[Itse]

For the record and by the way.

I can understand why people like Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz feel like it's liberals who refuse to have the conversations they'd like to have. Liberals are the people they've tried to have those conversations with the most. I'm sure they're not the only people who have personal bubbles where that discussion over "what can be talked about with liberals" feels super relevant.

However, I feel that if look at the quality of conversation outside the liberal bubble, you will notice the same lack of reasonable public speech on Islam and radical Islamism. Partly for the same reasons, partly for different ones.

Plus as I've said I don't think it's constructive or fair even to start calling out the kinds of people who very likely in other contexts are taking part in related important work, such as fighting for civil rights and against the discrimination of Muslims.


It's also important to remember when you listen to people like Harris and Nawaz that every expert thinks their field is the most relevant one. (It's often why they became experts in that field in the first place.)

EDIT: This often leads them to completely miss the existence of other aspects of a question.

For example, both Nawaz and Harris seem to consider the Guardian some kind of a "prime offender" in not talking about Islam in the way they'd like it to be talked about and thus for them the Guardian is part of the problem. Now, even if we entertain the notion that The Guardian does indeed talk about Islam in a way that's fundamentally wrong, that argument completely ignores the rest of the everyday fight against radical Islamism. Even if the Guardian is indeed wrong on that one thing, they're fighting the good fight on a whole variety of others.
Harris and Nawaz both talk of the Guardian as if all that other stuff simply just doesn't exist. But seriously, which of these things is the most acute issue when it comes to the fight against Islamist terrorism: Problematic passages in the Quran, Turkey buying oil from ISIS, grenade launchers being sold to Islamic militants or the US acting as if it can shoot itself out of this problem?

You can of course discuss all of these topics at once, and yes you can argue that the philosophical debate is also absolutely necessary to have. But it's still extremely unfair and IMO actually rather narcistic for them to make such a big deal about somebody disagreeing with them in their own field. Even if they were right in that one topic. (They should be, they're experts in that field. The Guardian is not. They're just journalists trying to do their job.)


I respect Maajid Nawaz enourmosly as a thinker despite the above because he clearly draws from a wide range of fields (political theory, sociopsychology, history etc) and is able to make connections between all of those things. That's a very difficult thing to do.

Sam Harris on the other hand, while good in his own field, seems to have a rather simplistic view of things outside of his own field of religion and philosophy, and so ultimately I find his commentary on the topic mostly rather trivial, even when it's true and interesting.

After all, the real world does not respect the boundaries of scientific disciplines. (Which is why it's just extremely unlikely that there would be a complex human phenomenon such as Islamic extremism that could be adequately explained with any one theory from any one field of study.)