http://loga-abdullah.blogspot.com/2008/11/defending-our-diin-ayaan-hirsi-ali.html

Here is a link to a study that finds government agency websites are, on average, at an 11th grade reading level. If wikipedia says that most Amercan high schoolers read at an 8th grade level and most college graduates at a 10th grade level, it appears that only those with a graduate degree can access important websites. There is both the immediate problem that most Americans cannot understand how their tax dollars are being used and the complicated divide between the governing and those governed. I wish literacy courses were the answer.

On a positive note, there are younger people within the government who are trying to do more than speak in “plan language”, but trying to make government more accessible.

The notion of the moderate Islam then, is just a ploy; the article’s line of questioning is thus dishonest, or, at best, satirical.

In this way her article is just another vehicle for villifying Islam– but what I particularly find dangerous is how Hirsi Ali cloaks her intent in the language of classical liberalism, in the language of working toward tolerance in the name of democracy.

the difference is that i don’t hate islam or muslims, and i don’t use my status as a muslim to justify spreading racist misinformation about muslims, or to be the darling of white feminists for legitimizing their colonialist perception of arab/muslim men.

but, the only muslim with credibility in the u.s. is an ex-muslim, this is why we have athiests who hate muslims being invited to speak about islam.

I’m going to assume you’re responding to my post, since you include some words that I use. But I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at. This post isn’t quite about morality as you would have it. And it’s not about keeping people “away” from racist objects–though it might be interesting to ponder your claim that we should embrace such texts because they motivate people to social justice. Support the harm to enable the remedy; wag the dog.

And to be clear, my post is not about Tintin being a racist. Tintin is not a person; Tintin is a character in a book, the author of which himself has gone on to characterize as a regretful choice.

And, since I’ve never met you, I can’t make any claim on your relative mental state in the wake of your deep feelings for Tintin– though judging by what seems to come through as your resolute anger and indignation, I wonder why, insofar as my post is specifically about a sense of harm and alienation that might come from books like Tintin in the Congo and some people’s stalwart defense thereof, I wonder why you have expended so much energy on exposing these imagined flaws and thus rewriting my post so that it better says what you want it to say. Turning me into you– is that social justice? Am I the dog? Or your straw-man?

Finally, I am also not quite sure why you have to drag Hello Kitty into this. No claim I have made is in regards to high or low culture in that way. I love the mall so I can’t really hate on Kinkade; I saw all the LOTRs, and I think AI is an underrated classic, and, wait a minute! I’m not the snob. You are– projecting it onto me…

I mean, really, what post are you reading? How might you understand this post differently, if you weren’t listening for the sneer that isn’t here and the sarcasm you have identified in the wrong places?

Indeed, it might have been nice to discuss this post more, but it is difficult to speak in the absence of listening.

The presupposition here is that minds are so polluted by seeing corrupting images or reading reprehensible material that they will be driven to bigotry, or at the very least introject loathsome philosophies into their unconscious, thus amplifying and validating the social presence (ubiquity?) of the ideas. To that I say baloney.

Maybe sometimes people acquire prejudices by seeing them/reading about them. Just as often the contrary is true and they are driven to moral outrage, motivated to struggle for social justice.

Here is where you say that in THIS case the loathsome ideas are loathsome ideas in sheep’s clothing, cutified by their presentation in a charming children’s book. O.K., you might not say “charming”. Well, maybe some children are adorable little idiots who can’t sort out the moral from the immoral, but if so, the world’s in a hell of a lot of trouble, because at some point the people who “know good from bad”, like you, aren’t going to be around to step up to the plate and pre-censor. Personally, I’d rather read them a book myself.

As for the snide dismissal of the “It doesn’t hurt anyone rationale.” I read the books when I was little and “I’m fine” (read “I’m not a racist.”) That’s right. Implying the opposite with a sneer and some sarcasm doesn’t make it true. If people who witnessed scenes of racism and images of bigotry (cutified or not) were unable to work for civil rights, there would be no civil rights movement. It’s by seeing injustice and the whole spectrum of behaviors that we are able to recognize the good from the bad. Then we choose.

And come on! What a low tactic: equating Tintin with Hello Kitty!, Peter Jackson, and Steven Spielberg? Come off it. What’s next? Are you going to equate Tintin with Thomas Kinkade? “In Touch” magazine? Reality TV? I guess not only is Tintin immoral; he’s committed a worse crime: he’s now kitschy and low-brow. I guess that’s pretty bad news for someone with such “very fancy conceptual tools” at their disposal.

By the way, if you think Tintin is always a racist, you’d better have a look at “Prisoners of the Sun”.