Eric:
You have quoted the middle part of Sam Harris' article which he entitles
"Head in the Sand Liberals"
<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-harris18sep18,0,1897169.story>
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-harris18sep18,0,1897169.story .
The parts before and after the part you quoted aren't on subject, but they
do represent that interesting and rare modern phenomenon: a Liberal who
realizes that his fellow Liberals are becoming increasingly squirrelly --
sort of the Left equivalent of what Fukuyama thought about his fellow
Neocons. I suppose I spoil it for the Lit-Ideas Liberals to say the article
is worth reading in its entirety, but I do say that. Sam Harris identifies
himself as a liberal. He describes his Liberal Bone Fides and yet he feels
he is stepping over the common Liberal line when he says such things as "We
are entering an age of unchecked nuclear proliferation and, it seems likely,
nuclear terrorism. There is, therefore, no future in which aspiring martyrs
will make good neighbors for us. Unless liberals realize that there are tens
of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick
Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine
enemies."
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Eric Yost
Sent: Monday, October 02, 2006 9:08 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Moderate Muslims
>>I was not able to determine that there were any moderates
in the Middle East because neither Omar nor I could find
hide nor hair of them.
Let me repost an excerpt from this article to see if it can
advance the discussion. For those who skim, the last
paragraph is most important.
_____
A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world - for reasons
that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic
doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are
not fighting a "war on terror." We are fighting a
pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.
This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims. But
we are absolutely at war with those who believe that death
in defense of the faith is the highest possible good, that
cartoonists should be killed for caricaturing the prophet
and that any Muslim who loses his faith should be butchered
for apostasy.
Unfortunately, such religious extremism is not as fringe a
phenomenon as we might hope. Numerous studies have found
that the most radicalized Muslims tend to have
better-than-average educations and economic opportunities.
Given the degree to which religious ideas are still
sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually
possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual
resources to build a nuclear bomb - and to believe that he
will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant
evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that
Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of
education and American militarism.
I don't know how many more engineers and architects need to
blow themselves up, fly planes into buildings or saw the
heads off of journalists before this fantasy will dissipate.
The truth is that there is every reason to believe that a
terrifying number of the world's Muslims now view all
political and moral questions in terms of their affiliation
with Islam. This leads them to rally to the cause of other
Muslims no matter how sociopathic their behavior. This
benighted religious solidarity may be the greatest problem
facing civilization and yet it is regularly misconstrued,
ignored or obfuscated by liberals.
[http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-harris18sep18,0,1897169.story]
