The liberal love affair with Islam

February 9, 2011
The liberal love affair with Islam

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/14/the-liberal-love-affair-with-islam/#ixzz1DV...





By John Gerardi




The liberal love affair with Islam is perplexing. While liberals tend to hate traditional Christianity for its more socially conservative worldview, they insist on vigorously defending Islam and its adherents. From Jon Stewart’s moralizing, to Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg’s outrage at Bill O’Reilly, to President Obama’s recent droning about the “spirit of tolerance” in the Indonesian Constitution (in spite of Indonesia’s laws prohibiting speech offensive to Islam), we are forever sermonized that there is a gulf between Islamist extremism and the “vast majority” of normal Muslims, whom we would apparently love to have as neighbors and run into at Whole Foods.

Well, I contend that we would not want to run into a lot of Muslims at Whole Foods. True, we probably wouldn’t mind running into most American Muslims, who don’t go for certain more widespread interpretations of Sharia law. But it remains true that huge swathes of the Islamic world hold views and have enacted legal regimes which would shock the average American, and which ought to shock liberals and media elites far more than, say, Roman Catholicism does. And it’s not like this is a “false” Islam, while the more peaceful, American interpretations are “true” Islam. Unlike Catholicism, there is no central magisterial authority in Islam; its nature is determined by how different schools interpret Sharia law and the Koran, and large numbers of Muslims interpret them in a fundamentalist, bizarre fashion.

Liberals deride Christianity and Catholicism in particular for its strict approach towards sexuality, claiming that prohibitions against abortion, contraception, homosexual sex, and premarital sex are simply oppressive forms of prudish patriarchy. But Islam is every bit as traditional on these matters; indeed, Muslim nations are the best allies the Vatican has at the U.N. in fighting against funding for third world family planning initiatives. You can’t reasonably deride one while accepting the other.

Furthermore, Islam goes way beyond Christianity by embracing doctrines that actually are oppressive, demeaning to women, and tyrannical. Throughout the Middle East, there is widespread acceptance of polygamy, of giving adolescent girls in marriage, of female genital mutilation, of harsh criminal sanctions against fornication and homosexuality (a capital offense in some countries), all of which is done in accordance with interpretations of Sharia law that are accepted by significant percentages of the Muslim world. While liberals rightly revile American polygamists, they fail to acknowledge that every major Muslim country (with the exception of Turkey and a few smaller countries) legally provides for this disgusting practice.

(I always find it odd that liberals get outraged at polygamists — it’s the only sexua| sin they still acknowledge between of-age, consenting individuals. Homosexual unions can be “marriage,” but not polygamous ones? Since when do liberals care about a strict limitation on the definition of “marriage?” Ultimately, I think it’s because homosexuals vote Democrat and drive Priuses, and polygamists don’t.)

Further, let’s look at how Islam treats religious and other minorities. In Darfur, Sudan, black Africans are being killed in a race- and religion-fueled vendetta of violence by Muslim militias, who have slaughtered more than 200,000 people. In Armenia, tens of thousands of Armenian Christians were slaughtered by the Turkish government at the turn of the 20th century; the Turkish government still won’t even acknowledge that the genocide happened. Sharia makes all sorts of provis

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/14/the-liberal-love-affair-with-islam/#ixzz1DV...


Tweet