With Merkel's Foes in Disarray, Germany Defies the Trump Trend

[Dill]

(05-05-2017, 02:43 PM)masterpanthera_t Wrote: I will say this about Harris.  He is very persuasive as an intellectual, and he brings a very rational style of discourse which seems to invite open exploration of ideas.  However, there was a video where he debated Reza Aslan (who I don't find particularly unbiased or open to criticism of his ideas) and he did not seem to have a cogent answer as far as his understanding of the centuries of Islamic cultural evolution with context of scholarship and the factors addressed.  His argument for being wary of Islamic culture, while defensible from the context that he makes it, (such as the polls and the factors that seem to draw a minority to terrorism and other cultural practices which we find abhorrent), doesn't seem to have a depth of understanding of the cultural evolution of the various populations of the Islamic world nor a deep understanding of the sects or whatever sort of denominational differences within.  I would say that his arguments are certainly worthwhile to listen, but are certainly not comprehensive in terms of drawing conclusions about the beliefs of more than a billion people.  In this respect, I don't find him to be a scholar on Islamic studies, but a great rational thinker who can articulate the concerns of those outside of Islam in an objective fashion, which can ultimately derive answers from the scholarly community itself.  

I think his persuasiveness is pretty well demonstrated, but it is also contingent upon the audience addressed.

The evidence in his arguments works mainly off what I would call "surface phenomena" like polls and de-contexualized translations of Arab texts.   These bits are then filtered through a liberal "free speech" argument based upon de-historicized and de-contexualized premises.

Five or six years ago I would have agreed he is posing useful questions and maybe driving the conversation forward, but he seems not to have grown over that time--especially when defending Israel. That suggests he may be selecting his exposure to the "other side's" arguments.  Real intellectuals don't do that.