Liberal philosophers excuse blatant bigotry when the target is Islam.

Evidence

The eminent Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, while acknowledging that The Rage and the Pride is full of ‘more bigotry than I’ve ever encountered in any other book worth reading,’ nonetheless deems it a significant book. Admitting that he feels queasy as he makes his way through the book’s innumerable racist characterizations of Muslims (a feature Taylor seems to prefer to call bigotry or xenophobia), Taylor nevertheless argues that Fallaci offers a ‘cogent, coherent argument’ and ‘a bracing response to the moral equivocation, the multicultural political correctness, the minimization and denial of the danger of Islamo-fascism that dogs the response to September 11 and to the ongoing “war on terror.”’ Taylor (drawing on Christopher Hitchens) is particularly concerned that the Left has engaged in a kind of ridiculous ‘moral equivalence’ between American acts of dominance and contemporary terrorism and has been so mesmerized by multiculturalism that it will not criticize those cultures that oppose freedom. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 215

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The move where a philosopher names a text “full of bigotry” yet still salvages it as significant exposes the precise discursive mechanism by which anti-Muslim racism is insulated — the bigotry is conceded, then ring-fenced, then made evidence of the critic’s own evenhandedness.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does Charles Taylor reconcile his communitarian ethics of recognition with this defense of Fallaci?