Critical Thinking vs. Muslim Bashing        Well, I see nobody posted any comments here yesterday to take me to task for Muslim bashing. Too bad, because if you had, I would have agreed with you. No matter, this is my follow up post to clarify that I was making two different, but equally important points. If you have been reading these blog posts all along you probably "got it", but I must explain it for those of you who came to class late. Anything I wrote that sounded like Muslim bashing came after the tragic deaths of those martyrs I dubbed "The Paris 12". The point of that was to voice solidarity with Charlie Hedbo or, as they say in France, "Je Suis Charlie". Muslim bashing is protected by free speech, but it is usually only practiced by bigoted jerks like myself. Satire is free speech, and critical thinking about philosophical concepts is also free speech, but do you know the difference between the two?
       That was a trick question. It is not always an Eith/Or option. Satire and insults are on a spectrum, and the point where each one falls on that spectrum is a matter of personal and/or social psychological construct. I will be posting my paper on SCA, Spectrum Construct Analysis, in the near future, but for now let's just say that the line between satire and constructive criticism is a fuzzy one.
       Calling myself a bigoted jerk is satire. Someone else calling me a bigoted jerk may also be satire, or it may be an insult. Obviously it is easier to tell the difference in person, face-to-face, with facial expressions, tone of voice, and other body language clues. But in the print media it is much more difficult. Another factor is cultural differences. Those murderous criminals who call themselves Jihadists and believe that death to the infidels is the appropriate response to criticism, have their own point-of-view, their own social construct. It is a localized cultural point-of-view that they were indoctrinated into by the culture in which they were raised. Sadly, they also control their cultures in a feed-back loop that perpetuates their stupidity and forces it, by threat of violence, on everybody around them. We have localized pockets of cultural stupidity here in the West too, but we also have both freedom of speech and protection against violence as safeguards. No matter whether some idiots take criticism as an insult, criticism and insults are both protected by freedom of speech, precisely because the line between them is so fine. Both satire and insult are in the ear of the beholder. If the shoe does not fit, do not wear it. And violent responses to criticism and insult are not protected, they are prohibited. Okay, I got that off my chest.
       My Muslim bashing, by the way, was accompanied by Christian bashing and Zionist bashing, so you can call me an equal opportunity bigot. I already posted a link to my essay on religion last week. Enough said about that.
       The big question we have to ask, here in the West, is why do so many Muslims want to migrate to Western countries? Do they really want to assimilate and/or escape the violence and repression they faced in their home countries? Or are they here as sleeper cell terrorists? Those are important questions, but you cannot begin to answer them without some serious and complicated research. An important rule of critical thinking is "you cannot generalize from a limited sample". What makes it complicated is that both questions, Assimilation & Terrorism, only have anecdotal, insufficient answers. My answer to the above questions is: do not assume anything. When in doubt, ask a Muslim. Better yet, ask as many Muslims as you can find. You may be surprised at what they have to say.
       This blog is not the venue for a whole sociology research paper on that subject so I am going to just list, randomly, some anecdotal evidence that you may, or may not, have read about, and let you, the critical thinker, figure out what it may, or may not, mean. Of course some of you may not be able to stifle your confirmation bias, but, oh well.

• Islamic State Executed Scores in Iraq This Month. From the New York Times, Wed. Jan. 21, 2015, by Nick Cumming-Bruce.
• From the Associated Press, Paris, Wed. Jan. 21, 2015. A story about a Muslim, Lassana Bathily, who was awarded French citizenship for heroism when he saved lives at a kosher supermarket that was attacked by terrorists.
• A French TV satire, Le Petit Journal, mocks Fox News for its false reporting that there are "no-go" pockets of neighborhoods in France and England where police and non-Muslims cannot go, and where Muslims enforce Shariah law. Officials in both countries testified that there is no credible evidence that these neighborhoods exist, and Fox News later admitted that their report was wrong and apologized. Story by Doreen Carvajal of The New York Times, Wed. Jan. 21, 2015.
• From the Associated Press, Cairo, by Jon Gambrell and Mari Yamaguchi, Wed. Jan 21, 2015. Story about Islamic State criminals taking two Japanese hostages and demanding $200M.
• Leonard Pitts, in the Miami Herald, Sun. Jan. 11, 2015, claims that terrorists have won the war against satire. His evidence? "Jon Stewart is quitting 'The Daily Show' to host a program on the Food Network, specializing in New Jersey cuisine. Mad magazine is going out of business and its famed mascot, the infidel Alfred E. Newman just became the latest journalist beheaded by ISIS. Bill Maher is teaching religious studies in Mississippi, Lewis Black is practicing Zen Buddhism and Stephen Colbert now claims that 'Stephen Colbert' was nothing more than a character he played."
• Yasmine Bahrani, professor of journalism at American University in Dubai, in the Washington Post, Sun. Jan. 18, 2015 makes several observations about the deteriorating relations between Muslims and the West.
  1. Why do we make a big deal about the Paris 12 but not about the thousands killed in Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, etc. and countless Muslims murdered by drone strikes, or the 132 Schoolchildren slaughtered in Pakistan in December?
  2. Right-wing political groups like Britain's UKIP, Germany's Pegida and France's National Front gain popularity and Middle Easterners feel threatened and become defensive.
  3. Nobody in Bahrani's classroom believes Boston bombing suspect Dzhosker Tsarnev is guilty: they believe he was set up. The United States government has a serious credibility problem. Saddam Hussein did not have the WMDs that G.W.Bush used as an excuse for the Iraq war, the U.S. organized a fake vaccination drive in Pakistan to get to Osama Bin Laden, and the U.S. told Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad, that the use of chemical weapons would cross a "red line" but they did not enforce it.
  4. Bahrani explained that part of the reason some of the students didn't "get it" that even tasteless or offensive cartoonists should have the right to freedom of expression, is because "In Middle Eastern Society, we deny ourselves comfort to make some one else comfortable".
• Can my readers detect any logical problems in that last item? I have some, but I'm not telling. You figure them out.
• Okay, Readers, now it's your turn to go out and research more of these items. I've done my work today, I need a beer.

Coming soon:       Spectrum Construct Analysis (SCA); Thought, Speech, and Action; A rant on Immigration; A rant on Pre-emptive Self-Defense; and my ongoing research on peace through education.
Also see: www.peacemoon.org