On Being Spineless

Sam Harris has an essay over at The Huffington Post about how we in the West have turned into a bunch of cowardly, spineless jellyfish because we don’t offer more and greater platforms to those who attack Islam, generally don't go out of our way to attack Islam ourselves, and even occasionally go to the great lengths of actually criticizing people who do attack Islam.

I’ll leave aside the debate over whether or not it’s truly necessary to distribute and promote material you disagree with in order to defend “Free Speech”, but Harris does offer a comparison in his essay that to me encapsulates the reason I dislike so much of what he talks about in the rest of it.

A point of comparison: The controversy of over Fitna was immediately followed by ubiquitous media coverage of a scandal involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). In Texas, police raided an FLDS compound and took hundreds of women and underage girls into custody to spare them the continued, sacramental predations of their menfolk. While mainstream Mormonism is now granted the deference accorded to all major religions in the United States, its fundamentalist branch, with its commitment to polygamy, spousal abuse, forced marriage, child brides (and, therefore, child rape) is often portrayed in the press as a depraved cult. But one could easily argue that Islam, considered both in the aggregate and in terms of its most negative instances, is far more despicable than fundamentalist Mormonism. [emp. added]

The problem with his little comparison is that he's comparing a tree to a leaf. He isn't comparing Mormonism to Islam, but taking the FLDS, "depraved cult" and comparing it to Islam “in the aggregate”, so that he can say that all Muslims are worse than the most extremist Mormons.

The difference is stark and shows the double-standard that Harris and others like him hold for Muslims. No one ever asks that every Mormon of every stripe publicly condemn and reject and disavow the FLDS sect. The FLDS are portrayed as a “depraved cult”, and the mere fact that other Mormons aren’t members of said cult is generally enough for most everyone to give them a pass. Just for a moment, do a quick bit of research and see how far off the FLDS sect is from “traditional” Mormonism in many of those abhorrent practices.

Polygamy is certainly still a tenet with some strength in the more “mainstream” Mormon flock, enough for HBO to do a comedy series on it. How much discussion is there over how close other Mormons may be in their beliefs to those in the compound? Why not a discussion about Mormons “in the aggregate”? How about some calls for a Mormon "Reformation"?

When the FLDS branch, or abortion clinic bombers, or some other deranged Christians do something nasty, regardless whether or not they can find all sorts of justifications for their acts in their holy books, they are treated as deranged individuals or groups, rather than as representative of their faith. Muslims aren’t so lucky.

Whenever a Muslim does something, even if they don’t use any religious justification for their actions, it is treated as an example of the entire faith and everybody who follows it. Occasionally it is more subtle, but it is the difference between saying someone of religion X did some nasty thing, and saying someone did some nasty thing because of religion X. Muslims always seem to fall into the latter category.

Go back, if you really want to, to all those stories about the FLDS compound, and wonder for a moment if the media didn’t bother using the acronym, but instead always referred to the group solely as Mormons, or at most, fundamentalist Mormons? Talked about how their Mormon beliefs justified such practices? How “traditional” Mormon belief allowed such things? How everything they did was because they were Mormons?

How long do you think it would be before the rest of the Mormon community got a little upset over the coverage?

No faith, no group, does terribly well if it gets painted as though its most extreme members are representative of the whole. Hell, as an atheist I don’t like being lumped in with guys like Harris or a cretin like Chris Hitchens, even if by definition I happen to share at least some of their views to varying degrees. They don’t answer to me and their views are their own.

The Mormons at the compound in Texas are responsible for their own acts, regardless of what the Mormon community as a whole believes or supports, and the same goes for any other people belonging to any other overall grouping.

Harris, though, doesn’t see it that way. The only people he seems willing to criticize as individuals are those who don’t feel it’s right to demonize an entire faith because some of those who purportedly follow it are really, really bad, (particularly Muslims who seem oddly unwilling to demonize their own faith).

The lesson we should draw from the Fitna controversy is that we need more criticism of Islam, not less. Let it come down in such torrents that not even the most deluded Islamist could conceive of containing it

Islam. Not Islamists, not jihadists, not Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, not particular practices or certain activities, no qualifiers or quibbling. Go out and bash Islam, plain and simple.

But really, as Harris tells us, he’s not the bigot here.

if anyone in this debate can be credibly accused of racism, it is the western apologists and "multiculturalists" who deem Arabs and Muslims too immature to shoulder the responsibilities of civil discourse.

Note to Harris: Denouncing the entire Islamic faith is not a form of responsible civil discourse. When you figure that out, I’m sure you’ll find that there are plenty of Arabs and Muslims capable and willing to partake in such discussions.

Cross-posted from Northman's Fury

Comments

[anderson]

Nicely argued. Sam Harris is really starting to annoy.

[Klaus]

Well put. They're giving atheism a bad name.

[Jessica]

Great piece. You're absolutely right. Harris' piece does more harm than good. I wish it would have been published somewhere other than the Huffington Post.

[Graham]

Religious "moderation" is a form of apostasy, and it is the moderate who fails to reflect a given faith.

The Islamic world has not yet ascended to the level of religious hypocrisy which we enjoy in the West. Our apostasy, while morally preferable, is theologically indefensible.

An intellectually honest reading of any of the "great" monotheisms is indeed cause for concern.