Monday, October 06, 2014

The No True Muslim Fallacy

The archetype of this is the No True Scotsman fallacy. A blanket claim is made about a certain group, such as saying that no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.  The counterargument that Hamish McDonald from Aberdeen puts sugar on his porridge and likes it just fine is rejected by saying that Hamish is clearly not a true Scotsman.

So, Bill Maher made some extreme claims about Muslim countries:
...if vast numbers of Muslims across the world believe, and they do, that humans deserve to die for merely holding a different idea or drawing a cartoon or writing a book or eloping with the wrong person, not only does the Muslim world have something in common with ISIS, it has too much in common with ISIS.
Reza Aslan pushed back, noting that some Muslim countries have a fairly benign view of what the state can impose on individuals. Of course, there was a response to that.

The response seems to be saying that whenever a Muslim majority country accepts a mostly secular structure of governance, like Turkey, Albania or Kosovo, it doesn't count, because No True Scotsman.


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