One must admit that we classify as reasonable those who agree with us. With that caveat, see Kirsten Powers over at The American Prospect, a liberal journal. Powers, who served in the Clinton administration, takes to task those who equate conservative Christians with radical Muslims. I call Powers reasonable not just because I think she is right on the money, but also because she understands that one does not have to agree with conservative Christians to see that they are not the real threat to liberal values. She defends Benedict XVI while having sharp words for Rosie O'Donnell (who recently said "radical Christianity is just as dangerous as radical Islam."). Powers's main point is that those who suggest and equality between conservative Christians and radical Muslims are blind to important distinctions between the two, at its worst ignoring the true assault on liberal values one sees in certain aspects of radical Islamic culture. Read the whole thing, but here is a snippet:
Rosie’s beef with Christian opponents of gay marriage would presumably pale should she find herself living in many Islamic countries. Perhaps she missed former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami’s speech at Harvard recently saying that, “Homosexuality is a crime in Islam and crimes are punishable. And the fact that a crime could be punished by execution is debatable.” And he’s considered a reformer. Just being a woman in an Islamic country is enough to get you sent to jail or killed. In Pakistan last week, the parliament was debating whether they should continue to jail women for being raped. In Saudi Arabia, the religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress. Seventeen girls burned alive. Under Islamic law, women who seek a divorce -- even from abusive husbands -- can still be lawfully murdered by their families in so-called “honor killings.” The U.N. Population Fund estimates that the annual worldwide total of honor killing victims may be as high as 5,000.
Hat tip to K-Lo.
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