The New York Times article about the Yazidi girls used as sex slaves brought lots of people to the paper’s Facebook page, putting in the obligatory word in defense of Islam. More specifically, the actions of the fighters of the Islamic State have nothing to do with Islam, they swore.

I thought I’d add some balance, so here ‘soffering a different take on the matter.

The later political Koran written in Medina frequently contradicts the early religious Koran written in Mecca. The Koran gives a rule for removing the contradiction by saying that the later Koran “abrogates” the early Koran. But the earlier Koran is still true; it was given by Allah. So in Islam both sides of a contradiction can be true. This gives Islam its dualistic logic. Our unitary logic says that if two things contradict, then one of them is false. This dualism accounts for the two types of Muslims — the good Muslim at work and the Taliban Muslim. Both Muslims are “real” Muslims. Dualism gives the “good” Muslim plausible deniability when they say that jihadists are not “real” Islam. Dualism means the “good” Muslims and the jihadists are just two ends of the same stick.

More food for thought here and here

They deserve to be treated completely differently for sure, based on their actions and opinions, not on their religion. But neither can lay a convincing claim to representing the Real Islam™.

As Jerry Coyne wrote recently, there is no such thing as “true” religion.

If ISIS is not Islamic, then the Inquisition was not Catholic.

Chew on that.