Hello ladies, enbies and gents.
If you’re wondering what happened to yesterday’s
chocolate, I edited it in… but then accidentally
uploaded the raw footage of yesterdays vlog
instead of the edited, so no chocolate, no
intro, no outro and a bit of waffle I’d
edited out for brevity. But in the name of
completeness, here’s yesterday’s chocolate…
and here’s today’s.
Anyway, on the subject of Sam Harris and Islamophobia.
If there’s one thing all Islamophobes have
in common it’s that they don’t merely
view Islam as dangerous, but they view it
as especially dangerous, usually when compared
to Christianity.
Whereas most Islamophobes simply fail to take
into account other factors besides religion
when it comes to Islamic extremism, Sam Harris,
in his bizarrely dubbed “Atheist Manifesto”
outright declares that Islam is the only relevant
factor.
Harris, like most Islamophobes will often
throw a half-hearted disclaimer out that he
doesn’t mean ALL Muslims, however having
recently gone on record as having said that
Syrian refugees shouldn’t be allowed into
America if they’re Muslim then I’m a bit
unclear as to exactly which Muslims are the
lucky exception to his rule.
Not the people the refugees are seeking refuge
from, and not the refugees either it would
seem.
So, as far as I can see, the Sam Harris way
to do things is to judge Christianity by the
behaviour of its Western practitioners and
view Islam by the behaviour of Middle Eastern
Islamist regimes who were empowered by the
Western world for its own political convenience
and whereas he would have us try to reason
with Christians he’d have Muslim refugees
who are fleeing from Islamic extremism denied
access to the West.
Personally, I think if you compare apples
to apples, both Christianity and Islam have
extremists and both have moderates. Both have
militant terrorists and both have those who
oppose violence. Both the bible and the koran
are scriptures that contain passages that
are barbaric from the humanist standpoint
at least when taken literally and both contain
passages that are not barbaric when taken
equally literally.
If you want to take a particular group from
either faith and say they are more dangerous
than another group from the other faith then
it at least would be prudent to go into some
detail as to why rather than simply asserting
that it’s because one faith is intrinsically
worse than the other.
As for Sam Harris, he’s highly respected
among modern day atheists and is considered
one of the Four Horsemen. Personally I consider
him to be highly overrated.
Thanks for watching.
