FREE SPEECH UPDATE: You still can’t write about Muhammad. Will other religious groups take the lesson that violence works? Because, in a world of the spineless, it does, and at very low cost. Thanks, guys, for establishing this incentive structure.
UPDATE: I am charged with “cultural relativism.”
Part of the Islamic belief-system is the proposition that one who insults Muhammad should be killed. That is why Muslims so easily resort to threats of violence against those who say things about Muhammad that they don’t like. No sect of Christianity teaches that the one who insults Jesus should be killed. In fact, they all teach that one should be patient and charitable with opponents. That is why Christians do not generally resort to threats of violence against those who say things about Jesus that they don’t like. There are nuts in every group, of course, and that’s why I say “generally,” but there is no sanction in the core teachings of the religion for such behavior. And that’s why Reynolds’s earlier assertion that “sooner or later, you know, fundamentalist Christians are going to pick up on this lesson, engage in similar behavior, and make similar demands” is almost certainly false. The most virulently fundamentalist Christian can find no sanction in Jesus’ teaching for the murder of his opponents any more than anyone else can.
It does not make every Muslim a terrorist to point this out, and it isn’t bigoted to do so, either. It is simply to state a series of facts — and if anyone wishes to try to prove that the facts I have asserted here are false, I welcome the challenge. Meanwhile, the relativism of Glenn Reynolds and so many others continues to hinder our response to the jihad threat.
Well, I believe in evolution, memetic as well as physical, and I think that if violence works, more people will use it, and the religious doctrine to justify that will follow. Am I right, or is Robert Spencer right? The world had better hope that Spencer is, since our spineless powers-that-be seem determined to conduct the experiment. . . .
ANOTHER UPDATE: Related thoughts here.
MORE: Reader Dave Warner emails:
Robert Spencer writes:
“The most virulently fundamentalist Christian can find no sanction in Jesus’ teaching for the murder of his opponents any more than anyone else can.”
Maybe no one expected the Spanish Inquisition, but I would certainly hope that someone might remember it.
Yes, I get arguments that “no true Christian” would do this sort of thing but these seem like variants of the “no true Scotsman” line.