nothing worse than being a liberal, allegedly

Piers Akerman wrote the following (about "small l liberals") in Sydney's Daily Telegraph :

“They cannot get their little heads around the reality that though the Koran does contain some verses of great poetry on tolerance and respect, it also contains a plethora of extremely virulent exhortatory suras condemning nonbelievers, apostates, Christians and Jews, to violent deaths and unending misery in the hereafter.”

So I sent these thoughts to Piers

How should a bleeding-heart liberal like me view a Holy Book that proclaims the righteousness of destroying “every living thing” (Genesis 7:4); condones brutality against servants (Genesis 16:6-9); rejoices in the extermination of whole cities (Genesis 19:24); rewards a murderer (Exodus 2:12); kills the entire first born generation of a nation as a tool to liberate the oppressed (Exodus 12:29); punishes with death children that hit or curse their parents (Exodus 21: 15 and 17); condemns to death anyone who defiles or works on the Sabbath (Exodus 31: 14 and 15); and provokes the violent death (by sword) of 3,000 people for worshipping God in an unorthodox manner (Exodus 32: 27 – 28)?

That’s just the first and second Holy Books in this anthology of Holy writings. How should this small l liberal respond to the adherents of that Faith, Piers? Maybe I should tell them that we have no room at this Inn for the likes of them? Maybe I should turn away from them or cast them out into the wilderness? Maybe I should force them to do as the Romans do? Maybe I should behead them or crucify them? Better not try the latter, it’ll just turn their leader into a martyr!

Charles Rennie MacIntosh (the designer) once wrote: there is hope in honest error, none in the icy perfections of the mere stylist. How very clever of you to compose such a stylish, clever but morally bankrupt distortion of the Holy Book of Islam and of its adherents (of which I am not one). Me? I’m a multiculturalist and a small l liberal. As we do, I wholly respect your right to hold to and express your illiberal and profoundly depressing views. I’ll do my best, in my small, private and infuriatingly liberal way, to resist your nihilism and poverty of thought because that too is what us small l liberals do.