Questions about Roger Scruton

Abstract

Roger Scruton, known for his good-natured conservatism and general attempts
to defend traditional Western life, seems blind to the novelty of
our globalized world as he conflates Islam with radical Islam and attacks
Muslims as though all were Islamists. Genial style notwithstanding,
his indictment of Islam and Muslims is inaccurate and his desire to
deny Muslims the right to live as Muslims in their own or Western polities
anything but good-natured. Alas, until Muslims become secular and
agree to imbibe alcohol, Scruton will reject them as impossibly asocial.
He ignores that there are many faces of Islam varying in place and
time as well as social milieu. That meshes with his devotion to viewing
religious conviction through the lenses of bourgeois Western mores and
deriding piety. Though appealing to populist sentiment, it does not rise to
the standard of serious criticism or come near the scholarly obligation to
give the arguments and the actions we oppose their strongest defense and
then probe for what is weak ...