Joel Mathis

The face of "real" Christianity? Not long ago, National Review's Andrew McCarthy wrote something that has stuck in my craw for a few days. He conceded that there are many moderate Muslims while dismissing the possibility of moderate Islam itself. Here he is : There is no moderate Islam in the mainstream of Muslim life, not in the doctrinal sense. There are millions of moderate Muslims who crave reform. Yet the fact that they seek real reform, rather than what Georgetown is content to call reform, means they are trying to invent something that does not currently exist. In other words, McCarthy dismisses "millions of moderate Muslims" because -- even though those millions of Muslims live their lives in what we're calling "moderate" fashion -- Islamic doctrines aren't similarly moderate. And that makes little sense: It's like insisting that there are no Catholics who use birth control or Southern Baptists who dance, because the doctrin

Abigail Thernstrom of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, replying to Andy McCarthy in National Review today: McCarthy’s screed falls far short of reasonable disagreement, offering superheated and sarcastic rhetoric where evidence and logical analysis are needed. Sounds about right.

Andy McCarthy has a beaut at The Corner today : The Ground Zero mosque project is not about religious tolerance. We permit thousands of mosques in our country, and Islam is not a religion. Islam is an ideology that has some spiritual elements, but strives for authoritarian control of every aspect of human life — social, political, and economic. Get that? Islam is not a religion. That's probably a surprise to the people who pray five times a day. But you know what? Even if you grant McCarthy his outlook -- even if you believe that Islam is an ideology -- guess what? Still protected by the First Amendment.

There's not a lot I'm going to say about Andy McCarthy's latest column in National Review , except that I want to note -- again -- the amazing and repugnant way he characterizes Iraqis: When the WMD did not materialize, the result of “look forward, not back” was to portray nation-building — a goal the public never agreed to — as the dominant purpose of our prohibitively costly presence in Iraq, an ungrateful Muslim country that generally despises Americans.  This isn't the first time that McCarthy has called Iraqis "ingrates " -- and really, there's a (can't get around this word) imperialist presumption to his attitude that's quite simply breathtaking. "You'll take our invasion -- and the years of bloody violence it unleashes -- and you'll like it!" As McCarthy notes, we didn't actually invade Iraq in order to bestow the blessings of freedom -- even in the anger that permeated America after 9/11, there probably wouldn

Here's how Andy McCarthy begins a National Review column that, ostensibly, about lambasting Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan : I wonder if Elena Kagan knows about Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. Ms. Ashtiani is about to be stoned. That’s where they bury you up to your chest and hurl rocks at you until you die. The rocks can’t be too big. You see, this is real torture, religion-of-peace torture. It’s the kind that happens every day but that Democrats prefer not to talk about. First: The last sentence. Huffington Post is promoting a petition to save Ashtiani's life . Feminist blogs like Shakesville are raising a ruckus. There's lots more examples of this. Ten seconds perusing Google could tell you that Andy McCarthy is wrong. And probably lying. But maybe he's as dumb as a rock But let's focus on the "real torture" part of McCarthy's statement -- with its implication that American treatment of Gitmo prisoners was relatively benign. Because here'