Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Language

Muslims attacked us on September 11, 2001. True or False

2 comments:

  1. Your request for a true/false answer makes this a deliciously wicked tug of war between logic and what you would “really” like to communicate. I will start the cauldron bubbling by saying the logical answer to your questions is “True”.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with Tom that the logical answer is "True." However, this does feel sort of like a "Do you still beat your wife?" kind of construction in its ambiguous use of language. To me the statement sorely needs a quantifier. "Some muslims..." would be a more accurate assertion, because as it stands one does wonder, are we talking about all muslims, or a muslim majority, or what?

    It would also be nice if voices for a moderate muslim majority would stand up and say: The assertion is False because we reject any self-proclamtion of muslim identity on the part of extremists who would perpetrate acts of terror against innocents. I haven't heard any such outcry, but maybe I just haven't been paying attention.

    ReplyDelete