of-the-spanish-inquisition-combined/
You know you’re in trouble when: Islam’s treatment of women is being used as a selling point. I will leave that for Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Amina and Sarah Said to address. Some claim Muhammad ended the outright infanticide of girls which was prevalent in those days. Well then, the work on equalizing female fundamental rights was done. You’ve come a long way, baby. Education, freedom of movement, choices in your personal life? Those belong to daddy, sweetie, Kristof inadvertently suggests.
Oddly, or not, due to the fact Kristof may truly know something about the early history of Islam under Muhammad and the subsequent conquests, Kristof switches gears to the 20th Century. So we’ve now jumped from the early Seventh Century to the 20th without Kristof adducing a single fact to support his position.
Look at his example “Christian/Nazi/Communist”.
???
:/
In fairness, three word summaries of centuries are prone to failure. He does that to the Far East as well. What does that mean?
I think I get it. Using my best Jeremy Clarkson voice on Top Gear when he is pretending to be both expert and stupid about something for humorous effect: “MANY people died of MANY things in the 20th Century and Islam was not among them.”
Wrong:
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/genocide.html
Islamic violence against Israel, in Indonesia, between Pakistan and India, the birth of modern suicide terrorism with explosives and vehicles…
Kristof continues:
“Likewise, it is true that the Quran has passages hailing violence, but so does the Bible, which recounts God ordering genocides, such as the one against the Amalekites.”
— —
Oddly, Kristof admits something here: Islam has passages “hailing” violence while the Bible “recounts” it. While to “hail” is an awkward construction in this context. To hail a cab is to want one to arrive in the future. It does seem to allow that there is something uniquely dangerous about the Islamic treatment of violence. And there is:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/023-violence.htm
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Bible-Quran-Violence.htm
Kristof’s second point is actually quite good. He should have built an entire editorial around that instead of trying to deflect from the facts he admits in that section.
Quote:
“Moreover, of the 10 bottom-ranking countries in the World Economic Forum’s report on women’s rights, nine are majority Muslim.”
— —
Wait, what about women’s rights at the top? Oh yes, “historically” and “particularly”. This was a auto-debunking.
In his third section Kristof admits Harris and Maher were right all along, without actually admitting it.
Quote:
“Yes, almost four out of five Afghans favor the death penalty for apostasy, but most Muslims say that that is nuts. In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, only 16 percent of Muslims favor such a penalty. In Albania, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, only 2 percent or fewer Muslims favor it, according to the Pew survey.”
— —
Notice Kristof leaves out the many nations which have majorities in favor of death for apostasy.
http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Islam_and_Apostasy
Quote:
A Pew poll released on December 2, 2010, found that even today “The majority of Muslims would favor changing current laws in their countries to “allow stoning as punishment for adultery, hand amputation for theft, and death for those who convert from Islam as their religion”.[9][10]
— —
Best case scenario: if you leave Islam somewhere on planet Earth only two out of every hundred Muslim people you meet will want to kill you for it. Fan-tastic! Nothing to worry about then.
For his big finish, Kristof names bad actors in history who were not Muslims and Muslims he finds to be modern reformers. Nobody, ever, asserted all the bad people in history were Muslims. Nobody.
I like Zuhdi Jasser and this ‘Muslim’ guy I know who drinks scotch and likes dogs. There are many other reformers I admired, but they were killed by other Muslims.
Beagle says
I wish I was paid by the typo. Twenty bucks for an edit function.
jihad3tracker says
Hello Beagle — Typos from your quill & ink are herewith forgiven, in future perpetuity.
Thanks hugely for gems of fact and analysis we JW readers get in return for a few spelling errors ! !
Kepha says
@Beagle:
On behalf of the teaching profession, mea culpa, re Kirstof’s beliefe that Islam was historically tolerant. Maybe Ummayad Andalus was “tolerant” compared to the Duke of Alva’s regime in the Low Countries, but “tolerant” is a relative concept. The fact is, we in the public school must carry water for a long tradition of very shallow thinkers who mistook shocking the Bourgeoisie for depth. Frankly, I’d like to dump out these buckets of swill burdening my teaching, but I wish to keep my job. This will ensure that another generation of Nicholas Kristof will emerge from our schools, confident that they are the educated “Greeks” compared to us “barbarians”, down to the very day some member of the successor organization to ISIS slits their throats.
If teaching history is supposed to preserve the “memory” of civilization, it is preserving a very selective one that re-inforces the prejudices and adolescent rebellions of a bunch of nitwits of an earlier age.
Tradewinds says
What’s wrong with Kristof? Imbibing too much PC Kool-Aid?
Champ says
Kristof follows up this wishful thinking with a frankly bizarre sentence: “Anybody looking at the history even of the 20th century would not single out Islam as the bloodthirsty religion; it was Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe and Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu/atheist Asia that set records for mass slaughter.” “Christian/Nazi/Communist”? “Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu/atheist”? These conflations render Kristof’s argument utterly incoherent. Islam is not “the bloodthirsty religion,” but “Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe” is? Is “Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe” a religion? Is it any single thing at all?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hmm, I see that Kristof writes dangerous wrongheaded fiction …
And: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” — Isaiah 5:20
Jaladhi says
He is delusional when he calls Buddhists and Hindus blood thirsty. Only if thes guys were so Islam could have survived in India and Indian subcontinent. Kristof needs to read history again before spouting such nonsense!!
Kepha says
@Champ:
Kristof follows up this wishful thinking with a frankly bizarre sentence: “Anybody looking at the history even of the 20th century would not single out Islam as the bloodthirsty religion; it was Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe and Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu/atheist Asia that set records for mass slaughter.” “Christian/Nazi/Communist”? “Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu/atheist”? These conflations render Kristof’s argument utterly incoherent. Islam is not “the bloodthirsty religion,” but “Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe” is? Is “Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe” a religion? Is it any single thing at all?
———————————–
With great trepidation about stepping on the toes of many whom I respect here,
I think Kristof has lived too long surrounded by secularized Jews (?). Such people think that even if someone believes the Gospels are trash and that Jesus never existed, he remains a “Christian” because his parents went to church on Christmas and Easter, and he can’t locate any Jews in his family tree. Hence, Stalin, who tried very brutally to root out Christianity in Russia until he found it politically useful in galvanizing resistance to the German invasion was a “Christian”. I guess even Kim Ilsung would count in such eyes, since regardless of what he himself came to believe and attempt to impose on northern Korea, it turns out his parents were nice, middle-class Presbyterians (Gasp :()!–since Uncle Kepha also happens to identify with that tradition).
And as for the presumably “Buddhist” or “Daoist” mass murderers of the 20th century (I will allow that Kristof knows a few things about the Far East), presumably meaning the likes of Mao The-dung and Pol Pothead, it seems to me they carried out their mass murders in the names of progress, social justice, and the popular will rather than to further the Dao that Cannot be Named or the Noble Eightfold Path–and this you have heard from someone who is not that big a fan of either Daoism or Buddhism, and has even been willing to allow that some of the Bamar and Singhala extremism of Myanmar and Sri Lanka is indeed Buddhist in its inspiration.
Similarly, to tread where Kristof will not, if Karl Marx, Bela Kun, Leon Trotsky, Ana Pauker, Clemens Gottwald, Rudolf Slansky, and many others were originally Jewish (and outnumbered by Gentile Comrades, I note), their roles in their movement’s mass murders had nothing to do with Torah–except to shower contempt on it–and plenty to do with the idols of “evolved” thinking.
Indeed, Kristof’s modern mass murderers (whom I, too, abominate) are noteworthy for their apostasy from traditional religions rather than for an historically understood piety.
Maybe Kristof needs to blow off the dust on his Bible and actually consider what it is trying to teach him about who God is and how to approach Him. But I fear he probably won’t do more than pick up a few tidbits about keeping kosher or keeping eunuchs out of the ranks of the kohanim, and perhaps as well that “Paul was a misogynist”.
Yes, Kristof is right that 20th century totalitarianism set records for mass slaughter. I’ll even allow that perhaps Marxism and fascism are “Abrahamic” [please note quotes] religions in the sense that they posit a linear progress to history that can be foreseen by “social scientists” (their equivalent of prophets). But Christian [or, since I mentioned a bunch of Jewish-origin Bolshies, Jewish]? If so, these terms have been emptied of any and all theological/doctrinal/ethical content.
Yes, Champ, Kristof’s expressions are bizarre, to say the least.
So, Robert, if you get to truly debate, present and demand proof from the sourcebooks. Ad Fontes!
Champ says
Thank you for writing, Uncle Kepha! 🙂
nacazo says
Counter-jihad wins the logical factual argument ALL the time. Unfortunately, we have to also fight the emotional argument using leftist language….
http://www.politicalislam.com/blog/voices-for-the-voiceless/
eduardo odraude says
nacazo, I wish that strategy were MUCH more used by counter-jihadists. I think it would be much more effective and doable than the anonymous internet commenting that most counter-jihadists restrict themselves to.
eduardo odraude says
I mean your link to that video where Bill Warner talks about a new strategy for counter-jihadists.
BlueRaven says
People like Nicholas Kristof are plenty. They will have typically one or two close Muslim friends, who will use taquyia to deceive clowns like Nic, because it is like a love relationship. They don’t want to see the reality, they don’t want to hear the reality therefore they don’t want say anything that is close to reality.
These kind of people are crazy when they start comparing Budhisim/Hinduism/Christianity with Islam.
jewdog says
Fjordman often references Tina Magaard, a Danish linguist who did a three year comparative study of various original religious texts. She found that Islam was by far the most violent in its intentions towards those of other faiths; that if people considered it to be the literal divine truth, “then we have a problem”.
What I can’t understand is why this is so difficult for people to accept. I think it’s quite legitimate to be concerned about those aspects of any faith which may have an impact on those of other faiths, particularly if it’s violent. This was one motive for the Catholic Church in issuing Nostra Aetate, which was at least partially in response to concerns that the concept of collective guilt for killing Christ resulted in violence against Jews. Muslims should be able to face problematic aspects of their faith in a similar, responsible way. Since accusations of blasphemy and apostasy prevent such self-criticism, then those censorious elements need to be discussed and dealt with as well. If Muslims cannot undertake such reforms, then non-Muslims should not hesitate to speak out frankly and act to defend themselves, political correctness be damned.
Boston Tea Party says
Kristof is the prime example of a follower of the religion that has supplanted Christianity in the West: The Holy Church of Cultural Relativism. C. S. Lewis saw this coming back in the 1940s. “Nothing means anything, anything can be ‘reformed’ into anything else. Everything is subjective and can be interpreted in many different ways by the individual.”
Kristof still retains some dim memory and fuzzy understanding of a few objective truths deemed acceptable in these times—women shouldn’t be oppressed, gay people shouldn’t be executed, genocide is wrong—but he’s succeeded in completely disconnecting these things from any culture or any ideology. “All cultures and religions have good followers and bad followers, and no culture or ideology is more likely to inspire bad things than any other. No religion or ideology is better or worse than any other. Passing negative judgement on any culture or religion is ‘hate’, and that can’t be tolerated. I FEEL that almost all people are good and only want good things, and I’m going to ignore reality or facts that contradict that.”
Jaladhi says
In the reference article comes across as a totally ignorant moron who dares to comment about something that knows nothing about. These kinds of people are in our newspapers who are spreading lies about Islam( that it is peaceful) instead of telling the horrible truth about it. We have got the enemy within us and we have to flush them out and hold them responsible for spreading abhorrent lies!!
Kephas says
Mr. Spender, kindly pick up Nicholas Kristof by the heels and sweep the floor with his hair, please–in debate, that is.
Whatever positive qualities Kristof may have as a man, I have always hated his columns. He thinks he’s being irenic towards us Evangelicals, when in fact he is horribly condescending and patronizing in just about every word he writes–including “and” and “the”, as someone more witty than I once put it of yet another writer. His viewpoint is always that of the big, mildly “religious” liberal who sees oh-so-farther than the rest of us trying to enlighten the benighted denizens of the Bible Belt.
That he fails to address the actual doctrines taught in the source books of the two religions is just typical of his whole tribe, and indicative of how they all have tin ears for theology (unless they expect to wow us by name-dropping the latest feminist liberation theologian from Haaaahvahhhd or Union, if the latter is still open).
People like Kristof are so smug in their certainty that the Bible and Qur’an are fundamentally the same once an “enlightened” person gets under the names of the authors and protagonists, or the languages of the Urtexten. Robert, if you get to debate Kristof, I will bet my bottom dollar that he will piously insist that he’s some kind of good, observant [liberal mainline, biblically and theologically illiterate] “Protestant” Christian who obediently rolls over and plays dead every time the cultured despisers and other sitters in the seats of the scornful command him to do so.
Anon says
Tiny Minority ™ update for newcomers and the passers-by (since long-time JW readers already know this):
Based on Islamic-majority counties in three areas, the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa (ten Muslim-majority countries). The data is from Pew Research, from 2010 and 2013, links below.
Should Sharia Apply to All Citizens? – The percentage that believe this is 46.5% based on ten Muslim majority countries in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa. Based on the Muslim population of those countries, that results in 243 million people (at a minimum) believing that Sharia law should apply to all citizens.
Penalty for Converting to Another Faith – The percentage that believe this is 67.60% based on ten Muslim majority countries in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa. Based on the Muslim population of those countries, that results in 353 million people (at a minimum) believing in the death penalty for leaving Islam.
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country
BC says
there are people who will only accept that Islam is inherently violent when the knife is at their own throats, by then it will be too late. I expect they will still be saying to the executioner, you are misunderstanding you religion!
Talal Itani says
Don’t just blindly attack the faiths of the others. Read their book first. Quran is at http://www.ClearQuran.com
Tradewinds says
No one is “blindly” attacking. The Koran is an UN-holy book and should be consigned to the trashbin of history. Islam is not a “faith” – it’s a mass-murder ideology. Bug off, Muslim. Go worship your non-existent Arabian moon deity like the brainwashed fool you are.
Mirren10 says
Unfortunately for you, mohammedan, and your co-religionists, a lot of people here *have* read your filthy koran, not to mention hadiths and sira.
So our eyes are **wide open**. Tough biccies.