I find it interesting that out of all the responses, no one (at the time of writing, Jan 26) has mentioned the presence of your Islamaphobia. Overall, this article is disingenuous; you are not promoting tolerance, rather you are seeking to sew divide between one group of people to another. And you wrote it to get views and get paid, evident by the paywall, attracting a certain demographic of people who either agree with you or are reactionary towards your beliefs (like myself).

My first question to you and my fellow reader is, who historically has decided which ideas have value? Well, in the Western civilization we so highly praise, it's been the elite. Men like Kant, whose argument you cite to support your claims. Powerful, wealthy men - for a feminist author, you cited their arguments a few times. In that tradition, these men, not women, decide which ideas are decidedly Western, and which ideas are beneficial to society. I’m sure you can agree that this is not a good system for society. On the basis of gender, race, and class, there is a disparity towards which ideas hold more weight in the marketplace and which ideas do not.

How is this type of thinking dangerous? Its thinking that promotes supremacist ideology, whether its men over women, Christians over Muslims, or ‘native Westerners’ over dirty immigrants. Essentially, you have decided you are of the group to determine Western values, and these immigrants or people arriving to live here are not. That they are not worthy of being apart of the supremacist class. In the same breath, you proclaim the white religious folks down south are an example of the extremism you despise, yet you utilize their tactics of deciding who is white / who is Chrisitan / who is rich enough to be a right ‘fit’.

Did you know that women can divorce men in Islam? Fairly I might add. Did you know that there are Muslim thinkers who advocate for queer Muslim rights? Did you know there are Muslim women on the front lines of protests for human decency and freedom, alla the Palestinian genocide? Did you know that people regularly challenge the narratives of their groups? Of course you might have, but from your writing, you haven’t even begun to challenge the narratives of your own beliefs, your own privileged life.

Now, this would not have been a problem if you mentioned any of these cases. If you came to the defence of Muslims who are actually fighting ignorance, fighting to change their cultural world, and fighting for education. But you do not. Instead? You describe children not liking a naked painting, a few parents getting upset and calling a PTA meeting, and in the next paragraph, you decide that this is a slippery slope that could end in murder. You equate the actions of Muslim children with a murderer. You make an assertion that any Muslim child who does not agree with the ‘West’ could be a murderer (even though, here in North America, there are plenty of angry, insane parents on the left and right who want to ban nudity in the classroom, talk of same-sex sex, who underfunded an entire sexual education program for years, and who have currently banned several books speaking on queer spaces - but you’re right, we are so much better than the kids who were taught not to look at nudity).

You make a paradox comparison, but just because you have read some philosophy books does not mean your writing isn’t a paradox of hatred and disgust itself.

And to the editors on this so called ‘publication’, you edited this? No one decided to question this? To ask if this is ok? I do not trust the writers on Medium for this exact reason, because nothing is ever really peer reviewed. This is not academia, and lets not kid ourselves, without the proper guidelines to hold each other accountable for shit like this, no one is really pushing any discipline forward. To the editorial board, you call yourselves writers, have some self-respect for your craft. Do better.

To quote you, I’m calling out the asshole - you’re the asshole, a fundamentalist. You think that these ‘ignorant’ people are not worthy of being heard in our society, but you don’t even understand who they are or why they are ignorant. You don't even understand your own bias' towards Muslim people. That makes you ignorant.