Religious polemic uses enemies’ moral example as a mirror for self-criticism

Evidence

Great attention was paid to all these aspects of Muhammad’s life. Both as to facts and as to motives, the worst was always believed. The picture of the licentious hypocrite took shape inevitably. What clerical writers, always aware of the problems of moral and pastoral theology, most feared was the doctrinal justification of sexual acts which are already attractive to men who believe them to be wrong. This explains the virulence of educated Christian feeling about Muhammad, which always excluded charity and usually excluded the complete truth. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 587 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

To put one’s faith in religious or nationalist dogma requires a kind of moral blindness to human suffering—something that David painfully learns when his youthful U.S.-centered political certainties crumble in the face of the conflicting demands of love. His early position is replicated in the new generation by James Palantine, son of an erstwhile friend for whom ideology outweighs the personal: he berates David for not being able to bury his personal feelings in the interests of America’s strategic priorities (387). Palantine acts as Casa’s opposite number in terms of uncompromising zeal. He comes to personify the U.S.-led war on terror, investing fully in the American nation and its symbols and seeing himself as defending it against a rampaging monolithic Islam with designs on the homeland: “Al Qaeda hiding in the mouth of the Golden Eagle.… They want to do to the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore what they did to the Buddhas of Bamiyan” (380–81, ellipses in original). Later on, when Palantine has captured Casa and is torturing him for information, he tells an appalled David, “It’s nothing personal against this man.… It’s not between him and me. It’s between them and us” (411). His view of the Islamic enemy demands a dehumanization that, in his willingness to employ “enhanced interrogation techniques,” reflects his own limited conceptions of what is human and inhuman. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 408 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Religious polemicists attack enemies hardest on desires they fear within themselves — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 587; Ideological zeal achieves moral blindness by treating enemies as categories, not persons — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 408; The lesser-evil logic measures morality against one’s own violence (+1 more)

Related

• Religious polemicists attack enemies hardest on desires they fear within themselves (similarity 0.87)
• Ideological zeal achieves moral blindness by treating enemies as categories, not persons (similarity 0.84)
• Religious polemic repels the home audience more than the described adversary (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Religious polemicists attack enemies hardest on desires they fear within themselves #corroborates (0.92) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 587
• The lesser-evil logic measures morality against one’s own violence #expands (0.78)
• Ideological zeal achieves moral blindness by treating enemies as categories, not persons #expands (0.75) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 408