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Xeno-Ignorance Is The New PCReader comment on item: Islamist Violence Will Steer Europe's Destiny Submitted by Dave, Oct 10, 2016 at 14:19 It may also be helpful to trace the evolution of moral thought in the West after WWII. Certainly, one salutary response to the Holocaust was the categorical rejection of racism, as there is no rational link between race and character. So far so good. But then, the human tendency to carry things to extremes set in, and there arose the highly questionable concept of cultural equivalence, as though culture, a man-made creation and therefore flawed, could somehow be placed beyond criticism. Marxist theory helped it along: If environment was everything, then nobody was ever morally culpable, and criminals were really just victims of circumstance. There were no toxic cultures, just victim cultures. The West, with its history of colonialism, became the agent of all the ills of the Third World. To link "Islamic" with terrorism was to deny the Western guilt. As Islamist violence becomes more pervasive and its links to Islamic ideology ever more obvious, the elite response has been to double down and deny to the point to absurdity, for example, that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam. The excuse for this PC ignorant tripe is manifold: Not all Muslims are terrorists so don't be bigoted, or the chestnut that dissing Islam will somehow result in ISIS recruitment. Anything to avoid a realistic discussion of the relationship of Islamic ideology to individual choice. The real reason for the denial is that more knowledge might lead people to question the moral equivalence of Islamic and Western culture. Thanks to the well-meaning stupidity of its elites, the West is demoralizing itself and it could very well wind up destroying its culture, so arduously developed over the centuries. But perhaps this intellectual fad will go the way of Know-Nothingism, another form of xeno-ignorance in the service of unreality. Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments". Reader comments (17) on this item
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