Argumentative Essay on Current Issues
Locate a current news story online about a current event, opinion, or issue. Using the premise – conclusion form, evaluate the premises and the conclusion presented in the article. Assess if the argument presented is valid and sound using the criteria for soundness and validity. How did evaluating the argument(s) presented impact your understanding of the issue or event?
An article from Pakistan talks about a 30-year-old political analyst who was taken to court by a bishop for publishing an article on the social media that portrayed hatred against the Christians. When the Muslim political analyst was convicted, he claimed that Christians were taking the lead in the major public sectors of the country and felt that it would eventually promote favoritism to the Christians at the expense of the Muslims, and hence his intention was to defend the people of his faith (Iqtidar, 2016). The case was listened to by the same number of Muslim and Christian judges in the court and a solution is not yet found (Larsen & Di Stasio, 2019). The article has raised the question of whether the Christian believers should be barred from working in the government offices since Pakistan is generally an Islamic country.
The Christian believers have maintained that they offer the public services to every citizen regardless of their religion.
Premise 1: A Muslim political analyst insults the Christians
Premise 2: A bishop takes him to the court
Premise 3: Christians occupy government offices.
Conclusion: The Christians pose a threat to the Muslims
The argument is valid. A connection exists between the premises and the conclusion. If the analyst feels that the Christians present threats to the Muslim faith which he belongs to as they occupy most of the government offices, then it is valid that the Christians pose a threat to their faith (Iqtidar, 2016).
The argument is not sound because although more Christians occupy the government offices, they are still guided by the constitution in the manner in which they lead the country found (Larsen & Di Stasio, 2019). In this regard, posing as a threat to the Muslim community is just the opinion of the political analyst and not a fact.
This calls for the consideration of the prevailing rules of the constitution before making a judgment
References
Iqtidar, H. (2016). Conspiracy theory as political imaginary: Blackwater in Pakistan. Political
Studies, 64(1), 200-215.
Larsen, E. N., & Di Stasio, V. (2019). Pakistani in the UK and Norway: different contexts,
similar disadvantage. Results from a comparative field experiment on hiring discrimination. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1-21.
