we need some comparative theology here

Submitted by Peter Herz (United States), Sep 12, 2010 at 13:08

A large part of the problem with the Left half of the American establishment is that it has no grasp on theology of any kind. Its studied ignorance of the Old and New Testaments, its long-standing dismissive attitude towards "ugh, fundamentalists", its uncritical acceptance of the 19th century Unitarian narrative when looking even at America's own ecclesiastical history,. and out-and-out fear of anyone who takes a traditional theism seriously means that it can only trot out knee-jerk moral equivalences and embarrassingly ignorant statements about the Bible every time someone notes the importance of the Qu'ran and Muslim doctrine to the jihadist movement. Many also fall back on the scattershot, unsystematic, and subjective appropriation of exotic mysticisms that dominated the 1960's and 1970's to find "moderate" Islam in all the wrong places (such as Sufi'ism--a movement that probably waged jihad more enthusiastically than anyone else).

Further, a lot of us on the right would dearly love to see Muslim 'ulema take on the jihadis; but we have yet to see it. This leads to the growing sense that Islam may well be hopelessly violent and bigoted at its very core.

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