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Notes -
Not posting in the Gaza/Israel thread since this is more generic, IMO.
In the most recent Sam Harris podcast, he elevates the problem with Hamas to the more general problem of jihadi terrorism. The episode is here and there's also a transcript here.
In this, he paints a picture of Hamas being a jihadi terrorist organization that's beyond reasoning with in terms of any reasoning we'd consider compatible with liberal western civilized order. He reads this quote from a member of a different jihadi group that had just finished slaughtering young children:
He makes the point that atheists have a lot of trouble understanding how utterly fanatical and unreasonable jihadis can be. People of Christian or Jewish faith know, because they know how powerful their own faith is in their lives. But atheists are eager to attribute this kind of proclivity towards sadism and murder as a reflection of terrible conditions that they must be living under. That people living in a utopia would never succumb to such depravity. Sam argues that Muslims of faith are just as destructive outside of Israel and disputed Israeli territories.
For more concrete stats, I found this from Google generative results
The culmination of this episode is Sam practically condemning belief in Islam entirely. Almost bordering on saying that every Palestinian is a mope in the Muslim Matrix who could become inhabited by a jihadi Agent Smith at any time. He argues that unlike Jesus, or Buddha, the central most beloved figure in Islam is Muhammed, and he was not anything like a saint:
What I hear from this is that there are no "good" Muslims, or if they are good it's an aberration, or that they're Muslim in name only.
How does one operationalize such a belief? Is Sam arguing that accepting Muslim refugees is a mistake, full stop, and that the only way to deal with jihadis is the grant them their wish: death, because there's nothing else in the world we could offer them? Is that even enough to cure the problem?
There are two billion Muslims in the world. If bringing them capitalism and the pleasures of modernity (everyone gets Starlink, Steam deck, dirt cheap halal KFC and Chil Fil-A, etc as a poster recently suggested for pacifying the Palestinians) does not innoculate against jihadi mind viruses, what would?
It took Europe about 1000 years for their culture to develop antibodies to dogmatic below-the-sanity-waterline Christian crusader ideology, and Christianity's deck was not nearly as stacked against it (its central figure was still practically a hippie). Will we have to wait this long for Islam to do the same? Sam sounds like he's advocating a form of genocide by another name.
Blasphemy. That’s how we got the christians to calm down. Certainly not by respecting their beliefs and community, or by celebrating their historical accomplishments. Islam’s stupidity and failures should be constantly rubbed in the face of its believers. Of course all muslim immigration to the west should be stopped on purely practical grounds, the insult is just a bonus.
Usually free speech can deal with those superstitions. The problem is that Islam has a built-in counter-strategy, death for apostates and critics. As sheikh qaradawi says, if not for the death penalty for apostates, Islam would not have survived to this day. This is the mechanism islamophobes need to target first, because it’s utterly poisonous to free expression. Free speech of muslims should be curtailed on that point, anyone preaching that doctrine should be deported or imprisoned. Apostates and critics should always be protected by the full force of the state, and get into a sort of witness protection program if they so desire.
Israel should bulldoze al-aqsa on live TV while ceremoniously asking Allah to do something about it. Muslims should be given the chance to reflect more often on their impotent rage and impotent god. Spurn the symbol and spare the man.
No, it isn't.
...Haven't you repeatedly argued with me that Free Speech Maximalism is one of your core values, and that I'm wrong when I argue that almost all people aren't actually free-speech maximalist but rather want as much free speech as possible so long as the speech isn't too objectionable? Because this sure looks an awful lot like "speech should be free as long as it's not too awful." I guess my point is that we are in agreement here, but that your previous statements indicate that this should be surprising to you.
It seems to me that your logic comes from a place where you assume the other side isn't going to actually be able to execute what they see as the righteous vengeance of God. That's not an assumption I would want to make a habit of relying on.
What makes you think "the western world" would even be a coherent concept in the event of an Al-Aqsa backlash? Have you seen the size of the pro-Palestine protests? Are the purplehair activists going to stop the local Muslims, or will they suddenly declare support for racist chuds that are supposed to do the dirty work?
Then reframe it to be "the section of the West that is willing to take up arms against a hostile Islamist takeover", and I, and probably @ImmanuelCanNot, would still agree that that's true. Not that I think such an outcome is particularly likely.
The section of the west that would be willing to take up arms in it's own defense is increasingly marginalized from institutions required to make the defense effective.
I'm pretty sure myself that a civilizational war of such proportions would see the US military mobilized, and the majority of its standing forces assigned.
I'm not sure how I can convince you of that, concrete evidence is obviously lacking, but I'm confident of that fact in the same manner I strongly believe that the discovery that the sun was going to blow up in 20 years would motivate NASA to accelerate manned space flight programs. While it's not quite as unlikely, it's in the same <1% zone.
More likely, it would result in a drag-out political fight that nationalizes spacex and prevents any actual spaceflight improvements.
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