{"id":3335,"date":"2014-04-26T01:54:32","date_gmt":"2014-04-26T05:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/?p=3335"},"modified":"2014-04-26T01:54:32","modified_gmt":"2014-04-26T05:54:32","slug":"dear-islam-defenders-are-you-antisemitic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/2014\/04\/26\/dear-islam-defenders-are-you-antisemitic\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Islam Defenders: Are You Antisemitic?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sorry,<\/a>
Sorry, Holocaust denial IS antisemitism.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As pesky facts continue to be unkind to those trying to polish the ugly face of Islam, they keep turning to newer<\/a> and newer<\/a> logical fallacies. \u00a0However, useful as this method has proven to be, it has its limitations. \u00a0Aside from being easily taken to pieces by anyone familiar with the basics of logic, they have the potential to backfire: the fallacies can be just as easily turned against those using them.<\/p>\n

Case in point: the recent cheap shot against New Atheists on Alternet for being (allegedly) too friendly to Israel, which I recently critiqued<\/a>. As you remember, author CJ Werlman, himself an atheist, had quite a few pearls of wisdom<\/a> for us.<\/p>\n

Politics is a funny game, for wedge issues often make for strange bedfellows. NSA overreach unites the far left with the far right. Libertarianism unites neo-confederates with black evangelicals. If you\u2019re looking for an even stranger ideological matrimony, try this one on for size: mention the Middle East peace talks, and voila, you have atheists singing from the same song sheet as the Christian Right.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He does have a point: politics does make for strange bedfellows. Why, would you believe an ultra-leftist liberal like Werlman himself “singing from the same song sheet” as an ultra-right Neo-Nazi standard bearer?<\/p>\n

No doubt, Harris (neuroscience) and Dawkins (evolutionary biology) are leaders in their respective fields. What they\u2019re not is experts on terrorism and the Middle East. So movement atheism needs to stop pretending like they are, because the words of Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens serve only to make movement atheists sound like neo-conservatives, Zionists and the Christian Right, which ultimately makes seeking peace even harder to attain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One minor problem here: blanket condemnation of “Zionism” is simply politically-correct antisemitism. Conspiracy theories blaming Jews for every problem under the sun have remained fairly prevalent during the decades since the Holocaust, most of all\u00a0in the Islamic world<\/a>, except that the words “Jews” and “International Jewry” (the latter beings a particularly popular term among the Nazis) have been replaced by “Zionists” and “Zionism”. And yet, the latter words are also favorites straw men among Holocaust denying Neo-Nazis. To wit<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Myr\u00adtle Beach Inter\u00adna\u00adtional Film Fes\u00adti\u00adval, to be held in South Car\u00adolina April 23\u201326, 2014, is fea\u00adtur\u00ading a film about German-born Holo\u00adcaust denier and anti-Semite\u00a0Ernst Zun\u00addel.<\/p>\n

Ingrid Rim\u00adland, Zundel\u2019s wife and a fel\u00adlow Holo\u00adcaust denier, pro\u00adduced \u201cOff Your Knees, Ger\u00admany!\u201d around 2011.\u00a0 The film por\u00adtrays Zun\u00addel as a vic\u00adtim of Jew\u00adish inter\u00adests that allegedly con\u00adspired to deprive him of his right to express his views on Germany\u2019s actions dur\u00ading World War\u00a0II. In the film, Zun\u00addel denies that the Holo\u00adcaust ever took place and claims that Ger\u00admany has been maligned by Jews. He asserts that he is try\u00ading to reclaim Germany\u2019s honor.<\/p>\n

Zun\u00addel argues in the film, \u201cIf I was a mem\u00adber of the Zion\u00adist lobby that has conned itself to a pin\u00adna\u00adcle of influ\u00adence and power in this soci\u00adety based on vic\u00adtim\u00adhood that they were hard\u00adened by, by my Ger\u00adman peo\u00adple in the Sec\u00adond World War, I maybe would also hate a guy like the Paul Revere of the Ger\u00admans to come along and ring the bells of freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the mid-1990s, Rim\u00adland has been pro\u00admot\u00ading Zundel\u2019s writ\u00adings and phi\u00adlos\u00ado\u00adphy through Zun\u00addel\u00adsite, one of the ear\u00adli\u00adest web\u00adsites devoted to the reha\u00adbil\u00adi\u00adta\u00adtion of Adolf Hitler and the denial of the geno\u00adcide of Euro\u00adpean Jews dur\u00ading World War\u00a0II.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, the Jews made up a massive lie to win sympathy…and the public face of the conspiracy to make this lie mainstream has been the “Zionist lobby”.<\/p>\n

But crazy Islamists and historical revisionists such as Zundel have more in common than obsession with the evil “Zionists”. They actually have been collaborating<\/a> on shared goals\u00a0for some time<\/a>\u00a0(even though at times they have tried to cover their tracks<\/a>)\u00a0and hence this goes beyond guilt by association, or, as apologist Werlman puts it,\u00a0“singing from the same song sheet”: they are real bedfellows, not imagined ones, such as atheists and the Christian Right.<\/p>\n

Hence the question for Werlman becomes: what if his own “logic” is applied to HIM? Does he want to be in the same boat as a liar like Zundel? Personally, I don’t consider him a Holocaust denier, for simply knocking down the same straw man the Holocaust deniers do; rather, just an idiot using bad logic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As pesky facts continue to be unkind to those trying to polish the ugly face of Islam, they keep turning…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-secularism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}