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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27151 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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Moderate Muslims in the West are... mostly like the rest of us. I hesitate to say that Islam is fundamentally incapable of undergoing some kind of "Enlightenment." (Leaving aside the arguments from some of our resident Christians that post-Enlightenment Christianity isn't real Christianity at all.) I don't think Islam is some sort of unique Neal Stephenson mind virus that turns its followers into violent p-zombies even if many of Islam's critics do.

"Moderate Muslims" are mostly people who are not particularly islamic; they eat turkey bacon while getting drunk the night before sleeping through morning prayer. Now I suspect that it's possible that devout Muslims in the west could be very like Christian fundamentalists, who are, reddit to the contrary, very rarely a problem, but you'll notice they're still a breed apart.

I do think a blanket "Muslim ban" is stupid (and clearly unconstitutional). But a ban on importing large numbers of people from countries that just happen to be dominated by Muslims of an uncompromising, anti-Western, pro-jihadist bent does not seem irrational or bigoted to me, but it would be hard to frame it in a way that would be acceptable to those who believe Islam is "just another religion."

I mean Assyrians and Maronites make great citizens, but shias and sunnis from their same countries do not. Obviously we could openly discriminate but that's illegal.

they eat turkey bacon

There is nothing wrong with eating turkey bacon as long as the animal was slaughtered in a halal manner.

There is much that it is wrong with eating "turkey bacon", most notably that turkey is not bacon.

Well yes, the point was that following Islam is inconsistent for these people. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, either way it’s not really out of religious devotion.

That's what the ideal is, though. "Culturally Muslim" like "Culturally Catholic" or Methodist or what have you. Keep some of the traditions for the Exotic Old Country flavour, be steeped in the modern secular liberal Western values of the surrounding society, and have "our mosque has a female imam" service attendance for the big cultural holidays (whatever the Muslim version of Christmas-and-Easter is).

That's what meant by and understood as "moderate Muslims"; the kind who won't rock the boat and are indistinguishable, apart from skin colour and maybe names, from the people around them. The sort of "diversity" that isn't diverse ideologically. A Muslim who is orthodox and follows the teachings is tolerable, the same as with Christians, so long as they know their place: religion is a private matter and you don't get to intrude it in the public square.

But that has nothing to do with Turkey bacon, which is fine.

The point was to include one Islamically influenced behavior in a list of haram ones. Maybe ‘breaks Ramadan with Turkey bacon’ would have been better.

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