11/26/2003

religious loyalty test

Go read Zack's responses to Daniel Pipes' "Moderate Muslim Questionnaire". The list of questions is designed to trap Muslims in contradiction, force them to accept second-class citizenhood, undermine their religion, and accept collective responsibility for the actions of a few. Zack treats them with the appropriate level of respect.

UPDATE: Kynn provides a test for identifying Christian moderates. Note that I think it's valuable in highlighting the bias in Pipe's questionairre, rather than an actual test that Christians would be expected to take. The entire point is that these tests meet an impossible standard and reject the integrity of faith, forcing the person who answers to sacrifice belief for political sanitization. As Zack's responses and Kynn's recasting of the entire thing towards a Christian target demonstrate, Pipe's questions are fundamentally an attack on the very act of believing in Islam.