You call that a response?
Sholto Byrnes has heeded all the comments on his sharia post and has posted a thoughtful well-reasoned explanation of his meaning.
No he hasn’t, of course he hasn’t, I’m making it up. I’m saying what he should have done instead of what he did do. What he did do is complain about comments at Harry’s Place – comments, not the post – and then offer more useless generalities and then accuse the people who disagree with him, which is almost everyone who has said anything about him, of wanting a “bloody and cataclysmic clash of civilisations.” That’s it. No particulars of where there actually is the good benign justice-seeking kind of sharia, or of how that differs from secular law, or of how he responds to the urgent concerns of women who don’t want to wave a forlorn bye-bye to their rights. No, just a snicker, and a whine, and a smear.
[T]he majority of commenters prove my point by focusing on the most extreme forms of sharia — which as I have said, many Muslims feel to be perversions — and concluding that that’s all it is. They don’t seem to be remotely open to the possibility that it could vary in any way.
As I none too gently pointed out, that’s because he hasn’t bothered to say anything about some “less extreme” form of sharia – he’s used the words, but he hasn’t told us where we can look to examine any.
He needs to explain why anyone needs sharia instead of secular law to begin with. He needs to explain what the problems are with secular law that theocratic law would fix. He hasn’t so much as made a pass at doing that – he seems to be simply assuming it. But it’s far from self-evident.
I find his flippancy and indifference highly offensive – “offensive” is for once the right word. He can’t be bothered to defend his own claims, he can’t be bothered to engage with what his critics say, he just shrugs and says he has to go have his weekend now.
This is no time to play Bertie Wooster.
“I am the son of an immigrant. My close family includes Jews and Muslims as well as Christians.”…but not atheists or agnostics?
That was uncalled for, Ophelia. Bertie would never defend sharia law. He would say, “That bally blighter Sholto needs a good spanking. Go give him six of the best with my mashie niblick, Jeeves. And don’t forget to keep your head down and follow through.”
I’ll repeat the comment I made over there. The New Statesman is just about unbelievable these days.
“The New Statesman used to have tough minded writers who were usually cleverer and better informed than their readers. Now it has mush heads who are stupider and more ignorant than their readers, going by the comments under this post. It’s particularly idiotic to quote comments from a blog to demonstrate the poor arguments of your opposition. If you have any intellectual honesty, you answer the best counter arguments, not the worst.Can we have a post on how the Roman Catholic church should enforce its own rules when dealing with its own paedophile priests, without reference to the law of the land. Opposing that would of course be anti-Papist bigotry and Catholic bashing.”
It’s utter crap. Christopher Hitchens used to write for it, for crissake.
However, what is cheering is that posts like this and CIF in The Guardian get a 95% anti and the 5% pro are usually garbage and inadvertently make the points of the 95% by trying to excuse the status of women under sharia as being a wish to shield them from responsibility.
There’s always a place for you to be a Jeeves though, mitigating and critiquing the foolishness of others (though perhaps more forcibly than Bertie’s valet …) =)
Hamilton, tsss, no he wouldn’t; for that he would have to know what sharia was!
But hey, if Stephen Fry wants to go into Jeeves mode and tell Sholto what’s what, I say by all means.
Ophelia and Hamilton,
You must know that Bertie is considered quite an expert in theology, having won a scripture prize in his schooldays.
A scripture prize, not a theology prize. Bertie would be the first to agree that he’s not a theologian.
Did you read that lovely article Dawkins had written where Jeeves explains evolution to Bertie?
Ha! No – or if I did I forgot it. I’ll have to find that. Thanks!
Sorry, Ophelia, I forgot to include a few lines of earlier dialogue:
“Some foul excrescence by the name of Sholto Bumwobble has been making a stink down at the Drones about some bilge called sharia, Jeeves. What’s up with that?”
“Sholto Byrnes, sir. And sharia is a system whereby the Mohammedan male asserts his right to dispense with the duties of noblesse oblige, even to the extent of casting the first stone at a lady. Most shocking, sir.”
“That bally blighter Sholto needs a good spanking. Go give him six of the best with my mashie niblick, Jeeves. And don’t forget to keep your head down and follow through.”
Oops, the lines of dialogue are supposed to be separated. Copy-and-paste from another editor seems to wipe out carriage returns.
Hahaha – all right, I’ll buy that.
Also, how can you “rethink” something if you haven’t thought about in the first place?
Hey OB: Saudi clerics have solved the problem of how to allow unrelated men and women to be together. Who said you shouldn’t laugh at Islam….
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2010/06/09/2010-06-09_saudi_clerics_issue_fatwa_okaying_adult_breastfeeding_as_way_of_circumventing_is.html
Dismal reply from Byrnes, misrepresenting his critics and refusing to enegage with the strongest arguments.
Funny too that he quotes Dave Allen without noticing the pointed ambiguity of his famous ‘may your god go with you’ sign off. Allen was notorious for mocking the church of course, and got into hot water for it in Ireland.