In the aftermath of the House hearing on American Muslims, Representative Keith Ellison appeared on HBO’s Real Time to further testify to the benign nature of Islam. Attempting to bring some glint of reality to the conversation, Bill Maher posed the following question:
Have you read Sam Harris’s book, The End of Faith?… [Harris] says, “On almost every page, the Qur’an instructs observant Muslims to despise non-believers.”
The Congressmen rejected this description of the Qur’an as “absurd, ridiculous and untrue”—the result of taking certain passages “out of context.” When Maher asked how jihadists can justify their actions by reading these same passages in context, Ellison claimed that jihadists do nothing of the sort. Rather, they think in terms of “political grievances,” not religious doctrine, and those who oppose them have the true doctrine of Islam on their side.
It is not my purpose to defend the House hearing on American Muslims (which I did not get a chance to watch). But it is growing increasingly disconcerting to see moderate Muslims reflexively lie about the tenets of their faith. [Sam Harris] Read more [via The View from Number 80]
