This is fine, I actually agree with you on his gun position. But there's a difference between having detractors and having people blatantly, repeatedly lie about your positions in order to debase the arguments being made so that they're immediately dismissed instead of considered and either accepted or rejected on their own merits.
I'm not going to get into it in too much detail because I could write pages, and it's been absolutely beaten to death all over the internet and you can find it if you want. But Aslan and Greenwald are two of the absolute worst offenders in intellectual dishonesty in mainstream politics at the present moment.
They're the sort of people who think that their view is right and has to win - which is fine - but are so convinced of that that they're willing to defame, misrepresent and smear opponents and lie to their own audiences in order to further their viewpoint on the world. They've both done it too frequently and too blatantly for it to be accidental or even wilful blindness. It's deliberate.
Dave Pakman did a good summary of some of the issues with Aslan. Incidentally, the stuff on FGM he talked about on CNN resulted in a rebuttal from Sarah Haider which you can read here, and she was immediately smeared as a bigot and being completely non-credible as an ex-muslim.
Harris himself gave a good story about Greenwald below, and his particular ongoing battle with the guy is well documented. But really, the sheer volume of dishonesty perpetuated by him and the Intercept is far too much to repeat here. I suppose the most concise way to sum it up is that someone coined the term "Greenwalding", to mean taking statements deliberately out of context in an effort to defame someone you disagree with by lying about their beliefs and motivations.
I actually don't have much bad to say about Zakaria, except that he's occasionally seemed to have only a very superficial understanding of these issues and has at times been no doubt unwittingly complicit in circulating some of the most obscurantist nonsense, usually from CAIR and related individuals. But I don't think he's a bad actor in the way that Aslan and Greenwald are. These guys are, quite simply, scum.
Scum? Really? Because they fire it back at Harris? You should be aware that the list of people who think Harris writes inflammatory rhetoric, when it comes to religion, is quite long. Even his profs and cohorts at UCLA thought as much. This shouldn't be a surprise. This definitely isn't some one-off type thing where Aslan or Greenwald have called him out for his choice of language. Lots of people don't like his rhetoric and think he is quite the pretentious prick to be honest. I would say that Harris is in the same boat as Bill Maher when it comes to discussing religion and Islam, albeit Maher is quite more colorful in his selection of words, and their points would be much better received if they didn't insult 1/3 of the world with their language. Again, I'm a long time Harris fan, but recognize that he hurts his message from time-to-time with very poorly selected rhetoric. Still love his stuff, but can see why other academics think he's too much and will lash out at him. I can understand your point of view, and picking sides, but I view this as a lot of posturing from all parties.
So, having finished reading Aslan's dissertation, I have to agree that there isn't really anything original in it. Nevertheless, he provides a good summary of relevant sociological research, combines it with his historical knowledge of Islam, provides an interesting perspective on the rise of Jihadism, and is very accessible for a lay person with an interest in the topic.
However, towards the end of his dissertation, just before the conclusion, it really does seem to become an opinion piece. There are nearly a dozen pages of text with almost no references where he outlines his opinion how it's really western attitudes to Islam that are causing people to act on their Jihadism, and that if only the west would get out of the way and allow groups like the Muslim brotherhood to actually govern democratic, but Muslim dominated countries, Jihadist violence will decline as everyone has other ways of having a say. He basically says banning headscarfs and criticizing Islam like Ayan Hirsi Ali does causes disenfranchised Muslims to blow up buildings (p117). He argues that western democratic nations are causing people to act on their Jihadism while at the same time suggesting that if Middle eastern and other Muslim Dominated countries could find a way to be more democratic, violent forms of Jihadism would disappear because they would have other ways to affect change. He doesn't argue why a Muslim dominated democratic nation would do a better job of providing a voice to the disenfranchised Jihadis than westerns ones do. He makes very little effort to actually backup his assertions here other than pointing to how the Muslim Brotherhood seemed to make a good official opposition in Egypt for a very short period of time. This is, I think, pretty disappointing for a dissertation from someone who is supposedly a respected scholar.
I have absolutely no clue who this guy is, but someone should ask him what his opinion on women is, and if it is right to force a 6 year old to marry someone because she was 'promised' to him.
can you guys take the muslim talk somewhere else? i'm wanting to see updates on American politics in a thread titles New American Politics thread.
Here, here. I'm still waiting for some discussion on this issue.
What do people think of the Koch brothers and their network refusing to back Trump? What are the probable outcomes from that? Will that money, $898M, find its way to state elections and further sway the balance at the state level, where an issue may be driven to a constitutional convention for amendment?
I have absolutely no clue who this guy is, but someone should ask him what his opinion on women is, and if it is right to force a 6 year old to marry someone because she was 'promised' to him.
He doesn't cover the religion itself in the paper as it's a sociology dissertation. But given he calls him self both a Muslim and a dedicated follower of Jesus Christ, considers both religions man made and seems to be a humanist of sorts more than anything, I think he would say it's not right. He would probably say it's un-islamic too.
I'll bite. All day it's been about trump and his disrespect to the Muslim couple speaking at convention. Yes. Donald Trump is an ass. Sexist and bigoted in his comments.
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Scum? Really? Because they fire it back at Harris? You should be aware that the list of people who think Harris writes inflammatory rhetoric, when it comes to religion, is quite long.
Again, I thought I was clear at the outset - "firing it back" at someone is fine. It's encouraged. When you do it by delberately lying about that person's positions to discredit them as opposed to by disagreeing with the positions and pointing out why you disagree, that's not acceptable.
They do it routinely. Thus, scum. I'm not clear on whether you missed that aspect of their disagreement, or whether you think it's acceptable to smear someone you disagree with to win an argument; that this somehow constitutes an acceptable way to "hit back". Even if you think Harris's views are pretentiously expressed or inflammatory in the way he puts things, it's not acceptable to lie about him.
That being said, especially in Aslan's case you don't even need to bring Harris into it. He deliberately misstates reality to advance his own cause. He's basically intellectual dishonesty personified.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Last edited by CorsiHockeyLeague; 07-31-2016 at 06:08 PM.
As with any discussion, it is not helpful to be angry, or to take a personal tone. I don't think I, myself, am a useful topic of discussion. I can assure you that your credentials, nor your wife's, are of any interest to me whatsoever. Stand or fall on your arguments.
Here, here. I'm still waiting for some discussion on this issue.
What do people think of the Koch brothers and their network refusing to back Trump? What are the probable outcomes from that? Will that money, $898M, find its way to state elections and further sway the balance at the state level, where an issue may be driven to a constitutional convention for amendment?
They've basically said they're pouring it into the Senate where they think there's races that can be won with money. House will most likely remain Republican and Trump will have little down vote effect there. I think this is basically the money men feeling like the executive branch is lost and they don't want to lose ground in the Senate from the Trump effect
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I'd also think that getting people out to vote for a senate or house race might end up with trickle up votes to Donald. Once your there you might as well vote for someone.
They've basically said they're pouring it into the Senate where they think there's races that can be won with money. House will most likely remain Republican and Trump will have little down vote effect there. I think this is basically the money men feeling like the executive branch is lost and they don't want to lose ground in the Senate from the Trump effect
Outside of the SCOTUS nominations, this is a much bigger issue. At local/state levels, that's where many policy changes are made, unless challenged at the SCOTUS level. Which is why I really need Bernie or Bust idiots to shut up and VOTE, because all of those downticket races are just as important as the Presidential part.
They've basically said they're pouring it into the Senate where they think there's races that can be won with money. House will most likely remain Republican and Trump will have little down vote effect there. I think this is basically the money men feeling like the executive branch is lost and they don't want to lose ground in the Senate from the Trump effect
I think that people tend to ignore the importance of State level politics. If conservatives can control 2/3s of the states legislatures they can force a constitutional conference on some of these hot button social issues and make constitutional amendments that could seriously change the social landscape. It's a long way to go to hit that number, but it is possible and would be a great investment of dollars for the Kochs.
I am too lazy to look it up to confirm, but what baffles me is why there are so many posts debating Aslan, Greenwald, Harris, etc when they were never significant parts of this conversation until a certain poster started obsessively bringing them up so that he could drop kick a straw man in the face.
At this point I think it would even be progress if we could have a discussion about Islam and its impact on the election. But instead, all we get is a discussion about people that discuss Islam. It seems so stupid.
I really wish I could quit this thread.
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Meh, I think it's kind of nice to have a different point of view in here, even if it is absurd.
And I should say I have no problem with opposing views. I don't like being in an echo chamber. I have spent the last 6 years living in South Carolina and Oklahoma while being a super liberal atheist. It's not very fun being in social settings!
But what I don't like is people that are argumentative just for the sake of being argumentative. People that think they are the smartest people on the internet and have to go out of their way to try and prove it. And people that distract from authentic discussion just to try and dig in and defend some arbitrary detail of an issue in an attempt to win internet points.
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