bounty44
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"Why aren’t liberals more critical of Islam?"
quote:
...So what is it about liberalism that makes it so difficult for it to take a clear, critical look at Islam, even while liberals have no problem excoriating Christians for every imaginable historical evil?...
As secular, liberalism understood itself as embracing this world as the highest good, advocating a self-conscious return to ancient pagan this-worldliness. But this embrace took place within a Christianized culture. Consequently liberalism tended to define itself directly against that which it was (in its own particular historical context) rejecting.
Modern liberalism thereby developed with a deep antagonism toward Christianity, rather than religion in general. It was culturally powerful Christianity that stood in the way of liberal secular progress in the West—not Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Druidism, etc.
And so, radical Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire rallied his fellow secular soldiers with what would become the battle cry of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment: écrasez l’infâme, “destroy the infamous thing.” It was a cry directed, not against religion in general, but (as historian Peter Gay rightly notes) “against Christianity itself, against Christian dogma in all its forms, Christian institutions, Christian ethics, and the Christian view of man.”
Liberals therefore tended to approve of anything but Christianity. Deism was fine, or even pantheism. The eminent liberal Rousseau praised Islam and declared Christianity incompatible with good government. Hinduism and Buddhism were exotic and tantalizing among the edge-cutting intelligentsia of the 19th century. Christianity, by contrast, was the religion against which actual liberal progress had to be made.
So, other religions were whitewashed even while Christianity was continually tarred. The tarring was part of the liberal strategy aimed at unseating Christianity from its privileged cultural-legal-moral position in the West. The whitewashing of other religions was part of the strategy too, since elevating them helped deflate the privileged status of Christianity.
And so, for liberalism, nothing could be as bad as Christianity. If something goes wrong, blame Christianity first and all of Western culture that is based upon it.
This view remains integral to liberalism today, and it affects how liberals treat Islam.
That’s why liberals are disposed to interpret the Crusades as the result of Christian aggression, rather than, as it actually was, a response to Islamic aggression. That’s why Christian organizations are regularly maltreated on our liberal college campuses while Islamic student organizations and needs are graciously met. And the liberal media—ever wonder why you didn’t hear last February of the imam of the Arlington, VA mosque calling for Muslims to wage war against the enemies of Allah? Nor should we wonder why, for liberals, contemporary jihadist movements in Islam must be seen as justified reactions to Western policies—chickens coming home to roost. Or when a bomb goes off, that’s why a liberal must hope that it was perpetrated by some fundamentalist patriotic Christian group.
What liberals do not want to do is take a deep, critical look at Islam. To do so just might question some of their most basic assumptions.
http://humanevents.com/2013/04/25/liberalism-and-islam/
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