re: #64 Charles

Then how do you explain the fact that there are thousands of apostate Muslims in the US who are not living under a sentence of death? If Islam is “fundamentally violent,” shouldn’t those people all be dead?

If there is no possibility of moderation, how are those apostates able to live out in the open?

That is a poor argument. Being required by religion to do something doesn’t mean it WILL happen, just that the adherents would like it to happen. Honor killing happens (unfortunately) throughout the Western world, for example. The language in the Qur’an is explicit about apostates.

In the case of the West/US, the moderation is imposed on them from a 3d party, our laws.

I’m not saying that all Muslims will kill apostates, I’m saying their religion tells them to. Not the same. The Catholic Church tells people not to use birth control, that doesn’t mean Catholics always (or even usually in the US) obey.

It’s easier to moderate when the theology is not so clear, however. The Catholic thing is a papal directive, so is more like an Islamic Fatwa and open to some debate I imagine. If the Bible said flat out “no birth control” people disobeying would be in a tougher theological position, no?

Nick Griffin is a stone-cold racist, by any definition of the word.

He can be a racist without his hatred of Islam being racist, the two are not the same. Hitchens describes himself, for example as an “anti-theist.” Being against all religions does not make him a racist. Religions are ideas. I don’t have a single word for “hatred of a religion” but it’s not “racism” technically since religion is not race.

Race is something you are born with and cannot change, period. An indelible trait. I hate (yes hate) Nazis, for example. That’s not racism because Nazis are not a race.