Yesterday political analyst Matthew Dowd posted the following tweet:
A fundamentalist radical Christian is just as misguided and frightening as a fundamentalist radical Muslim. No difference.
— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) August 10, 2017
The tweet prompted a variety of responses including this one from Chad of Truthbomb Apologetics:
This is a astonishingly ignorant comment. It is a blatant denial of reality. https://t.co/Skc8IuiCKR
— Chad (@TBapologetics) August 10, 2017
Frankly, that response left me rather puzzled.
To begin with, I take it that any individual who is properly described as a “fundamentalist radical” thereby exhibits the following characteristics (among others): anti-intellectualism and thinking constrained by simplistic binaries, scapegoating of outgroups, intolerance of others and willingness to resort to violence to promote one’s agenda.
So compare:
Zale H. Thomson, a Muslim who exhibited anti-intellectualism and thinking constrained by simplistic binaries, scapegoating of outgroups, intolerance of others and willingness to resort to violence to promote one’s agenda. As a result, Thomson attacked four policemen with a hatchet in New York on October 23rd, 2014, severely injuring one of them in the head and another in the arm before he was shot and killed.
Robert Lewis Dear, Jr, a Christian who exhibited anti-intellectualism and thinking constrained by simplistic binaries, scapegoating of outgroups, intolerance of others and willingness to resort to violence to promote one’s agenda. As a result, Dear carried out a mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic on November 27, 2015 resulting in the murder of three people and the injury of nine more.
Dowd would say that (Christian) Dear and his actions are “just as misguided and frightening” as (Muslim) Thomson’s.
And I have to say I agree with him. To say the least, I don’t see how Dowd’s observation is “astonishingly ignorant” or a “blatant denial of reality.”
