Tag No True Scotsman

Who are the true Muslims – all or none?

By Jonathan MS Pearce • • 10 comments

The National Secular Society has released this fascinating piece which is relevant and in line with my last substantial post on Islam.

Moderate believers argue that Isis has misinterpreted the Koran. But no one can determine who is right or wrong, argues Matthew Syed.

Who are the real Muslims? Who are the bona fide, authentic, true-to-the-core followers of the Islamic faith? Now, that might seem like an easy question. Surely, the people who are Muslims are those who say, when asked: “I am a Muslim.”

Muslims, Christians and No True Scotsmen

By Jonathan MS Pearce • • 158 comments

The No True Scotsman fallacy is a well-used fallacy in debates about religion with religionists. As wiki defines:

No true Scotsman is an informal fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion.[1] When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim, rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule.

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