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Hitchens fighting cancer. Bawer facing charges? What’s next?

My wife and I just returned from Europe (i.e., London, Paris, vicinity of Switzerland, and Brussels. Our friend in London (an Italian) and several people in Paris confirmed the problems discussed by Mr. Bawer and then some. I have many friends who call themselves Muslims (our friends from Brussels are from Turkey but I suspect they are nonbelievers — the subject has never come up) but only some of whom could be called Muslims by an reasonable definition of the word. These people are more like many Americans who call themselves Christian by default, because that is the majority religion that has informed their culture and their concept of God. They are all essentially “freelance monotheist.” who celebrate Eid like we celebrate Thanksgiving. The fact is that the majority of the people on this planet, including such freelance monotheists have no real appreciation for those that take their religion seriously. The truth is that many moderates who claim to speak for Islam refuse to discuss the dark side of this belief system. They painfully attempt to obscure plain truths. Where they cannot, they remain silent. However, they cannot condemn the dark parts of Islam, because to do so would be to deny the perfection of Islam. Judaism and Christianity, due to the fact that they derive from multiple, sometimes contradictory scriptures that were at best inspired by God, have done a better job at developing sophisticated theological arguments to allow believers to disavow the dark stuff. Due to the fact that Islam is a single scripture representing a single revelation to one prophet by God himself (via an angelic conduit), it seems unlikely that Muslims will be able to develop more humanist interpretations of the dark scriptures. In short, it seems impossible to deny Islam in part without a significant degree of cognitive dissonance.

Bruce, you have done your part. Time to return home where the dream is still alive.