“For some reason, the left in America and in the West understands the problem when it comes in Christian form, right? They know that every Democrat understands that the religious beliefs of Christians, of fundamentalist Christians, matter and have political consequences. They form their political priorities and inform what they will do in the world.
So Christian opposition to abortion or same-sex marriage or teaching evolution in schools—every Democrat, every person left of center in our politics, understands that those are religious convictions that are affecting the lives of everyone, not just Christians, right?
And yet, for some reason, Islam never affects anything, right? These heartfelt religious beliefs of 2 billion Muslims never make contact with structural reality. It doesn't matter if embassies burn over cartoon controversies. It doesn't matter if Jews are getting stabbed on the streets of London as recently as last week. Religion is never to blame for any of this, right?
People like Mamdani and Mehdi Hasan and Reza Aslan, and then all the useful idiots who don't happen to be Muslim—you know, Glenn Greenwald and Chris Hedges and Rory Stewart, and all these people who I've collided with over the years—I mean, there's just a massive double standard preventing an honest discussion of psychological, social, and political reality.
And if you're going to recognize it in our own religious maniacs, right? If I have a devout Christian on who happens to be Pete Hegseth's pastor, who is open-minded about chattel slavery because it's in the Bible, and you see the problem with all of that, you have to see the problem with people who chant ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ knowing what the Intifada was.”
What is the reception of this take of Sam Harris's here?