Another thing about that Karen Armstrong piece. I touched on it in passing yesterday, but it occurred to me this morning that I needed to make much more of it. She said something really quite disgusting.

…the chief problem for most Muslims is not “the west” per se, but the suffering of Muslims in Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Iraq and Palestine. Many Britons share this dismay, but the strong emphasis placed by Islam upon justice and community solidarity makes this a religious issue for Muslims. When they see their brothers and sisters systematically oppressed and humiliated, some feel as wounded as a Christian who sees the Bible spat upon or the eucharistic host violated.

Wait. What? The strong emphasis on … Read the rest

Colin McGinn talks to Bill Moyers [link fixed!]:

BILL MOYERS: What do you think is missing in our conversation between faith and reason? You’ve been at this festival of writers for several days now. What’s missing in our conversation between faith and reason?

COLIN MCGINN: Well, I think there’s too much tolerance of faith, and there’s not enough respect for reason. I think there are two sides to what’s happening in contemporary culture. Let’s talk about the reason side first. For the last 30-50 years, reason has been under attack. Subjectivism, relativism, multi-culturalism have been brought in to undermine the enlightenment values of the disinterested search for truth, the belief in objective justification, the belief in objective reality, the belief … Read the rest

This piece by Karen Armstrong has a big gaping hole in the middle of it.

[Blair’s rebuke of ‘moderate Muslims’] ignores the fact that the chief problem for most Muslims is not “the west” per se, but the suffering of Muslims in Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Iraq and Palestine. Many Britons share this dismay, but the strong emphasis placed by Islam upon justice and community solidarity makes this a religious issue for Muslims. When they see their brothers and sisters systematically oppressed and humiliated, some feel as wounded as a Christian who sees the Bible spat upon or the eucharistic host violated.

Speaking of ignoring facts – why is the chief problem for most Muslims the suffering of Muslims in Guantánamo, … Read the rest

Here it is again. Yet again. The BBC declaring the head of the MCB a ‘leading Muslim’. But what makes him a leading Muslim, who says he’s a leading Muslim? The MCB is a self-appointed, very reactionary ‘council’ that gets treated and deferred to as if it represented all UK Muslims in some way, but it doesn’t. It’s very annoying and unhelpful and lazy and obscurantist that the BBC keeps pretending it does, keeps handing it a giant megaphone by rushing to ask its opinion every ten minutes and by refraining from asking non-MCB Muslims and people of Muslim background for their opinion at the same rate. Why does the BBC do that? Why doesn’t it stop doing that? … Read the rest