Gentlemen:
However much you may disagree, you seem to agree that bashing religious fundamentalism at Secular Humanist U, where none dare call it bigotry, is one of life’s unexamined and simple pleasures.
Mr. Thorpe, in your April 7 reply to Mr. Carp you say that “I was left confused as to why you didn’t just rephrase your arguments to rightly target only fundamentalist Islam, which, like fundamentalism of any religion, is pretty bonkers.” Four paragraphs later you say that “racism and bigotry can be found in a belief system that unfairly generalizes an entire group of people or culture. Even though you say that generalizations are sometimes necessary, you seem to forget that generalizations are the seed of racist thinking.” Mr. Thorpe, how do you square your assertion that “generalizations are the seed of racist thinking” with your sweeping generalization that “…fundamentalism of any religion, is pretty bonkers”?
In excoriating Mr. Carp for suggesting that the distinction between the Islam of peace and the 9/11 nineteen’s brand of Islam, as a practical matter, might be a distinction without a difference, you’re reading from the Gospel of Bush: “Islam is a religion of peace,” intoned the unabashed religious fundamentalist—you’d have to call him “pretty bonkers” mere days after 9/11. (Alas, Mr. Thorpe, he failed to fulminate and thump the Bible.)
Mr. Carp, you reply to Mr. Thorpe on April 11: “I would hope that EVERYONE denounces religious fundamentalism—we need not write Wespeaks stating the obvious.” Obvious, that is, to everyone at home in the bubble wherein the blinkered, smug, and censorious mindset—the coin of the realm on High—is minted.
In your denunciation of religious fundamentalism you are denouncing, inter alia, the Amish Brethren, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Pentecostals, the Mormons, the Baptists, Orthodox Jewry, and Wesleyan’s Methodist founders; you are denouncing the English churchmen whose sermons bore fruit when Parliament outlawed slavery in Albion’s far-flung Empire (the Royal Navy battled Arab slavers); and you are denouncing the Abolitionists whose eyes had seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Mr. Guha, I quote from your April 21 Wespeak: “I did not earlier, and do not now, offer any excuse for, nor endorsement of, the narrow-minded inhumanity (”inhumanity,“ no less!) of religious fundamentalism (Islamic or otherwise).”
Gentlemen, if your fearless hearts are set on slaying the hellfire-breathing dragon of “narrow-minded” religious fundamentalism, here on High is where it’s at. Let’s begin with Freshman (or is it Frosh?) Week, when every novice discovers that freedom of conscience is a dead letter vis-à-vis the demanding confession of Diversity. Let’s also consider the Catechism (course book) put out by the Church of the Holy Trinity of race, class, and gender studies. And finally let’s not forget The First Commandment: “Thou shalt have no other catechism before me.”
That pulpit-hogging hegemon is briefly dwelled upon by Ariel Levy ’96, in “Female Chauvinist Pigs”:
“I remember a meeting we once had, as members of the English majors committee, with the department faculty: We were there to tell them about a survey we’d given out to English majors, the majority of whom said they wanted at least one classics course to be offered at our college. We all bought the party line that such a class should never be REQUIRED because that would suggest that Dead White Men were more important than female and nonwhite writers. But we figured it couldn’t do any harm for them to OFFER one canonical literature course for those of us who wanted to grasp the references in the contemporary Latin American poetry we were reading in ever other class. It seemed like a pretty reasonable request to me. After I made my pitch for it, the woman who was head of the department at that time looked at me icily and said, ‘I would never TEACH at a school that offered a course like that.’”
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