Is found, I think, towards the end of a long article by Sam Harris in the L.A. Times about the evils of Islam, fanatical faith, suicide bombers, architects putting down their set squares to hack off the necks of journalists, etc:
The … failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
Given the amount of approving quotes of Sam Harris in the new Dawkins book on religion, this might prove rather embarrassing. On the other hand, it does show very clearly what a shallow and jejune understanding of other cultures Sam Harris must have always had.
Just out of interest, I’m trying to find the original source of a too-good-to-be-true quote that’s doing the rounds. “”Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence” – Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam. Google News seems to think it’s in some AP reports, but it’s not in the reports when you get there – and all the other occurences I can find are in blogs or similar places of indifferent reality. I did find this in the People’s Daily:
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said that anyone who felt that Islam was intolerant or Islam spread through use of force showed ignorance.
“Statements of this nature are very unhelpful in the efforts that we are making to bridge the gap and promote understanding between different religions,” he added.
Is this TGTBT? A misquote that was rectified? A real quote that was withdrawn?
R
I’m not sure you’re refuting Harris here, as much as proving his point. By “Gödel sentence” I gather you mean something like “agree with this sentence, and you are a fascist and therefore Harris is wrong and you shouldn’t agree with this sentence”. But I think you may be misreading him — In Letter to a Christian Nation, he puts the same meme in a slightly different context:
I read him as saying that it is lamentable that fascist wackos are the only ones unencumbered by the conventional strictures that make it impermissible to state the obvious where religion is concerned – that there are aspects of Islam (that are mostly shared with Christianity, by the way) that are fundamentally incompatible with modern life in a liberal democracy. Also, it is important to note that he is not saying that all Muslim immigrants are a threat to European society, or “Oh no, brown hordes are outbreeding the rightful white inhabitants of Europe!”. His article is not pro-fascist or pro-racist. I don’t see how it’s embarrassing at all. Could you expand on why you think it would be?
I think that only an American, with no knowledge of fascism or its history here could write, as Harris did, that European fascists are “sensible” and have “the courage to speak honestly”. The reason that we shrink from association with fascists here is nor fear of rasicm or political correctness. It is the knowledge that, whatever the disease, if fascism is the cure, it’s worse. People who call fascists their allies in a struggle for rationality misunderstand both fascism and rationality.
Again, what are the “conventional strictures” that stop people saying that there are aspects of Islam incompatible with modern life? Do they apply to the Daily Mail? Do they apply to the Pope? Do they apply to anyone running for national elected office anywhere in Europe? No. Of course they bloody don’t. It is the conventional wisdom in every country in Europe that Muslims must give up — to the extent that they practice them — forced marriages, honour killings, punitive gang rapes and so on if they want to live here.
If we take as the question, “Are Muslims respectful of women?” as a useful shorthand proxy for Harris’s question, “Do we think that Muslims should be free to do obnoxious things?” there is a [“Pew Survey”:http://pewglobal.org/commentary/display.php?AnalysisID=1009%5D a quick google away. From this we learn that France, Germany and Spain all think worse of Muslims than the USA does (77,80, and 83% of the population think Muslims are not respectful of women vs 69% in the US and 59% here).
Harris believes that “Islam now poses a threat to European society”. You claim that this doesn’t mean that all muslim immigrants are threats, or that the brown hordes are outbreeding the white inhabitants of Europe. Obviously the first claom is a straw man. People who fear immigration do so on the grounds that quantity alters quality; as for the second claim, it is, of course, quite true that the “brown hordes” are outbreeding the white inhabitants of Europe.
So I don’t see why Harris shouldn’t make the claim, except, of course, that it leads to the follow-up question: what is to be done? The fascists have an answer for that one, too; and I remember that when I learnt where the London tube bombers had come from, I woke up in the night with a phrase ringing in my head, “a thousand Srebrenicas on the NorthYork Moors.”
Quite apart from the moral objections to this programme, I think that from Harris’ point of view, there is another problem. If there is to be the kind of anti-Muslim backlash he seems to think is necessary to save European civilisation, it will not be secular. Or, if it is secular, it will rapidly take on the quasi-religious characteristics of fascism of communism. That’s just the way that human minds seem to work. But it is much more likely to be offensively Christian. We can see the beginnings of that very clearly in the Pope’s speech at Regensburg. Either way, it is bad news for liberal secularists such as, well, me.