Wieseltier Responds

25 Apr 2008 08:54 am

I'm relieved by this:

About one thing I wish to be piercingly clear: I do not believe that Andrew Sullivan is an anti-Semite. No, it is more than a matter of my own belief. I know as an incontrovertible fact, based on my long acquaintance with him and his writings, that he is not an anti-Semite. Of course he is not an anti-Semite. I should have said so before I pounced.

The valid question at issue is the following:

Why a Catholic cannot call a Muslim a fraud or a Jew call a Protestant a liar or an agnostic call a believer a cynic, or why one's identity should have any bearing upon the truth or falsity of anything one says.

I take that point. Yes, in some respects, anyone is at liberty to call anyone else a fraud and their own identity can be irrelevant to that judgment. What I was trying to get at - not so artfully - is the following point. When a Catholic calls another Catholic a bad Catholic or a phony Catholic, it is evident that he is fighting over what both acknowledge is the same corpus of belief. They are both trying to get at the truth they should share. There is an understandable inference of sincerity and good faith. But if, say, a Muslim were to call a Catholic a fraud, it is not so clear that he is arguing out of sympathy for the common belief. And if he also has a political advantage in playing up divisions within another faith community, one's suspicion of cynicism and opportunism on his part should ratchet up a notch. That was my point. In retrospect, I think I over-stated it. But I don't think it's without merit either.

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