17 October 2011

Was Paul Goodman right to take on Douglas Murray for his views on Islam?

.... As Paul Goodman writes this morning, Murray is waging battle against him. Why? Because Goodman quite rightly distinguishes between Islam and Islamists, while Murray blurs the distinction between the worst extremists and your ordinary Muslim.

Worse, because he is a fabulous agent provocateur, Murray doesn't just portray the Muslim community as rabid Sharia fanatics: he urges Britons – in fact all Europeans – to make life difficult for them.

In a speech to the Dutch Parliament that Goodman quotes, Murray argued that "Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board." He went on to suggest that mosques be demolished in some cases, and that Muslim immigrants should be banned.

[A COMMENT] I'd suggest that Murray is the braver man …. Its far easier (and morally cowardly) to brush very real and difficult issues about Islamic belief and practice under the carpet, rather than expose it to public scrutiny and debate.

[A COMMENT] No Cristina, to uphold 'tolerance' as some kind of supreme British virtue is *your* politically correct, thoroughly discredited, relativist view of what kind of fate is desirable for Britain.

To quote Aristotle: 'Tolerance is the last virtue of a dying society'; if a society has reached such a nadir, where it stands for nothing, has lost any core values it once had …. proclaims tolerance for contradictory world views as its *supreme* value, it has signed its civilisational death warrant. [telegraph.co.uk] Read more