Fisking

a new Fisk

He starts out reasonably with
"If Muslim violence is to be condemned, it is not because Mohammed is misunderstood but because it violates basic human rights."

But after outlining the issues with literal interpretation of Christianity and Islam he moves on to the argument he was setting up.

> How can we suggest that a religion based on "submission" to God must itself "submit" to our happy-clappy, all-too-Western " universal human rights"? I don’t know.

Just suggest it Mr. Fisk.

> Are we therefore in a position to tell our Muslim neighbors to "grasp the nettle"? I rather think not.

Fisks problem is that he groups the world into three groups here
1) The Islamic world - worthy of critique by pure people
2) The Christian world - impure and not able to critique and worthy of critique
3) Himself - able to critique (therefore pure?)

This is a lovely position he has given himself but is the people he is arguing against really members of the phalange? And if not then why does he not bear collective responsibility also?

So did we loose our moral compass?
Well we never had a moral compass in the first place. It is ridiculous to argue based on human rights that a few hundred years ago white people were extremely moral by Fisk's standards - afteral so many people had slaves and so forth!

But not knowing exactly where we are hardly means we should not make note when we see people who clearly inhabit Polar Regions. (Maybe I'm taking this metaphor a bit far).

Anyway the vast majority of Christians I know don't take the history of the bible as purely literal or that any action in the bible must be sanctioned by god - therefore the critique is bit meaningless unless he is arguing they SHOULD think that.