Sam Harris

I think the following story exemplifies a major theme in the End of faith.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/05/16/newsweek.quran/index.html

What do you think…

I think that we have no idea what really caused the riots and this is an effort by the government to silence media reporting on the way prisoners are being treated—i.e. terrible living conditions, torture, disrespect, and all the rest of the barbaric stuff.

Inhuman treatment is inhuman treatment, and the word WILL get out unless we kill every person we’ve been treating this way. The only people who WON’T know about it is the citizens of the US if the government gets its way.

In other words, I don’t think this has much to do with the beliefs or lack of beliefs of the rioters. How would we know what’s the basis for the riots? Somebody interviewed them? Took a poll? It’s just too easy to blame Newsweek. Exactly the same things in that Newsweek story have been reported at least since January in other news media.

[quote author=“CreateFate”]I think the following story exemplifies a major theme in the End of faith.

What do you think…

I think that’s the first thing I thought of when I heard the story. It’s striking to see the utter lack of the ability to trace responsibility to the reaction. What about the fact that the riots in the Middle East are an Olympian overreaction is so hard for so many to grasp? Why does such radically irrational, violent behavior get a relative free pass, while Newsweek gets blamed for it? Newsweek is almost certainly guilty of high stupidity, sure, but to blame them for the collective psychosis being so clearly demonstrated in the Middle East is ludicrous . . . so why are even most Westerners so dismissive and oblivious regarding this absolutely pathological religious behavior?

For example . . .

Byron

Everytine a Sunni blows up a Shi’ite mosque, car or house, surely a copy of the Koran is destroyed.  How many were destroyed when Iraq invaded Kuwait? And let’s remember most Afghans can’t read. Shouldn’t it be a sin not to able to read god’s holy books?

Like most of the others here, I think the blame lies primarily with the rioters; if this article was in fact “the cause,” it’s only because the riot’s instigators were looking for one.

The Smug Delusion of Base Expectations

I wanted to call attention to the excellent op-ed piece in today’s Boston Globe by Jeff Jacoby, which points out that the blame for the rioting and deaths falls squarely on the shoulders of the radical Islamists and their “moderate” enablers. Jacoby points out that as a rule other major religions do not erupt in riots at every slight. (Of course being a Christian conservative type he doesn’t mention that atheists don’t riot at every insult either .) The real “desecrator of Islam”, Jacoby states, is “what totalitarian Muslims have been doing to innocent human beings i the name of Islam. It is 9/11 and Beslan and Bali and Daniel Pearl and the USS Cole. It is trains in Madrid and schoolbuses in Israel and an “insurgency” in Iraq that slaughters Muslimms as they pray and vote and line up for work.” And the vast majority of the world’s Muslims say and do “nothing about the jihadist cancer eating away at their religion.”

The link is: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/

Scroll down to about the middle of the “Opinion” page and you’ll find the piece. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the great Danziger cartoon which accompanied it!