The Battles of (Ir)Rationality

Last week I shared an article of Greenwald, which was in reply to Sam Harris and Dawkins “irrational Islamophobia” and alongwith it the emails exchange between Sam Harris and Greenwald on RSOP, when he retweeted Murtaza Hussain’s (A toronto based columnist) article on Sam Harris and Dawkins attitude. This is Dawkins infamous quote which spurred a debate in liberal as well as atheist circles,

“Haven’t read Koran so couldn’t quote chapter & verse like I can for Bible. But often say Islam [is the] greatest force for evil today.”

This one is in continuation to that. The question is, is new-atheism synonamous to Islamophobia? This is what Harris says about it,

“There is no such thing as “Islamophobia.” This is a term of propaganda designed to protect Islam from the forces of secularism by conflating all criticism of it with racism and xenophobia. And it is doing its job, because people like you have been taken in by it.”

Here is a reply of Sam Harris to Greenwald (courtesy: Faraz Talat) and here is Greenwald’s email exchange with Harris. This is Mortaza Hussain’s article. Another similar article written by Nathan Lean is here.

Mortaza has this to say,

“Just as it is incumbent upon Muslims to marginalise
their own violent extremists, mainstream atheists must work to disavow
those such as Harris who would tarnish their movement by associating it
with a virulently racist, violent and exploitative worldview”

In addition, here is Nathan Lean’s concluding paragraph.

“How the New Atheists’ anti-Muslim hate advances their belief that God
does not exist is not exactly clear. In this climate of increased
anti-Muslim sentiment, it’s a convenient digression, though. They’ve
shifted their base and instead of simply trying to convince people that
God is a myth, they’ve embraced the monster narrative of the day. That’s
not rational or enlightening or “free thinking” or even intelligent.
That’s opportunism. If atheism writ large was a tough sell to skeptics,
the “New Atheism,” Muslim-bashing atheism, must be like selling Bibles
to believers. After all, those who are convinced that God exists, and
would otherwise dismiss the Dawkins’ and Harris’s of the world as
hell-bound kooks, are often some of the biggest Islamophobes. It’s
symbiosis — and as a biologist, Dawkins should know a thing or two about
that. Proving that a religion — any religion — is evil, though, is just
as pointless and impossible an endeavor as trying to prove that God
does or doesn’t exist. Neither has been accomplished yet. And neither
will.”

Relating to the Dawkins episode, this account is shared by Asad Masood with this comment “a few months ago Peter Higgs called Dawkins ‘almost fundamentalist.“ This story by Alok Jha, published in The Guardian can be read here. Thanks to Asad, he provided another story by Nigel Farndale on the same.

However, in my opinion not only these new-atheists, especially Sam Harris are consciously or unconsciously beginning to develop Islamophobia but extremists, western salafists and modern Islamists like Anjem Ch. and Hizb-ut-Tehrir also hide
behind “Islamophobia excuse” to justify their weird attitudes and
self-righteous ideologies.