will the real scholar please stand up ?

 According to A. El Younss, for Irshad Manji, “it is high time dissent in face of societal norms entered the mainstream vocabulary and public discourse in Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority countries. She calls on both Muslims and non-Muslims—liberal or other—to speak up more against such injustices and not be constrained by political correctness and cultural sensitivity” Manji has written about the Qur’an from a ”higher critical method” and shown the Qur’an the kind of treatment that “scholars” have shown the Christian Bible for the last two centuries.  Manji actually argues that the Qur’an has contradictions in it, and this claim has been particularly unsettling to many Muslims, to say the least.   This critical method is applied to major religious texts, which seems to be the way of learning theology in the academy worldwide.  Another trend is critiquing fringe religious groups, designating them as cults.  One such group, with some 5,000 followers, is referred to as the Twelve Tribes are said to have unthinkable behavior.  This group is classified as Christian Fundamentalism, but it is accused of behavior that veers far away from orthodox Christian practices.

Nonetheless, detractors from Christianity use this and groups like it to characterize the whole of Christendom.  An atheist like Sam Harris critiques all beliefs in God as irrational and not palpable in any sense. He finds theodicy to be the area of strongest weakness in religion.  Comically, Harris fancies himself to be a mindfulness expert, and last I heard, he was pursuing a PhD in Cognitive Science.  I suppose that degree will make him an expert on what it means to be a humxn. It may be time to drum-up some new material on AI to see how much more intelligent Harris has become. Socrates demonstrated that the basic principles of religious and secular life could be critiqued by his philosophy.  I do not imagine Harris as shaping hxstory the way Socrates, or rather Plato did. Scholarship and being called a “scholar” is a lot of hype. It must be remembered that the masters of all knowledge are called doctors.  Remember, the person who graduates last in class in medical school is called a doctor.  From Harvard to community college, one might not find anyone as intelligent there as some person on the street that gets dialed up.  

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