June posted a comment last night about the Bob’s blog controversy. Here’s an excerpt from what she wrote:
Bob never aimed the word "banned" at me, he did delete my posts and tell me that I didn't belong there. He did this essentially because I questioned the way that he talked about Islam, saying that my Muslim friends would find it offensive. He had claimed that he was specifically referring to "Islamists"--radical extremists such as those who have beheaded Westerners on video tape, but when I pointed out examples of his condemnation of the entire religion, he decided it was time to delete me.
This is my reply:
June, it seems to me that you’re right that many people hatefully condemn ALL of Islam and not just Islamist terrorism as barbaric and evil. And I’m not surprised that you were able to document this somewhere and were subsequently met with a less than favorable response by the “thought police” of that community.
I confess that I too harbor profound misgivings about Islam. While I acknowledge that only a tiny minority of the world’s Muslim population are engaged in the bloody acts of terroristic violence we roundly and justifiably condemn, I suspect that a far larger percentage condone or even practice the oppression, if not worse, of females, the enforcement of barbaric laws, and other exceedingly dubious things as consistent with their faith, and, sadly, these actions may very well be consistent with a faith rooted in an allegedly word perfect dictation by Allah through Gabriel to the final and greatest prophet Muhammed during an era rife with tribal warfare, and rigidified by built-in resistance to the kinds of self-examination and openness that have enabled other wisdom traditions to evolve in keeping with an ever-evolving world.
But what is the most wholesome and wisest attitude to take and express toward Islam and its people? Surely it isn’t the mocking derision and enmity we see on a certain blog and elsewhere. For surely this won’t help to foster the social and economic conditions that would no doubt progressively decrease the hate-fueled violence of Islamic extremism, nor is it consistent with any religion or spiritual practice that most of us would consider worthy of embrace.
This is not radical leftist “political correctness.” This is just plain human decency and perspicacity.
Self-Help and the Devil's Menu
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Speaking of integration around the good -- and the impossibility of
integration around its converse -- the following words popped into my head
this morni...
19 hours ago
3 comments:
Seems to me you have managed to get them way off themselves for a minute and focused on you and what you are doing. Kind of strange for someone to say they don't want to give you attention and the next posts they make are directed at you. Great for you though. Negative publicity always works. Look what it's doing for traffic on your own site here.
It's nice to have a blog like this where I can cool my heels after reading some of the gratuitous anger over at that other blog...stuff like "That's the thing about those Leftists, they like to be victims..." and other generalizations that don't apply to me or any other leftist moonbats I know. I fear that Kahn, always conciliatory and welcoming to those with differing viewpoints, will ultimately be perceived by the father-blog readers as wimpy at best or subversive -- or even, God and Bob forbid, secretly an unevolved Leftist.
Anonymous, I don't seek negative publicity for negative publicity's sake, but, in this case, I won't reject it either. :-)
FFH, I agree with you that Bob and his crew are masters of the "straw man" and ad hominem argument. They attack caricatures of "leftist" thinking and insult us personally in place of actually addressing what we say.
I hope you're wrong about Kahn's fate. Then again, it might just be the best thing that could happen to him. :-) If it does, he's welcome to hang out here. :-)
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