I've seen some pundits complain that the Notre Dame fire got far more attention than China bulldozing the Keriya mosque. A few quick observations:
i) Different people have different reasons for what they value. Many people who aren't Catholic or Christian love Notre Dame as an architectural masterpiece. Many people love Paris.
ii) At the risk of stating the obvious, there's nothing hypocritical about a Christian feeling greater attachment to Christian art than Muslim art or Buddhist art or Hindu art. As Christians, we naturally have more affinity with Christian art.
iii) For that matter, we can also make discriminations within Christian art and architecture. If First Baptist Dallas burned to the ground, that would bother me far less than if York, Reims, Amiens, or Vézelay burned to the ground.
iv) In addition, many westerners are naturally more familiar with western art than Muslim art.
v) Then there's the question of whether it's wrong to destroy the art of a religion you disapprove of. That's separate from (ii). As a rule, I don't support the destruction of non-Christian art and architecture. But that doesn't mean I'd feel the same sense of loss.
These are just elementary distinctions. But progressives can't keep more than one idea in their head at a time.
--But progressives can't keep more than one idea in their head at a time.--
ReplyDeleteThat is true, and that idea is consistently "Must hate Christianity".
Assume that paradigm, and every apparent oxymoronic stance held by leftists is perfectly explained, especially their condemnation of 'backwards, bigoted' Christianity while handwaving much more extreme examples of Islam.