Since I am now beginning a blog, the form as a vibrant part of political discourse must be coming to an end, as I am always the last to hop on to a trend. But, here it is.
One of the harder things about doing this is that I will now have to read all manner of idiocy on the web and elsewhere, the better to have something to pontificate about. Thus, after avoiding much of the right-wing opinion mill, I now have to wade through such "intellectuals" as Jonah Goldberg, or...whoever qualifies for intellectual status over there...well, anyway, I'll have to read some very silly stuff.
I have mostly avoided partisan writing on the whole, unless I already agreed with it, leaving the work of actually checking other people's work to the mainstream media and liberal writers, and crossed my fingers that they were doing a good job while I largely wanked off reading various texts and history and hoping to hide away as an academic some time in the future. Though I had been political in my mind since I was but a pup, I had been a big wuss when it came to adding my own perspective. I didn't really involve myself at any level. I was weak, flaccid, pale, clammy. So, coming to this late, after three decades of not really doing much of anything, with no real expertise on issues beyond what I've read and an unused journalism degree, after so many others have done so much with the blogosphere, and after assiduously avoiding even reading opinions that do not jibe with my own, I would say that jumping into the fray now is intimidating. But then, that's ok, since the idea anyone will read this piffle is outrageous anyway.
To make it easy on myself, I thought I would start by insulting Instapundit. That always seems like a good tactic. Unfortunately, the post I wanted to rip fucked me up because he made my point for me-but no matter, because there is always this response from Bryan Preston:
But he’s wrong that “fundamentalist Christians” are going to take this as a cue to start up their own terrorism to get what they want. And he’s wrong because he starts with an error on the basics: Namely, that Christianity and Islam aren’t the same thing, don’t believe the same things and don’t teach the same things. The foundational texts of the two faiths are very different, and the differences make all the difference in the world.
Certainly! Because no Christians have ever turned to violence to advance their causes. Not like
this , for example, or
this , just to name two.
He continues:
It’s a pity that five years into this war, or nearly 30 if you’re dating its beginning to the Islamic Revolution in Iran, so few people actually understand this. Most of our political leaders in both parties don’t understand it, secular humanists constantly conflate Pat Robertson with the Taliban thereby demonstrating that they don’t get it, and most of our pundits and most of our major bloggers obviously don’t understand it either.
Right.
Why would anyone equate Christian fundamentalist leaders with the Taliban or hate-spouting, violence-inducing imams? As usual we get the claim that Islam is inherently a religion of violence while Christianity is not:
Bin Laden and Zawahiri and Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad constantly quote the Koran to justify their global jihad, itself a dual Islamic concept that includes both internal and external warfare. Saladin’s jihad followed Muhammad’s example. Christianity has no such concept and Christ provided no similar warlike example.
This might make for a very nice religious debate point. As a long time atheist who is only recently converted to religion, I can say it is also semantic horseshit. The long, long history of violence done in God's name has needed no Biblical marching orders-it's been a feature since the beginning. Fundamentalists of all stripes desire control, and religion is their tool. They interpret their guiding works as they see fit to justify telling everyone how they will be forced to live. It matters not at all whether the words are explicit, as in the Koran, or implicit, as in the Bible-or, the Bible as interpreted by Christian fundamentalists. These same Christian fundamentalists feel no guilt at all trying to foment war in the Middle East to bring on the End Times, regardless of who it kills. These aren't acts of God or religion, these are acts of
people, people who have specific motivations for doing these things and believing these things quite apart from righteousness. Trying to make the claim that Muslims are drooling, knuckle-dragging barbarians bent on killing good, clean, squeaky Christian angels because the Koran tells them to might get the guns-n-jesus crowd all riled up, but it makes for really dim discourse.