Reza Aslan, Ben Affleck, Bill Maher and Sam Harris walk into a bar... (Atheism, Islam and liberalism: This is what we are really fighting about)

[Warpoet]

Many feel this way about those that knee-jerk to racism without any other consideration, or attack with an ad hominem, feeling justified in doing so because their opponent is "racist". They can never even get to the actual topic of conversation without first wading through accusation after accusation, definitions, misrepresentations, misquotes, and so on. I think many of them prefer it this way. Better to stay focused on the evil racist bastards than actually have an uncomfortable but adult conversation. It's a shutting down of the argument.

ETA: What really gets to me about this behavior is that crying wolf all the time can bring deaf ears when actual cases of racism are evident.

Exactly what does this have to do with my sourced observation that Harris does not, in fact, think Islamophobia exists, under any circumstances? Which is a patently absurd viewpoint that only a jackass would hold?

 

[braces_for_impact]

Many feel this way about those that knee-jerk to racism without any other consideration, or attack with an ad hominem, feeling justified in doing so because their opponent is "racist". They can never even get to the actual topic of conversation without first wading through accusation after accusation, definitions, misrepresentations, misquotes, and so on. I think many of them prefer it this way. Better to stay focused on the evil racist bastards than actually have an uncomfortable but adult conversation. It's a shutting down of the argument.

ETA: What really gets to me about this behavior is that crying wolf all the time can bring deaf ears when actual cases of racism are evident.

Exactly what does this have to do with my sourced observation that Harris does not, in fact, think Islamophobia exists, under any circumstances? Which is a patently absurd viewpoint that only a jackass would hold?

Here we go. Why would it be "a patently absurd viewpoint that only a jackass would hold?" What would we use as a definition for Islamophobia? Are you saying that Harris doesn't think Racism against Muslims exists?

Actually, never mind. I withdraw my observation. I'm really not interested in yet another Sam Harris discussion.

 

[Warpoet]

Here we go. Why would it be "a patently absurd viewpoint that only a jackass would hold?" What would we use as a definition for Islamophobia? Are you saying that Harris doesn't think Racism against Muslims exists?

Actually, never mind. I withdraw my observation. I'm really not interested in yet another Sam Harris discussion.

If you weren't, then you would have just not posted; regardless, the question hardly even merits answering. A phobia is an irrational fear; there are plenty of people with an irrational fear of Islam and Muslims. Thus, Islamophobia is obviously real and Harris is wrong. Trying to redefine said phobia as merely bigotry, so as to attempt to delegitimize the concept of "Islamophobia" simply because it makes you mad that people accuse you of it, is playing disingenuous word games to serve an agenda. And it's precisely the sort of asshattery one would expect from the likes of Harris, who as I said, is a self-important twat.

 

[TSwizzle]

What would we use as a definition for Islamophobia?

Islamophobia, it's a bullshit made up word. Meaningless really.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

What would we use as a definition for Islamophobia?

Islamophobia, it's a bullshit made up word. Meaningless really.

According to the Oxford dictionaries, you are wrong.

Definition of Islamophobia in English:
noun

Dislike of or prejudice against Islam or Muslims, especially as a political force.

 

[TSwizzle]

Islamophobia, it's a bullshit made up word. Meaningless really.

According to the Oxford dictionaries, you are wrong.

Nah, it's a made up word, bullshit. it means fuck all.

 

[barbos]

Blame youtube, they suggested it to watch. And I checked wikipedia and confirmed that the guy does not have PhD in history of religion and he is not a professor of religion.
I find the guy annoying and it is a shame that Jon Stewart could not see through this nutjob.
As for Fox interview they are right but accidentally. I mean muslims can in principle write a book about jesus but in this particular case the book is utter garbage and author is lying about his credentials. Having said that, let be honest here, we are all atheists here and I think we all agree that good research on religions require certain amount of religious disbelief, after all, religious belief is a disorder.

Maybe you should stop foaming at the mouth over your personal dislike of Aslan and examine the issue rationally. Here are several comments on the article your video is sourced from:

Since i was Reza's thesis adviser at the Univ of California-Santa Barbara, I can testify that he is a religious studies scholar. (I am a sociologist of religion with a position in sociology and an affiliation with religious studies). Though Reza's PhD is in sociology most of his graduate course work at UCSB was in the history of religion in the dept of religious studies. Though none of his 4 degrees are in history as such, he is a "historian of religion" in the way that that term is used at the Univ of Chicago to cover the field of comparative religion; and his theology degree at Harvard covered Bible and Church history, and required him to master New Testament Greek. So in short, he is who he says he is.

...

The author needs to understand that the study of Religion falls under The Department of Sociology, at many schools.
As was noted in the article, the title of his dissertation is "Global Jihadism as a Transnational Social Movement: A Theoretical Framework".
It is, clearly, a study of religion, in a sociological framework (as it should be)

Further, if you'd care to open up the dissertation, you'll note the first point in the abstract denotes that the work has a religious, rather than societal or cultural basis.

Here it is:
1. Appealing to a set of familiar symbols (in this case, religious, rather than cultural or societal) to construct a collective identity that transcends all cultural, national, ethnic, and gender boundaries, with the aim of mobilizing individuals to rise up and effect radical social change.

Green (or her producers) either did what they set out to do (a hit job to rile up viewers) or failed to perform even the most basic research, like the author above.

Unfortunately, this article misses the forest, for the trees, and does little more than parse words, while missing the essential meaning behind them.
C'est la vie.

...

My father was the chairman of the Religious Studies Department at Boston University. His specialty was what he referred as the "life world" that gave rise to Christianity--exactly the focus of Aslan's new book. My father always referred to his field of study, which by any measure was historical, as the sociology of religion. These attempts to discredit Aslan are simply silly.

So the picture appears to be much more complicated than your narrative allows, and largely boils down to the question of what threshold of academic work gives you the right to call yourself an authority on a given subject. Whether you like Aslan or not, he certainly has lots of credentials relevant to this area, and so calling him a fraud is fucking stupid.

Reza Aslan said he had PhD in history of religion. In reality he has PhD in sociology, it's titled "Sociology of Jihad". It has nothing to do with history. I know sociologists will protest but sociology is a few ladders lower than history. His academic standing is nonexistant, he is an associate professor of "creative writing", which kinda explains his book writing hobbies.

And you still haven't answered my question - who gives a shit, outside of a handful of people with an axe to grind against the man (like you)?

Reza Aslan give a shit, for once. I give a shit simply because he lied about his credentials.

And how the hell does his being Muslim matter when Christians write books about other religions all the fucking time?

I explained how. His writing a book is not an issue here, his pretending being a scholar of religion is. First of all he is not a scholar of religion, and second of all, being a muslim, or christian for that matter, disqualifies him from being unbiased scholar of religion.

 

[braces_for_impact]

Islamophobia, it's a bullshit made up word. Meaningless really.

According to the Oxford dictionaries, you are wrong.

Definition of Islamophobia in English:
noun

Dislike of or prejudice against Islam or Muslims, especially as a political force.

I'm not one for argument via dictionary, but really I have a quibble against this definition. I have a dislike against Islam, like I do most religion. I dislike different religions for different reasons, and some religions have quite a bit of overlap as to why I dislike them. I also dislike religion as a whole for the most part. I don't consider myself an Islamophobe. Some may disagree, I don't know. I've never been accused of it, but I suspect a little more time arguing with Warpoet will remedy that.

When I meet a Christian, or a Jew, or a Sikh or a Muslim, I do try my best not to treat them differently based on their religion. I try to judge them as individuals based on their behavior, not the label they claim. These labels are so general in most cases that meeting someone with such a label tells me very little about that individual. Nevertheless, beliefs translate into action, and certain beliefs are more prevalent within certain religions than others. I see no reason to try to pretend that all religions are the same.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

According to the Oxford dictionaries, you are wrong.

Nah, it's a made up word, bullshit. it means fuck all.

All words are made up words.

You don't like the word. It upsets you. I get it. You might want to look into why it upsets you. However, your being upset does not mean that the word has no meaning.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

According to the Oxford dictionaries, you are wrong.

Definition of Islamophobia in English:
noun

Dislike of or prejudice against Islam or Muslims, especially as a political force.

I'm not one for argument via dictionary, but really I have a quibble against this definition. I have a dislike against Islam, like I do most religion. I dislike different religions for different reasons, and some religions have quite a bit of overlap as to why I dislike them. I also dislike religion as a whole for the most part. I don't consider myself an Islamophobe. Some may disagree, I don't know. I've never been accused of it, but I suspect a little more time arguing with Warpoet will remedy that.

When I meet a Christian, or a Jew, or a Sikh or a Muslim, I do try my best not to treat them differently based on their religion. I try to judge them as individuals based on their behavior, not the label they claim. These labels are so general in most cases that meeting someone with such a label tells me very little about that individual. Nevertheless, beliefs translate into action, and certain beliefs are more prevalent within certain religions than others. I see no reason to try to pretend that all religions are the same.

Has someone called you an islamophobe?

 

[TSwizzle]

Nah, it's a made up word, bullshit. it means fuck all.

All words are made up words.

You don't like the word. It upsets you. I get it. You might want to look into why it upsets you. However, your being upset does not mean that the word has no meaning.

*yawn*. The word is gibberish, mumbo jumbo, claptrap etc.

 

[blastula]

Sam Harris hasn't said that and doesn't believe it.

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-mosque

"Apologists for Islam have even sought to defend their faith from criticism by inventing a psychological disorder known as “Islamophobia.”

...

There is no such thing as Islamophobia."

Coincidentally, Harris just happens to be a self-important twat who's not worth anybody's time or consideration.

You cut out the rest of the paragraph.

There is no such thing as Islamophobia. Bigotry and racism exist, of course—and they are evils that all well-intentioned people must oppose. And prejudice against Muslims or Arabs, purely because of the accident of their birth, is despicable. But like all religions, Islam is a system of ideas and practices. And it is not a form of bigotry or racism to observe that the specific tenets of the faith pose a special threat to civil society. Nor is it a sign of intolerance to notice when people are simply not being honest about what they and their co-religionists believe.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

All words are made up words.

You don't like the word. It upsets you. I get it. You might want to look into why it upsets you. However, your being upset does not mean that the word has no meaning.

*yawn*. The word is gibberish, mumbo jumbo, claptrap etc.

Well get ready to yawning a lot cause it ain't going away.

And you really should look into why the word upsets you.

Also why a word you feel is gibberish is taking up so much of your trolling time.

 

[TSwizzle]

*yawn*. The word is gibberish, mumbo jumbo, claptrap etc.

Well get ready to yawning a lot cause it ain't going away.

And you really should look into why the word upsets you.

Also why a word you feel is gibberish is taking up so much of your trolling time.

zzzzzzzzzz. It's codswallop.

 

[braces_for_impact]

I'm not one for argument via dictionary, but really I have a quibble against this definition. I have a dislike against Islam, like I do most religion. I dislike different religions for different reasons, and some religions have quite a bit of overlap as to why I dislike them. I also dislike religion as a whole for the most part. I don't consider myself an Islamophobe. Some may disagree, I don't know. I've never been accused of it, but I suspect a little more time arguing with Warpoet will remedy that.

When I meet a Christian, or a Jew, or a Sikh or a Muslim, I do try my best not to treat them differently based on their religion. I try to judge them as individuals based on their behavior, not the label they claim. These labels are so general in most cases that meeting someone with such a label tells me very little about that individual. Nevertheless, beliefs translate into action, and certain beliefs are more prevalent within certain religions than others. I see no reason to try to pretend that all religions are the same.

Has someone called you an islamophobe?

No.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Has someone called you an islamophobe?

No.

Good, because I don't think you are one. Criticizing the faith is one thing, and a good thing I might add. Othering all who adhere to that faith or designating that faith to be a special kind of evil that justifies a nuclear first strike to an entire region of the planet in order to "be safe" are different things.

 

[skepticalbip]

Well get ready to yawning a lot cause it ain't going away.

And you really should look into why the word upsets you.

Also why a word you feel is gibberish is taking up so much of your trolling time.

zzzzzzzzzz. It's codswallop.

It is worse than that. It is a mis-identification. Literally, islamophobia would mean "dreadful fear of Islam". To see that Islam is a socially destructive and authoritarian belief system worthy of being opposed is not fear. Anti-islamic would be a more appropriate word.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

zzzzzzzzzz. It's codswallop.

It is worse than that. It is a mis-identification. Literally, islamophobia would mean "dreadful fear of Islam". To see that Islam is a socially destructive and authoritarian belief system worthy of being opposed is not fear. Antiislamic would be a more appropriate word.

Well then you go with that.

 

[barbos]

"Islamophobe" is an invented term which does not mean much usually because it is severely overused. If you apply it the way islamic appologists apply it then 70% of population on the west would be islamophobes.
Now let me invent few other terms, - "westophobe", "cartoonophobe", "freedomphobe", "womanphobe", "commonsensephobes", "intelligencephobes"

 

[barbos]

zzzzzzzzzz. It's codswallop.

It is worse than that. It is a mis-identification. Literally, islamophobia would mean "dreadful fear of Islam". To see that Islam is a socially destructive and authoritarian belief system worthy of being opposed is not fear.

That's not how this term is normally applied.

Anti-islamic would be a more appropriate word.

Yes it would.