Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
Really don't understand what is so special about Islam that inspires the SJW outrage. They don't defend any other religion with this much fervor. I could post scathing criticism of evangelical Christians and there wouldn't be a peep from anyone, only nodding heads. I could talk about the reactionary pining-for-the-1950s worldviews of neocons and they would practically slip a disk nodding in agreement so hard. But as soon as wufwugy or Sam Harris criticizes a religion that openly wants to remake the world in the image of 600 AD, out come the pitchforks.
I agree with all of this, except when you lump Harris' critiques in with wufwugy's.


Quote Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla View Post
This is dangerously close to censorship. You should be able to hear any array of opinions expressed, entertain them, criticize them, take away all they're worth and dismiss the rest.

To disallow any discussion because it somehow triggers a 6th sense hate-speech awareness is exactly how I do not want to be.

I'm not a fan of pretending there are unthinkable thoughts and if it truly is hate speech, then its another opportunity to understand a pernicious aspect of humanity.
I get the knee-jerk to call out SJW censorship-- but be careful to not do exactly what your accusing MMM of. Let's take wuf's argument point by point.

1) Mainstream Islam preaches racism, e.g. all the hot Muslim womens are off limits to wuf.

2) Mainstraem Islam preaches sexism, e.g. the Imam that openly supports women's rights is an extreme rarity.

3) Mainstream Protestantism, the predominant religion of the USA, where most of us live, has values that approximate the values of the culture of the place where most of us live.

4) Smorgasbord of borderline incoherent jabs framed by an overarching comparison to the pinnacle of tolerance, peace, and all that is good in the world: Protestantism.

5) Muslims don't condemn the abhorrent acts of fellow Muslims.

All of these claims are unsubstantiated, and while probably in the ballpark of truth are contaminated with hyperbolic rhetoric. Further, most of the claims beg dissenters to respond with anecdotes, since they themselves are anecdotal observations of the entirety of Islam-- how is this productive?

I think that's the gripe with wuf's post that had MMM sum it up as hate speech-- the rant lacks substance, is full of rhetoric, and does nothing to address a solution to the problem or even offer common ground on which a fruitful dialogue can be had. This is the difference between what Harris says on the topic and what wuf has to say. Harris gets lambasted for being a bigot, but it's because he uses extremely nuanced arguments, which often get turned into out of context quotes and inflammatory soundbites. I'm not missing any nuance in wuf's post. If it is an attempt to move towards a solution, it's a miserable failure, and if it's a purposeful success at anything, I think my value system is as far from wufwugy's as he proposes Mainstream Islam's is from that of western culture.