Andrew O'Hehir And SALON Are Off On A Tangent - Or Ten

Regarding this article in SALON

http://www.salon.com/2014/10/11/atheism_islam_and_liberalism_this_is_what_we_are_really_fighting_about/

There are numerous dishonest or at least inaccurate representations in this article by Andrew O’Hehir but this paragraph is among the most obvious. (see direct quote in bold below)

Is it just me, or did I miss Sam Harris and Bill Maher saying we needed to “kill or cut out the cancer of Islam”? 

Gee, what I thought they said was that we need to support the reformers within the religion and in Muslim societies because, as the author, Mr O'Hehir himself pointed out (again, see below) most majority Muslim nations are associated with “the subordination of women, the suppression or persecution of LGBT people, extremely limited tolerance for those of other faiths (or none) and sharply restricted freedom of expression.”  You may not personally call that the motherlode of bad ideas (I would) but it would be disingenuous for any liberal thinker not to rank them as a rich friggen vein of them! 

Hey, I know, let’s take that bolded last line below, and tweet it to millions of people completely out of context and attribute it to Mr. O’Hehir!  That will hurt his cause and since I disagree with him we should all do it!  (That, BTW was sarcasm, not a suggestion.)

It continues to amaze me how supposedly intelligent writers can take an idea they misunderstand and construct a four page edifice of nonsense out of it. 

For my own part, again from his article, the day that my opinions are seriously undermined because Mr. Harris' worldview "would provoke eye-rolling from a sophomore seminar in the subject" will be the pre-arranged day that my wife or caretaker will put me out of my misery.

Cheers.

“Ultimately it does not aid the cause of tolerance to deny that social practice in most majority-Muslim nations involves a lot of stuff that Western liberals rightly find appalling: the subordination of women, the suppression or persecution of LGBT people, extremely limited tolerance for those of other faiths (or none) and sharply restricted freedom of expression. One can discuss these troubling aspects of real-world Islam – as Reza Aslan and many other Western Muslims frequently do, in fairness – while also insisting that you can’t understand them independent of social and historical context. We don’t have to follow Maher and Harris down the rabbit hole of unjustified assumptions and disastrous conclusions: Illiberality and intolerance are intrinsic elements of Muslim doctrine, they argue, and Islam is a zone of monolithic groupthink unlike any other world religion (“the mother lode of bad ideas,” says Harris). Therefore Islam is a global cancer or disease, which must be killed or cut out.?