Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Why I don't love Muslims


From what I've read, "progressive Christians" and evangelical leaders often make these two claims:

i) Jesus commands us to love our enemies

ii) Muslims aren't the enemy

In reference to (ii), they say calling Muslims the enemy is bigoted. The vast majority of Muslims are peaceniks. Only an infinitesimal fraction of Muslims are terrorists. Moreover, these are merely Muslims who happen to be terrorists. There's nothing intrinsically violent about Islam.

But if I put these two claims together, the natural conclusion is that I'm under no obligation to love Muslims. 

(i) Love your enemies

(ii) Muslims aren't your enemies 

(iii) Ergo, you don't have to love Muslims

Now, someone might interject that that's fallacious. The fact that scripture commands us to love our enemies doesn't mean Scripture commands us to love only our enemies. We are likewise commanded to love our neighbors.

Okay, but that's not the original contention. People like you keep quoting the command to love our enemies in the context of…Muslims! You say it's wrong to "discriminate" against Muslims because Jesus commands us to love our enemies (even though you turn right around and tell us that Muslims are not the enemy).

The title of my post is a trick title. The point is to draw attention to an inconsistent dyad. 

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