"I also now realize, with brutal clarity, that in the progressive hierarchy of identity groups, Muslims are above gays. Every pundit and politician -- and that includes President Obama and Hillary Clinton and half the talking heads on TV -- who today have said ‘We don't know what the shooter's motivation could possibly be!’ have revealed to me their true priorities: appeasing Muslims is more important than defending the lives of gay people. Every progressive who runs interference for Islamic murderers is complicit in those murders, and I can no longer be a part of that team." -- Anonymous at PJ Media
At first glance, the liberal approach to Islam makes no sense whatsoever.
Liberalism is generally hostile to Christianity and it particularly seems to dislike anyone who has strong religious convictions that conflict with liberalism. This describes every devout Muslim on the planet.
Liberals go on and on endlessly about a war on women and Islam treats women like garbage. In many parts of the Islamic world, women are forced to wear burkas or veils, are given clitoridectomies to take the pleasure out of sex for them, can’t leave the house or drive without a male relative and may be raped or beaten with impunity.
Libs obsess endlessly about gun violence and constantly trash our troops when they accidentally kill civilians. In a large minority of the Islamic world (and a majority in many more fundamentalist countries), innocent women and children are considered fair game and terrorists who murder them in large numbers in places like the Palestinian territories are considered to be heroes.
The Left has gone so insane over imaginary violations of “gay rights” that liberals are in favor of driving Christians out of any profession that caters to weddings and they insist that women have to use the bathroom with men because the less than .2% of men who “feel like” women would be uncomfortable using the men’s bathroom. Meanwhile, Islam goes with homophobia the way peanut butter goes with jelly. There are a number of Islamic countries where being gay is a crime with jail or even DEATH as the penalty.
So, how can liberals continue to turn a blind eye to all of this?
As my friend Evan Sayet has explained, it has to do with the liberal emphasis on “indiscriminateness.”
They were raised to believe that indiscriminateness is a moral imperative. That the only way to be moral is to not discriminate between right and wrong, good and evil, better and worse, truth and lies because your act of discrimination – discriminating between these things might just be a reflection of your personal discrimination, your bigotries.
They were raised to believe that indiscriminateness is a moral imperative because its opposite is the evil of having discriminated. The second bullet point, and this is an essential corollary, is that indiscriminateness of thought does not lead to indiscriminateness of policy. It leads the modern liberal to invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. Why? Very simply if nothing is to be recognized as better or worse than anything else then success is de facto unjust.
There is no explanation for success if nothing is better than anything else and the greater the success the greater the injustice. Conversely and for the same reason, failure is de facto proof of victimization and the greater the failure, the greater the proof of the victim is, or the greater the victimization.
Once you understand this facet of liberal thinking, many of the illogical things that liberals believe make more sense.
Why are American liberals so hostile to the rich? As that old quote often attributed to Honoré de Balzac goes, “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” That’s the thinking.
Why do so many liberals seem to loathe America even though we’re the richest, most successful country in history? Because the very fact that we’re the richest, most successful country in history proves we must be doing something wrong and unfair.
Why do white Americans have to be benefitting from racism and “white privilege?” Because white Americans are a majority in the United States and they’re doing better than most other racial groups.
Additionally, this way of viewing the world makes it extremely difficult for liberals to deal with Islam in a rational way. They are unable to admit that among religions, Islam has a unique problem with terrorism, violence and rape. They are not capable of admitting that there is a particular risk to bringing in Muslim immigrants. Even when a Muslim tells everyone he’s killing people because of his religion, liberals can’t acknowledge his motivation because to do so would mean that they’d have to admit Islam has issues.
Until liberals can get past their “indiscriminateness” blind spot, when it comes to Muslims, expect them to keep blaming anything and everything other than religion for the horrible things radical Islamists do.