[Itse]

Originally Posted by Thor

many of us have become afraid to speak about Islam critically for fear of sounding like the right wing who attack Islam on much harsher grounds.

Again, when you absolutely insist that people should talk critically of Islam (not Islamism or radical Islamism), I have a really hard time believing that you actually make such distinctions.

And again, just because people are not saying what you want them to say does not mean they are afraid.

Lets be clear here, its the reformers within Islam, those being hunted down for posting blogs in the Muslim world, which are calling out for modernization within Islam that are most dissapointed at the west for allowing only the more extreme right be the main voice against these issues within Islam,

The extreme right does not talk about about issues WITHIN Islam. They talk about issues WITH Islam. That's a pretty huge distinction.

while the left has failed to stand up and call out these issues for cultural sensitivity, fear of being called bigots, and a whole host of other nonsense.

And I will just keep repeating myself it seems. Just because you think peoples reasons for saying something or not saying something are "nonsense", or that they're "afraid" does not make it true.

And while you say that you are talking about "some liberals", you again right in the next turn talk about "the left has failed", again as if the whole left is some monolithic creature.

This is the reason why there can be no argument. You insist on generalizing things to a point where the claims you make just can't be taken as reasonable ones.

There is no need to defend a claim such as "the left has failed to stand up". The far left especially has done a ton to stand up. Let's take the very latest case for example, Turkey. The political far left in Europe first warned about and then raged against Turkey slipping into a theocratic democracy. They've done this for I think a decade now. They've held marches, written books, tried to get their talking heads on air, etc etc. It's not the left that failed to support the moderates and the liberals in Turkey. They did what they could. They just don't have almost any power in Europe right now.

(The far left has also for a very long time sympathized the Kurds in the Middle-East, who are relatively secular by that areas standards. They've brough Kurdish speakers on tours in Europe etc.)

The whole rise of radical violent Islamism has happened while most of Europe has been under center right rule.

The only reason I can see for blaming the left for any of what's happened is that you really just don't like lefties. Because factually the claim makes no sense.