Presbyopic Myopia
Saturday, September 10, 2005
"It Is the Biggest Joke-Free Zone in Literature"
What is the speaker referrring to? The Quran. Who is the speaker? Roger Scruton. He's a British Conservative with some interesting opinions. Generally, I'm no conservative, but this guy has some fascinating opinions. Mr. Scruton is "a writer and philosopher who lives in rural England."
Here's a link to an article he wrote in 2002 called "Religion of Peace?" Interesting that he wrote these things before the advent of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the bank bombings in Istanbul, the murder of Theo Van Gogh, the death threats against Hirsi Ali and Gert Wilders, Beslan, the downing of two Russian airliners, the July 7 attacks against London, and on and on...
Perhaps he's on to something.
Comments:
Leaving aside the opinion of some that the entire book is a joke, I'm not sure how many jokes there are in the Bible, a far longer piece of literature than the Quran. I can't think of any examples off the top of my head. That suggests that even if there are some, they are so intermittently dispersed that large Bible sections might well be longer than the entirety of the Quran. For that matter, perhaps Scruton simply isn't versed in the humor of a foreign and ancient culture, thus misses jokes and puns contained in the Quran.
I didn't read the article. His opening line--about how Western societies have been friendly toward foreigners--is so historically false that I didn't feel the need to read on. Someone whose research involves American immigration history, as mine does, couldn't give such an opinion even the slightest weight.
Scruton needs to re-read the history of both Christianity and Islam's spread with new eyes: he seems totally unaware that Islam often spread through non-coercive means, while Christianity's history of the sword is a realistic contender for bloodiest religion of all time. This is not intended to let Islam off the hook for its many abuses or to obscure Christianity's many positive contributions to world civilization, just to point out that Scruton is a woefully inadequate historian.
I didn't read the article. His opening line--about how Western societies have been friendly toward foreigners--is so historically false that I didn't feel the need to read on. Someone whose research involves American immigration history, as mine does, couldn't give such an opinion even the slightest weight.
Scruton needs to re-read the history of both Christianity and Islam's spread with new eyes: he seems totally unaware that Islam often spread through non-coercive means, while Christianity's history of the sword is a realistic contender for bloodiest religion of all time. This is not intended to let Islam off the hook for its many abuses or to obscure Christianity's many positive contributions to world civilization, just to point out that Scruton is a woefully inadequate historian.
# posted by 
: 2:01 PM
: 2:01 PM
Jeff,
You're right, his history is limited. It's "tempero-centric" in the extreme. He says that 70% of the world's refugees are Muslims who are fleeing countries that are (at least nominally) officially Muslim. I haven't checked the accuracy of that statistic, but it makes anecdotal sense. Of course, he doesn't mention that those "Muslim countries" are often cynically propped up by Western governments. Nonetheless, the article is interesting
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You're right, his history is limited. It's "tempero-centric" in the extreme. He says that 70% of the world's refugees are Muslims who are fleeing countries that are (at least nominally) officially Muslim. I haven't checked the accuracy of that statistic, but it makes anecdotal sense. Of course, he doesn't mention that those "Muslim countries" are often cynically propped up by Western governments. Nonetheless, the article is interesting
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