is a nice example of selecting one thing to expose idiocy/mock.
And I'm sure she can count on DT to provide many such openings.
Perhaps the first time I encountered a Gish Galloper in person was in 2013, during a debate on Islam and peace at the Oxford Union. One of my opponents, the far-right activist Anne Marie Waters, began her remarks with this word salad of an attack on my faith and my co-religionists:
Let me tell you what actually whips up fears of Islam. Let me take it from the top: 9/11; the London Underground bombings; Madrid; Mumbai; Mali; Bali; northern Nigeria; Sudan; Afghanistan; Saudi Arabia; Iran; Yemen; Pakistan; death for apostasy; death for blasphemy; death for adultery; death for homosexuality; gender segregation; gender discrimination; unequal testimony between men and women in legal proceedings; child marriage; amputations; beheadings; imprisonment for being raped; anti-Semitism; burqas; execution for this, that, and the other … This is what causes fear of Islam. It is not me; it is not my colleagues on this side … It is the actions of Muslims that are causing fear of Islam. That is the real world. That is where we actually live. Then we’ll be told this is just the extreme fringe of Islam. Well, let me have a look at Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam …
She Galloped on in this vein for several more minutes, piling one “example” of evil Muslims upon the next, and not stopping to expand or elaborate.
There was no way I could address all of the supposed examples she cited to justify “fear of Islam”; she listed 33 items in less than two minutes—about one every four seconds.
This was no nuanced discussion about the problems of Islamist extremism. No, this was a screed that sought to taint all of Islam, and all Muslims—presumably myself included—as aiders and abetters of terrorism. Any effort I might make to draw distinctions and unpick some complex realities from this fabric of bigotry would be doomed. It would have taken several minutes, if not my entire allotted time. It also would have put me on the defensive, when the key to winning any argument is to put your opponent on the back foot. So, instead, I chose to zero in on the most ludicrous assertion: that Saudi Arabia was the “birthplace of Islam.”
“Just on a factual point,” I responded, “you said that Islam was born in Saudi Arabia. Islam was born in 610 A.D. Saudi Arabia was born in 1932 A.D. So you were only 1,322 years off! Not bad.”
By mocking and debunking that particular claim, I poured doubt on the rest of them—and made my opponent look foolish in the process.
= new reply since forum marked as read
