I've wrestled with this for years. My own feeling that decides the issue for me personally is this:
What is the cost of silence? Is the cost greater or lesser for speaking out?
In my view, and I've reached this over a long period of introspection, is that the cost of silence is that Islam and Islamism gets a free pass, which is even more catastrophic, because it will continue to assert itself, and that will feed the far-right paranoia and essentiallising of hyper-nationalist far-right Stormfront types in any case.
Silence would also mean the death of free conscience, because in the face of a prosletysing religion, a taboo would be observed. And that, I believe, ultimately, would lead to the creation of an even worse climate and situation.
What serves humanism and individual dignity? Silence or reasoned expression of free conscience?
Everyone has to decide for themselves. Its not going to be easy. But there you go.
I don't disagree with you on how the rhetoric of those who accept these claims as the only authentic form of Islam influence an atmospherics in which the far-right can thrive.
My contention is that their responsibility 'for handing such crackpots all the excuses they need' is a second hand one. The first hand responsibility is from those who propagate these ideas and interpretations of Islam from inside Islam, and Islamic Identity Politics in the primary instance.
The second hand re-packagers of it simply pick up the baton and run with it. And then transmit that, with distortions, to the far-right.
Without addressing the 'first-hand' opinion, without even recognising it in the first place, its basically pruning the ugly thorns, not the roots of the plant.
Here is the thing - alot of those who criticise the second-hand peddlers of Islamic essentialising, are themselves proponents of Islamic essentialising - only they are Muslim. The Islamists, those affiliated with Jamat-e-Islami, Mawdudi disciples, Ikhwanists, this list goes on and on and on. And in an even further complicating twist, some of those on the Left, actually go along with this too.
This is complex. I know alot of people who won't speak out, because of this. I can see where they are coming from. I understand it. I see the dangers of speaking out.
I can see why many rush to silence, or deny these interplays, out of defensiveness, and out of fear of the far right-wing malevolence.
After years of wrestling with this, I don't think there should be silence. I think that, ultimately staying silent will make things much, much worse.
But it is something that everyone here needs to introspect on, because its a very important and incendiary issue, and you can only speak with moral force and clarity, if you have thought about it.
Who are you addressing this to? Who has advocated silence in this thread?
President Bush, 9/11: "We're gonna hunt you down."
Prime Minister Stoltenberg 22/7: "We will retaliate with more democracy"
You brain-damaged or something?
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