Quisling for Islam

A predicable and typical example of virtue-signaling by apostate Randal Rauser:

I’m guessing you have no Muslim friends because if you did, you’d recognize that the views you just expressed represent a selected portrait (one popular among conservative American media) which mirrors the uncharitable portrait of conservative Christians common in liberal media.

Your question — when are professed “Christians ever this bad? — suggests you have some rather dark rose tinting on your glasses. Professing Christians commit violent and un-christlike actions all the time. To be sure, you can say “Those aren’t real Christians” but then you fall into the no True Scotsman fallacy.

And the mirror opposite applies as well: my Muslim friends are loving and kind and thoughtful. They are like Izzeldin Abuelaish, the Muslim doctor who wrote a memoir, “I Shall Not Hate,” chronicling his journey of forgiveness for the Israelis that killed his family.

Of course, as you say the true Christians aren’t violent, you can also say the true Muslims are, in which case you can exclude Abuelaish as a false Muslim. And in that way, you can stumble yet again into the no true Scotsman fallacy.

A better way: you could choose to love your neighbor and treat them the way you want to be treated, to get to know some Muslims, and to set aside your stereotypes.

https://randalrauser.com/2020/03/no-true-christian-no-true-muslim/

1. Rauser is smart enough to know that he's blurring crucial distinctions. The fundamental question isn't how professing Muslims and Christians behave, but whether their behavior is consistent with or even mandated by their authoritative religious sources. 

2. Modern-day Muslims routinely commit atrocities and social pathologies on a wide scale, viz. acid attacks, beheadings, female genital mutilation, sex slaves, a rape culture, honor-killings, jihad, martyring Christians, flogging women who refuse to wear a hijab, ISIS, Boko Haram. There's nothing comparable going on in modern-day Christianity. At one point Rauser tried to draw a comparison with the Rwandan genocide. 

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/01/would-you-rather-be-muslim-who-acts.html

3. We could go back in time to the brass-knuckle tactics of Roman Catholicism, which used to resort to torture and warfare to suppress "heretics" and "schismatics." In many cases I think their motives were sincere. They were being true to their religion. Of course, Catholic theology has undergone some drastic change since then, at the expense of internal consistency. I'm not obligated to vouch for their Christian bona fides. I'll leave that assessment to God. 

4. Islam isn't a sola-Quran religion. The Islamic faith is defined by the development of authoritative traditions and interpretations. 

5. Part of Rauser's duplicity on this issue is due to the fact that he's a progressive theologian who naturally sympathizes with progressive Muslims. Just has he rejects biblical authority, he deems it consistent with Muslim identity for them to reject their authoritative religious sources. He seems them making the same moves that he does. But, of course, that's hardly represents normative Islam. It just reflects the secularizing wings of Christianity and Islam alike. 

6. BTW, one of Rauser's tactics is to pick on soft targets. He will quote somebody who's easy to outargue, then pat himself on the back.