"attempting to present Islamic radicalism as not only evil and dangerous, which it most certainly could be, but as unique, which it is definitely not."
.,,.
Seriously, Jim. Certainly not uniquely so -- I don't think anyone is asserting that -- but most arguably the most so. I know about Jim Jones & those loonies in Kansas & the Rev Mr Moon & his Unificators; about Shatila; and so ad ∞; & deplore them all as much as you do. But you have yet to name any actual present-day sovereign state ruled by any other system than claimed Koranic authority, in which people are stoned to death for what are not even offences in most places in the world; where young women are publicly given 100 strokes of the cane on the bare buttocks for being seen out in public with someone who is not an immediate relation, or because a veil has slipped to show too much face ...

I could go on, as you know. But I invoke Hegel again: this is not merely a quantative, but a qualitative difference, between this "Faith" & any other you can name. How can you urge that the fact that the Israelites stoned adulterers to death in the days of King David, & even as 'recently' as the days of Jesus Christ, or that the Holy Office burned 'heretics' in C16, is any "whataboutery" justification for their going on performing such stonings to this very day in Malaysia and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia?

How?


~M~