January 8, 2010
Tolerance or Capitulation?
On the one hand, Muslims have every reason to feel aggrieved over U.S. military interventions around the world. On the other, many Muslim cultural practices run up against Western norms and don't — in my view — under the banner of religion deserve any special protections. Indeed, a danger exists the other way around when ecumenical tolerance, a bedrock liberal concept, gets circumscribed though undue deference to a fundamentalist world view. To explore some of these issues I turned to Dr. Jytte Klausen, author of the recently published (and partly censored by Yale University Press) The Cartoons That Shook the World
Comments
I found Dr. Klausen's perspective very reasonable and refreshingly fact based. However, I don't think this interview responded to the issue that I had with your comment, George, which was the suggestion that Islam was in some way an inferior religion.
The intolerance that results from indefensible moral certainty is characteristic of some of the adherents of all religions, including secularism.
[I wouldn't put it that way, David, and I'm sorry you interpreted what I was trying to say as such. I'm making a distinction — a distinction, I hope, with a difference — between a religion and its associated culture(s). Wearing the chador, for example, is to my mind a clearly barbaric cultural practice. g.]
Posted by: David Ford | January 10, 2010 1:59 AM