Atheism and Islam

Last week I wrote about an article published by Charisma News that called for war against Islam, and denied that either converting Muslims or expelling them from the U.S. could solve the Islam problem. I pointed out that the author, Rev. Gary Cass, completely ignored that most Muslims are not so different from you or me, that there are (and have always been) a variety of interpretations and sects of Islam, and that religions change and evolve over time. On the whole, the comments on my post condemned Cass and pointed out his hypocrisy in calling for war against Islam.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that too many atheists are more than willing to call out the religious for bigotry but less willing to look in the mirror and examine themselves. I’ve seen this done with regards to women’s rights. Atheists as a group are quick to criticize Christianity or Islam for oppressing women, but when women in their own movement point out sexism within their ranks many male atheists respond with anger and denial at best, and abuse and hate at worst. These same atheists too often ignore that there are egalitarian Christians and Muslims, and that these believers often draw on their religious beliefs and traditions to support their promotion of women’s rights. It turns out it’s much easier to take simplistic pot shots at the other side than it is to engage in self reflection or take time to understand the complexity of an issue.

In his Charisma News article, Cass ignored the complex past and present of Islam and the critical role of socio-political factors, preferring a simplistic and limited understanding that blamed every harmful action of a Muslim on the religion as a whole. Cass did this as a conservative Christian, but I’ve seen atheists do the same thing. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for example, was raised in a Muslim family but has since become an atheist and has made her name as an outspoken critic of Islam. If you read her interview in Reason in 2007, or her other writings, you’ll find that there’s little to distinguish what she says from what Cass says.

Reason: Should we acknowledge that organized religion has sometimes sparked precisely the kinds of emancipation movements that could lift Islam into modern times? Slavery in the United States ended in part because of opposition by prominent church members and the communities they galvanized. The Polish Catholic Church helped defeat the Jaruzelski puppet regime. Do you think Islam could bring about similar social and political changes?

Hirsi Ali: Only if Islam is defeated. Because right now, the political side of Islam, the power-hungry expansionist side of Islam, has become superior to the Sufis and the Ismailis and the peace-seeking Muslims.

Reason: Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?

Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.

Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, “defeat Islam”?

Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.” There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

Reason: Militarily?

Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.

Hirsi Ali was recently invited to speak at Yale. Yale’s Muslim Students Association has put out a statement of concerns, signed by the women’s center and two dozen other university organizations. Atheist blogger Jerry Coyne of Why Evolution is True wrote a response, stating: “I’ll defend Hirsi Ali’s right to speak, but I’ll also defend her criticism of Islam as a divisive and often hateful religion, one that is, perhaps, the world’s most dangerous faith.” Hirsi Ali and Coyne are far from the only well-known atheists to says such things. Sam Harris wrote that “It is time we admitted that we are not at war with terrorism. We are at war with Islam.” Richard Dawkins tweeted “Haven’t read Koran so couldn’t quote chapter & verse like I can for Bible. But often say Islam greatest force for evil today.” 

Here is a quote from the statement released by the Muslim Students Association:

The level of radical inaccuracy in representing a faith that is part of our community compels all of us, not just Muslims on campus, to act on Yale’s fundamental values of freedom of speech and diversity of thought to express our sentiments.

We sympathize with the unfortunate circumstances that Ms. Hirsi Ali faced in her Muslim household as a child and we recognize that such experiences do exist in many countries, including Muslim-majority ones. We condemn such actions and contend that Islam does not promote them. It is important to distinguish Islamic teachings from the practices of some Muslims, which can be based on a variety of sociopolitical reasons and which do exist in other non-Muslim communities around the world.

Our concern is that Ms. Hirsi Ali is being invited to speak as an authority on Islam despite the fact that she does not hold the credentials to do so. In the past, under such authority, she has overlooked the complexity of sociopolitical issues in Muslim-majority countries and has purported that Islam promotes a number of violent and inhumane practices. At her worst, Ms. Hirsi Ali has said that Islam is a “destructive nihilistic cult of death” worshiping a “fire-breathing Allah” that, in all of its forms, needs to be “defeated.”

I have only one quibble with this statement. I would argue that Islam, like Christianity, has a diverse religious text and historical tradition that can today be used to support a variety of positions, some repressive and some progressive. Religious traditions are flexible. They change over time and can be used by different groups to support such varied positions as women’s equality and female submission. This is how religious traditions work. Religious believers—whether liberal or conservative—frequently argue that their interpretation of their religion is the only correct one. This appears to be what the Muslim Students Association is doing in its statement.

Regardless, statements like these are much needed. Most Muslims across the globe do not support terrorism and want friendly relations—not war—with the West. Hirsi Ali’s talk at Yale is titled “Clash of Civilizations: Islam and the West.” This is highly misleading and promotes and furthers current misunderstandings. This is the central problem with Hirsi Ali’s current efforts. Her activism for women’s rights is important, yes, and that is where she started, but today she pays little attention to Muslim feminists working toward women’s rights within their religious tradition and sees Islam, rather than patriarchy, as the problem and the enemy to be defeated.

Hirsi Ali had this to say in the 2007 Reason interview:

Hirsi Ali: There is no moderate Islam. There are Muslims who are passive, who don’t all follow the rules of Islam, but there’s really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There’s nothing moderate about it.

Reason: So when even a hard-line critic of Islam such as Daniel Pipes says, “Radical Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution,” he’s wrong?

Hirsi Ali: He’s wrong. Sorry about that.

Remember what I said about progressive believers who argue that theirs is the only correct interpretation of their religion? I said that I take issue with this claim because religious traditions and texts are varied and can be used to promote and support a variety of positions, both regressive and progressive. What Hirsi Ali is doing here, though, is what I’ve seen too many atheists do when they insist that fundamentalist Christians are interpreting the Bible correctly while progressive Christians are just picking and choosing and making it up as they go along. As I’ve explained many times here before, that’s wrong—and it also means joining forces with fundamentalist Christians to argue that progressive Christians have got Christianity wrong. Atheists like Hirsi Ali and others do this exact same thing when they argue that there is no moderate or progressive Islam. I’ve written about this before too.

When writing about Hirsi Ali last spring, blogger Sarah Jones pointed out that Muslims in the United States are subject to bigotry and even violence, and that in that climate stirring up hatred against Islam by portraying it as especially evil or united against the West contributes to a dangerous climate for the nation’s Muslims.

According to the FBI, American Jews and Muslims are disproportionately more likely than atheists to become the victims of hate crimes. In the last thirty days, shots have been fired at mosques in two states, an imam with no criminal record was forcibly removed from a flight, a Muslim community center in Montreal was vandalized with an axe that read “we will scalp Muslims,” and in New York City a man spit on a 15-year-old girl, threatened her life, and called her a terrorist while others on the bus watched and laughed.

We need to avoid bigotry and prejudice. We need to be able to call out Christians who call for war against Islam and atheists who declare that Islam and the West are locked in a “clash of civilizations.” If the American public believes that Islam is incompatible with modernity and human rights, what do you think that means for the wellbeing of Muslims living in the United States or other Western countries, or for countries across the globe with Muslim majorities? If prominent speakers convince people that Islam is our enemy and must be defeated, what impact do you think that has on American foreign policy, as well as internal policy vis a vis the civil rights of Muslims in the U.S.?

This isn’t about not wanting to offend people. It also isn’t about being willing to ignore reality to avoid fomenting genocide against the world’s Muslims. It’s also about being accurate. Too often it seems like atheists are ready to jump to use any argument they can find against religion without even bothering to check if it is accurate. If someone tells them that Islam is bent on war with the West and that there is no such thing as moderate or progressive Islam, these atheists are only too eager to believe it. For too many, understanding things like socio-political context, history, or even the present appears to be unimportant. There is nothing about this that aligns with “reason” or “irrationality.” It smacks more of laziness, ignorance, and even—yes—bigotry.