The thought processes of Mad Mel

Steven Poole examines the thought processes of Mad Mel, or rather, what passes for thought:

One of the things that excited [Melanie Phillips] last week was an article by Daniel Pipes, describing a book by Timur Kuran which argues that “Islamic economics” was invented so as to:

minimize relations with non-Muslims, strengthen the collective sense of Muslim identity, extend Islam into a new area of human activity, and modernize without Westernizing.

“Melanie” cites this passage with glee and immediately glosses it thus:

In other words, Islamic finance is a political and ideological weapon which was devised as a means of subjugating the west to Islam. [emphasis added]

Probably “Melanie” just read “extend Islam into a new area” and shut off what remains of “her” brain, intepreting it according to her apocalyptic obsession with Islam invading the west. Of course the passage in Pipes’s article clearly means extending Islam into the area of finance, not into the area where “Melanie” lives. As to how anything could really work as “a means of subjugating the west to Islam” while at the same time hoping to “minimize relations with non-Muslims”, we are in the dark. Perhaps they will use robots as intermediaries?

On the subject of robots, I wonder how long it is before a political commentator on the Internet — one with loony ideas may be easier to program — is revealed to be an AI Turing Test project. Or maybe Mel is one such already.