Frank, I have featured your review at my academic blog site, Religion in the 21st Century, where I am making the review "required reading" for students in the composition and rhetoric class.
People stay away from this subject in droves. It's worse than a fart in church. Not nice to talk about, and somehow you're suspect for having noticed it and brought the matter to light. Fact is, Bawer couches and documents his hundreds of examples and assertions with scrupulous care and makes no bones about his stand: “there is no such thing as a moderate or liberal Islam.” There are millions of good-hearted, peaceful Muslims around the world, but their moderation, he says, is a measure of their individual character, not of the influence of any branch of Islam. For instance, Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa, or death sentence, against writer Salman Rushdie, he maintains, was not a freak aberration, but sprang from “the eternal nature of Islam itself” and its insistence that everything be brought into line with sharia, a code that calls for, among other things, subjugating infidels (non-Muslims), honor killings, and prohibition of equal rights for women.
I stumbled across your review of this book somehow and wanted to tell you how much I appreciated it. It's refreshing to see an acknowledgement of media bias for politial correctness. As a Christian and former writer and editor in the media for more than 10 years, I find I have to tune out the media or filter what they "report" (on both sides)through my own set of standards, and it was nice to see the independent thought and discussion of actual facts that appeared in your piece.
Frank, I have featured your review at my academic blog site, Religion in the 21st Century, where I am making the review "required reading" for students in the composition and rhetoric class.
ReplyDeleteI will check and see what they have to say. Thanks.
ReplyDeletePeople stay away from this subject in droves. It's worse than a fart in church. Not nice to talk about, and somehow you're suspect for having noticed it and brought the matter to light.
ReplyDeleteFact is, Bawer couches and documents his hundreds of examples and assertions with scrupulous care and makes no bones about his stand: “there is no such thing as a moderate or liberal Islam.” There are millions of good-hearted, peaceful Muslims around the world, but their moderation, he says, is a measure of their individual character, not of the influence of any branch of Islam. For instance, Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa, or death sentence, against writer Salman Rushdie, he maintains, was not a freak aberration, but sprang from “the eternal nature of Islam itself” and its insistence that everything be brought into line with sharia, a code that calls for, among other things, subjugating infidels (non-Muslims), honor killings, and prohibition of equal rights for women.
Frank, Excellent piece yesterday. Really first-rate. Your point couldn't have been made any better.
ReplyDeleteI stumbled across your review of this book somehow and wanted to tell you how much I appreciated it. It's refreshing to see an acknowledgement of media bias for politial correctness. As a Christian and former writer and editor in the media for more than 10 years, I find I have to tune out the media or filter what they "report" (on both sides)through my own set of standards, and it was nice to see the independent thought and discussion of actual facts that appeared in your piece.
ReplyDelete