LESSONS IN LOGIC: Context is more than We often Realize

No matter where we stand on the political spectrum, we all have a tendency to look at the policies and actions of our leaders and conclude that they are either incompetent or insane.  Now, logically, this is a possibility, however, it is probably the last conclusion we should make because it is a conclusion produced by lazy thinking.  I submit that, before we toss things up to incompetence or insanity, it would be better if we look for a frame of reference from which a given policy or action makes sense.  We have all heard the saying “context, context, context.”  Well, that is all I am suggesting: that we look for a world view (context) that makes sense of the things we see as incompetence or insanity, then draw our conclusions.  If you will allow me, I’d like to use this article to illustrate my argument: “Saying Merry Christmas is Worse than Murder!”

Here is the story:

Muslim Religious Leader says Saying Merry Christmas is Worse than Murder (VIDEO)

In fact he says that saying Merry Christmas

“is worse than fornication and drinking alcohol and killing someone, because you are approving of the biggest crime ever committed by the children of Adam’s sin.” 

I agree with this cleric! If you are a Muslim, saying Merry Christmas is ‘shirk:‘ the greatest crime you can commit — because it is the greatest sin.

To those raised outside of Islam, it sounds absurd.  Even an Atheist (if they are reasonable) will admit that saying Merry Christmas does much less harm than murder.  However, if you are a Muslim, acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God is worse than murder, rape, even genocide.  So, once you understand the context from which this cleric is speaking, his words make perfect sense.

This is a principle of logic: if we seek the Truth, we must find and understand the full context of an issue before we draw any conclusions.  If we will take the time to study a given issue, we will find that it is usually possible to find the full context, and that when we do, things that once made no sense to us suddenly make perfect sense.  But this often leads to the really difficult part: accepting the conclusions that naturally flow from understanding the fuller context.  In the case of our Muslim cleric here, he says saying Merry Christmas is shirk and kafir. Well, according to Muhammad, Muslims are commanded to either convert or kill kafirs, so we need to accept that this cleric believes he has a duty to do just that (and now we need to know what ‘shirk’ and ‘kafir‘ are and what they really mean).

This is the part most of us in the West cannot bring ourselves to accept about Islam: that it truly is a religion that commands world domination to be spread by the sword.  To our way of thinking, it is easier to just make up and accept a lie.  Instead of accepting the truth, we tell ourselves they just want jobs, or they are being driven to kill by climate change.  However, if you were raised Muslim and you understand ‘shirk,’ then the idea that a lack of jobs or climate change motivate you to kill is a joke.  But more than this, if you are a Western leader who was raised Muslim, and who understands ‘shirk,’ and you still seek to defend and even advance Islam in the West, then you might agree with or even advance these silly ideas as a means of waging what Islam calls ‘cultural jihad.’  Once again, we can’t know for sure if this is the case until we find and understand the fuller context of what we see such a leader actually doing.  Even then, if we study what our leaders actually do and we hold them against what we can learn about Islam, we may be forced to confront an even more unsettling conclusions: namely that some of our leaders may not be closet Muslims waging a stealth jihad against America after all.   Even more frightening than this, we may have to consider the possibility that we are dealing with Secular Humanists who have allowed their arrogance and ignorance convince them that they can ‘use’ Muslims to help them deal with the ‘superstitious’ Christians in the West, then — after they have consolidated their power — they will ‘deal’ with the ‘superstitious’ and backward Muslims.  If you look at what you are seeing in the news from these two positions (closet Muslims and Secular Humanists), and you know Islamic and Progressiv ideology, then what looks like incompetence or insanity to an outsider suddenly starts to make perfect sense.  All you need is to do some research, apply it to the things you see being done, then find the courage to believe the natural implications of what the fuller context means.

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