Cognitive dissonance

Submitted by Ilya Feoktistov (United States), Nov 29, 2005 at 19:51

A certain Islamist at my university, Dartmouth College, presented a revealing argument to me during a discussion related to Mr. Pipes's visit to the College. Incensed over my criticism of the infamous Hadith wherein the Jews are fated to be killed by Muslims after being betrayed by the trees and rocks behind which they are hiding, the Islamist claimed that I was practicing racism by criticizing his religion's holy texts.

When quizzed over the fact that this holy text was being used contemporarily to incite Muslims to murder Jews, he answered that it wasn't being used by all Muslims but only by the Arabs. He himself is an Indian. He claimed that it was ok to criticize and hate Arabs, in fact he insisted that he himself hates them very much. Yet any criticism of Islam was racism in his mind. Cognitive dissonance indeed.

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