this, by now, is mechanical, not only for muslims but for non-muslims, and if truth was pragmatic or merely strategic, the idea that acts of violence or terrorism have nothing to do with islam would be...true. now let me say, there are many varieties of islam. you're not going to find sufi saints in suicide vests. not only that, but of course there are christian fanatics, and there are people who go on shooting rampages for non-religious reasons or for no comprehensible reason whatsoever, which is really the position on something like this: any explanation - including religious fanaticism - is inadequate because the effect is both infinitely in excess to and virtually completely conceptually detached, arbitrary, in relation to the cause.

but if like eboo patel you find yourself explaining away act after act day after day as a misunderstanding or having nothing to do with what the people doing these acts say they are doing, i think you are being disingenuous, or perhaps believing what you need to believe in the teeth of what's true. if you keep quoting the peace-loving passages of the koran and ignoring the justifications or celebrations of violence in the text or the extremely violent early history of islam - its teaching that the infidel deserves death and its history of giving people what it says they deserve, i don't think you're being honest.

at any rate, i don't feel the necessity to pretend to believe what, if it were true, would make the world a little better. and indeed, if you know that you're doing that, you don't actually believe what you say you believe: believing p is taking p to be true, not taking it to help us all live as brothers.

i might admire you for being good, but if i think that the reasons you're urging me to believe that p have nothing to do with whether p is true, by definition it's not possible to find what you're saying convincing. you (the politician, pundit, or just schmoe) say that p because it would help to believe p or it would be admirable to believe that p or we would all feel better if we believed that p or if we all beieved that p the world would be cured or something. you say it and i nod along for reasons that have nothing to do whether what we're saying is true. you talk, i nod, and neither us believe at all. (the graduation address: "anything you can dream, you can accomplish." no one denies it, and no one believes it.) now i think we pay a huge price for that ultimately; i don't believe it really is a long-term solution to anything or that it really usually has good effects. it's just living in a cooperative fantasy or a tissue of lies. but of course by my own lights whether it does or does not have good effects cannot be the question.