Glenn Reynolds today sends his readers to this absolutely exquisite essay from Roger Simon of Pajamas Media, who explains why his support for gay marriage and women’s rights leads him to be such a committed warrior in the War against Islamofascism:
…So, yes, I am a supporter of gay marriage and undoubtedly will remain so, since it is consistent with my values of long duration. And, yes, I will continue to agitate for it in my writing and elsewhere. But in return I call on my friends on the Left –- straight or gay -– to help defend that real source of liberalism the Enlightenment, because if we lose and fall under religious law, there not only will be no gay marriage, there will be no women’s rights, no freedom of the press, no basic human rights, not even – as in the case of Iran – any music.
Every now and then, it is worth noting that substantial portions of the right-wing political movement in the United States — the Pajamas Media/ right-wing-blogosphere / Fox News / Michelle Malkin / Rush Limbaugh listener strain — actually believe that Islamists are going to take over the U.S. and impose sharia law on all of us. And then we will have to be Muslims and “our women” will be forced into burkas and there will be no more music or gay bars or churches or blogs. This is an actual fear that they have — not a theoretical fear but one that is pressing, urgent, at the forefront of their worldview.
Also currently up on Salon:
Is the critique of Darwinism basically the same as what you’d find from American creationists?
Much of the rhetoric is similar. There are only so many ways you can argue against evolution, only so many ways you can say the fossil record doesn’t tell you what the biologists say. But there are also differences. For example, in American creationist circles, one of the stronger options is “Young Earth creationism.” People who read the Book of Genesis literally believe in a creation that happened 10,000 years ago, literally done in six days. But the Quran is much vaguer about the time frame of divine action. Therefore, they are not as committed to fitting earth history into thousands of years. So Muslim creationists are almost invariably “Old Earth creationists.”What about the idea that human beings have a common ancestor with chimpanzees?
That’s definitely a no-no …you will find that Muslims will typically be very reluctant to allow for human evolution.
You can probably see where I’m going with this.