Sam Harris on Fitna

5 May 2008

The controversy over Fitna, like all such controversies, renders one fact about our world especially salient: Muslims appear to be far more concerned about perceived slights to their religion than about the atrocities committed daily in its name. Our accommodation of this psychopathic skewing of priorities has, more and more, taken the form of craven and blinkered acquiescence.

There is an uncanny irony here that many have noticed. The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we will kill you. Of course, the truth is often more nuanced, but this is about as nuanced as it ever gets: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we peaceful Muslims cannot be held responsible for what our less peaceful brothers and sisters do. When they burn your embassies or kidnap and slaughter your journalists, know that we will hold you primarily responsible and will spend the bulk of our energies criticizing you for “racism” and “Islamophobia.”

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Tags: Fitna, Geert Wilders, islam, quote, Sam Harris

Comments

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4334 ResponsesSam+Harris+on+Fitna2008-05-05+16%3A04%3A20nullifidian to “Sam Harris on Fitna”

TW on May 8th, 2008 9:32 pm

I am not a big fan of Sam Harris in general, however this time I find myself in agreement with him.

Sadly the whole issue of dealing with “Other cultures” (not just Islamic nutcases) has a tendency to be treated as very black and white and the important shades of grey are ignored. Some of Sam Harris’ writing falls into this trap and gives a whole host of arguments for right wing bigots.

There needs to be an equal relationship between Islam and the middle east on one side and the “democratic” west on the other. Strangely as we enact more and more ludicrous laws, this equal relationship may appear – just not in the way any sane person would want.
Ted Goas on May 13th, 2008 4:57 pm

From the blockquote above alone, this is a topic that covers almost every religion. There’ll always be fundamentalists and extremists that make the rest of the population look bad.

The case above does seems like it’s being explained in black and white, though. Not sure if it’s a fair assessment.
nullifidian on May 14th, 2008 7:46 am

@TW: I’d agree, I don’t agree with all of his views by any stretch of the imagination, but I do accept most of his arguments in as much as they assess the situation. The resoloutions he proposes – not so much…

The equality I think you might be referring to seems to be some kind of de trop “lowest common denominator”. I agree and, I assume, for many of the same reasons.

My issue with this behaviour is that I feel we should be working towards a highest common denominator, and those with more conservative (small ‘C’) and private concerns can ignore those aspects of life that they don’t agree with. They should not expect the rest of us who don’t agree to put up with any kind of draconian enforced censorship when personal self-censorship is much easier and far more effective, and doesn’t make people like me tend to dislike them.

@Ted: I’d tend to disagree with that. It seems to me to quite accurately reflect what the more “moderate” muslims do (at least the vocal ones) even if it’s unsaid. Perhaps because it’s unsaid, and all we have to go on are their actions (or perhaps inactions might be more precise).

Of course there are those muslims who, like the vast majority of christians (and the rest of the population for that matter) just keep their own counsel when they feel their beliefs have been insulted. However, those are precisely the people who don’t go around making those sorts of threats or committing the sorts of actions that Fitna was rebuking.
Ted Goas on May 14th, 2008 3:02 pm

“It seems to me to quite accurately reflect what the more ‘moderate’ muslims do (at least the vocal ones) even if it’s unsaid.”

Good point. Now that I think a bit more about it, I remember reading and seeing interviews with ‘moderate’ muslims and being appalled by just how different they are from, say, western culture. Calling our women whores, damning us to eternal hell if we don’t have God’s law, things like this.