ibnwarraq

Loved The Unbelievers :) Huge fan.

You (and Sam Harris and others) have often spoken about the unique threats of Islam compared to the other world religions. Most liberals are silent on Islam - or keep repeating that all religions are the same, with "fundamentalism" being the problem.

Why do you think this is?

How do you see the challenge in tackling Islam shaping up at the moment?

a couple of friends saw that speech (with his frail voice and) that hug on youtube later - after his death, no one was tearless

How do we wake our fellow liberals up?

Many uninformed ones (Ben Affleck) simply view the issue of Islam - a religion, ideology, worldview like Christianity - blindly and solely through the lens of race (ironically, as Ali Rizvi points out, by clubbing Muslims into a race, THEY are possibly racist - except they don't demean but rather glorify the group. Plus, "protecting" Muslims from hearing criticism of Islam is patronizing.. and shows they think of Muslims as inferior and incapable of reason).

Remember in that discussion, Maher/Harris were speaking about Islam (whether factual or not is a different issue - though I think Harris was quite spot-on) - but Affleck simply screamed down "its racist, its bigoted"... "Argument" over. Many liberal writers sided with Affleck after this, although their manipulating and downplaying the PEW numbers was telling.

So criticism of Islam has become conflated with race for SOME (but not all) liberals. A get-out-of-jail free pass for Islamic apologists - and dangerous Islamists - who have made an industry out of NOT addressing the criticism but insteading attacking the critics as racist, neocon, bigoted, what not.

We (Indian atheist here) are the clearest pawns in this battle - the liberals should've supported us for women's equality, gay rights, freethought, social liberal values, etc - instead we are looked at with suspicion!

What do we do? Like Sam Harris, I fear for the future of liberalism.

thanks for perfectly proving my point!

Physics or Biology - which is the greater use of intelligent peoples' time?