Thanks for your comments Saul.

I pretty much agree with your approach – there are good and bad ideas everywhere, and we shouldn’t assume an idea is good or bad (or otherwise) dependent on its source, but judge each one on its own merits.

It’s interesting re. AU’s comments – there’s a rule of thumb we liberals often use which is that if a situation seems to declare that one side of the argument is wrong and the other side is right, then be sceptical. It’s a good rule of thumb generally, but it is still just a rule of thumb and you see in many liberals an innate inability to set it aside, even when it’s self-evident that the situation is an exception to the rule.

If you rely on a rule of thumb too much you end up ceding your decision making to a predetermined dogma. Your ability to think about things in a free, open way is constrained. Any dogma does this, even liberal dogma. And the liberal dogma/rule of thumb that minorities can’t be prejudiced, and must be defended no matter what their beliefs, is a curious kind of left-wing sado-masochism.

Boko Haram do not deserve the craven, airheaded, bending over backwards approach. They are equivalent to, and in some cases even worse than, exactly the kind of western fascist authoritarians that liberalism has always fought and yet AU feels strongly enough that they require defending from overt criticism.

There’s another liberal rule of thumb too, which is maybe even more prevalent: ‘whatever conservatives are arguing, argue the opposite’. This feeds greatly into the leftist support for Islam too. It’s a potent brew. An open goal for SJWs and the more irrational end of the liberal spectrum is for another liberal to agree with the right on any issue. The nuances of your argument are irrelevant, as are the differences in motivation between you and the right – if you agree you’ve stepped out of bounds.

Now I almost never agree with the right or conservatives, but occasionally, like a stopped clock twice a day, they happen to get things right. So what can I do? I constantly feel the need to add caveats in anything I write about Islam in order to make it clear that I loathe the conservative right just as much as other liberals – it’s cloying, and it feels craven, to have to insert slightly apologetic disclaimers in any comments I make, but that’s how far the dogma of ‘never agree with the right’ has taken us. And mix the aforementioned dogmas/rules of thumb with the general disapproval of religious criticism and it feels more and more that liberals who feel the same way I do are a tiny sliver of opinion squeezed between two politically-opposing monoliths, who are united only in their opposition to us.

Anyway, like the website. It’s very impressive. Inspiring too:).

p.s. If I’d had the time I’d have written a lot less. Apologies.

Thank you.

So, why don’t you go have some pluralistic discussions with them and let us know how they turn out?

“That doesn’t mean we cannot have a pluralistic discussion about them instead of repeating the mantra Boko Haram = Jihadists = unmitigated evil = world conquer.”

What exactly does a “pluralistic discussion” of an organization that is committed to precisely that look like?

Hi Heather,

Sure, Boko Haram has done some absolutely atrocious things, which everyone should condemn. That doesn’t mean we cannot have a pluralistic discussion about them instead of repeating the mantra Boko Haram = Jihadists = unmitigated evil = world conquer.

As I’m sure you agree, whatever someone’s own views about education, they have no right to use the kind of tactics Boko Haram does to force their views on others. Islamic education is available for those who want it. I’m pretty sure some of Nigeria’s northern states have Sharia too, but that Boko Haram doesn’t consider it to be enforced strictly enough, and they want to enforce the kind of punishments that make most of us recoil at the idea of Sharia.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/Backchannels/2014/0506/Boko-Haram-doesn-t-really-mean-Western-education-is-a-sin

** I take everything groups like Red24 say with a huge pinch of salt – they often have their own agendas. You might be interested in read Lisa Stampnitzky’s book “Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented Terrorism”.