No Muslim jihad here—just unrelated random murders of non-Muslims by Muslims

Joseph Farah at WND catalogues the continuing series of murderous attacks by Muslims on the American public over the last year that are not, our authorities instantly assure us in each and every instance, terrorist attacks.

This ongoing denial that murders of non-Muslims by Muslims, even when the killers say they are acting in the name of Islam, have anything to do with Islam, perfectly illustrates an idea we’ve often discussed, that modern liberalism is a species of nominalism. Modern liberalism tells us that the cultures, nations, religions, and races to which individuals belong either have no reality, or, if they are real, have no importance; we’re all just individuals, and should only be seen as individuals. Nominalism tells us that the categories into which we group similar things are nothing more than names and that these names do not refer to anything real. Thus there is no such thing as Islam. There are just lots of separate phenomena and people that we call Islamic. Daniel Pipes embraced this liberal-nominalist view when he said that Islam can be whatever Muslims want it to be. Here’s an earlier discussion on the same topic.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 21, 2007 01:05 PM | Send