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Edited on Sat Jun-17-06 05:24 PM by igil
more precise. Then refutation is impossible, and the thing's been defanged. You've been handed an ambiguity, something that means different things to different people, and therefore cannot be discussed. The only way to discuss it it is to remove the ambiguity. What do I mean?
Then there are the many Muslims that'll just disagree with it, and for which it is patently false. They're wishy-washy or moderately devout, or even fairly secular. They're excluded from coverage in this e-mail; they simply reject the premise, but they're not 'devout'. Now, no believer wants to be called 'wishy-washy', but most are.
There are many imams and Islamic scholars that will disagree with reading it and with the content. They are devout by most definitions. They should be excluded from this e-mail. The e-mail does not. Therefore, the e-mail is untrue. It makes a claim about 'devout Muslims' that is false.
There are imams and Islamic scholars, even some considered fairly moderate, that will disagree with reading it, but not the content. They are also devout. Therefore, this e-mail is not entirely untrue. It makes a claim about 'devout Muslims' that is true. Zing. Define 'devout'. Ah.
There are scholars that would agree with much of these--al-Qaradhawi, a 'moderate' whose visa to the US was recently rejected, was very recently cited as saying the disagreement in the schools of Islam isn't whether or not to kill gays, but the prescribed manner; gays, fornicators ... whatever, they should be punished. Of course, male homosexuality, as a practical matter, is worse than lesbianism ... He's also gone on the record for wife-beating, in the proper circumstances. He's not alone, and there are 'devout Muslims' that support him. Denying that they exist is a reflex for some people that like word games, like this e-mailer likes word games. They just have different motives and goals.
That there are such people, considered by themselves to be Muslim, and which a not insignificant section of the Muslim community unthinkingly accepts as being Muslim, makes it false to say that the e-mail is completely untrue. But one also can't say the e-mail is true. It is ambiguous. The e-mail is changing definitions mid-discourse; and for an argument or exposition to work, definitions have to be consistent, and either shared by both speaker and hearer or the speaker must make his definition completely explicit.
It's an annoying problem, since for most people something is true or false, and they get really cranky when you try to say "it's true, if you take the word in one common meaning, it's false if you take the word in another common meaning." It forces them to think and make their assumptions explicit, and if there's one thing people hate, it's that. It takes serious work.
Bear with me. This is fairly subtle, but obvious once you get it. "Devout Muslims" is a set of people. You hear the phrase, you assume you know the set. You have a definition of 'devout' and of 'Muslim', and you compose the two words into a phrase (think of it as the intersection all all people both devout and Muslim). Yippee, you think. Then properties are attributed to this set. The properties listed have the effect of restricting the set of people the term applies to: the term 'devout Muslim' is being given a definition, which you assume applies to the set you've already picked out. You can't get from "devout Muslim" to just the group of people defined in this e-mail by merging your usual meaning of 'devout' and 'Muslim'. There is such a group of people. And you have just been mislead to assuming that everybody in the first group, the set of all Muslims that are also devout, is the same as the set of "devout Muslims" you're left with at the end, at least partially because you know there is such a group, so you can't completely deny their existence; and you don't have time to tease out exactly where the trouble is. The final set of Muslims you're left with is, at best, nothing more than a subset of the first. You've been led to either redefine 'Muslim', redefine 'devout', or attribute a quirky meaning to 'devout Muslim', so that there are devout Muslims, and then there are "devout Muslims".
That's an implicit change of terms, a fallacy. A pretty basic, fundamental fallacy. But one that's not always easy to catch. Most people would use the word "extremist" to avoid the fallacy, with the understanding that 'devout' and 'extremist' are mutually exclusive (so that there aren't 'devout' Muslims that are also 'extremist Muslims'), or they'd be clear that they're offering a definition of 'devout' at odds with the one you assume.
Some will argue that the e-mail must be entirely false, since their definition of "Muslim" or "devout" denies the thing being described. They also don't see the fallacy, and frequently employ the exact same fallacy with the reverse outcome. Again, the definition of the word shifts mid-discourse, and a discourse without mutually accepted definitions is no discourse at all.
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