Last week I wrote about an article published by Charisma News that called for war against Islam<\/a>, 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\u00a0of Islam, and that religions change and evolve over time. On the whole, the comments on my post condemned Cass and pointed out his hypocrisy\u00a0in calling for war against Islam.<\/p>\n One thing I\u2019ve noticed over the years is that too many atheists are more than willing to call out\u00a0the religious\u00a0for bigotry but less willing to look in the mirror and examine themselves. I\u2019ve seen this done with regards to women\u2019s rights. Atheists as a group\u00a0are 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\u00a0women\u2019s rights. It turns out it\u2019s 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\u00a0issue.<\/p>\n In his Charisma News article, Cass ignored the complex past\u00a0and 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\u00a0a conservative Christian, but I\u2019ve 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<\/a>, or her other writings, you\u2019ll find that there\u2019s little to distinguish what she says from what Cass says.<\/p>\n Reason<\/strong>: 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?<\/p>\n Hirsi Ali<\/strong>: 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.<\/p>\n Reason<\/strong>: Don\u2019t you mean defeating\u00a0radical<\/em>\u00a0Islam?<\/p>\n Hirsi Ali<\/strong>: No. Islam, period. Once it\u2019s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It\u2019s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They\u2019re not interested in peace.<\/p>\n Reason<\/strong>: We have to crush the world\u2019s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, \u201cdefeat Islam\u201d?<\/p>\n Hirsi Ali<\/strong>: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there\u2019s 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\u2019re 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, \u201cThis is a warning. We won\u2019t accept this anymore.\u201d There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.<\/p>\n Reason<\/strong>: Militarily?<\/p>\n Hirsi Ali<\/strong>: In all forms, and if you\u00a0don\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being\u00a0crushed<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Hirsi Ali was recently\u00a0invited to speak at Yale. Yale\u2019s\u00a0Muslim Students Association has put out a statement of concerns, signed by the women\u2019s center and two dozen other university organizations. Atheist blogger Jerry Coyne of Why Evolution is True\u00a0wrote a response,<\/a>\u00a0stating:\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ll defend Hirsi Ali\u2019s\u00a0right to speak, but I\u2019ll also defend her criticism of Islam\u00a0as a divisive and often hateful religion, one that is, perhaps, the world\u2019s most dangerous faith.\u201d Hirsi Ali and Coyne are far from the only well-known atheists to says such things.\u00a0Sam Harris\u00a0wrote that<\/a>\u00a0\u201cIt is time we admitted that we are not at war with terrorism. We are at war with Islam.\u201d Richard Dawkins\u00a0tweeted<\/a>\u00a0\u201cHaven\u2019t read Koran so couldn\u2019t\u00a0quote chapter & verse like I can for Bible. But often say Islam greatest force for evil today.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Here is a quote from\u00a0the statement released by the Muslim Students Association:<\/p>\n 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\u2019s fundamental values of freedom of speech and diversity of thought to express our sentiments.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cdestructive nihilistic cult of death\u201d worshiping a \u201cfire-breathing Allah\u201d that, in all of its forms, needs to be \u201cdefeated.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n 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\u00a0and some progressive. Religious traditions are flexible. They change over time and can be used by different groups to support such varied\u00a0positions as women\u2019s equality and female submission.\u00a0This is how religious traditions\u00a0work. Religious believers\u2014whether liberal or conservative\u2014frequently argue that their interpretation\u00a0of their religion is the only correct one.\u00a0This appears to be what the Muslim Students Association is doing in its statement.<\/p>\n Regardless, statements like these are\u00a0much needed. Most Muslims across the globe do not support terrorism\u00a0and\u00a0want friendly relations\u2014not war\u2014with the West. Hirsi Ali\u2019s talk at Yale is titled \u201cClash of Civilizations: Islam and the West.\u201d This is highly misleading and promotes and furthers current\u00a0misunderstandings. This is the central problem with Hirsi Ali\u2019s current efforts. Her activism for women\u2019s rights is important, yes, and that is where she started, but today she pays little attention to Muslim\u00a0feminists working toward women\u2019s rights within their religious tradition<\/a> and sees Islam, rather than patriarchy, as the problem and the enemy to be defeated.<\/p>\n Hirsi Ali had this to say in the 2007 Reason interview<\/a>:<\/p>\n Hirsi Ali:<\/strong> There is no moderate Islam. There are Muslims who are\u00a0passive<\/em>, who don\u2019t all follow the rules of Islam, but there\u2019s really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There\u2019s nothing moderate about it.<\/p>\n Reason:<\/strong> So when even a hard-line critic of Islam such as Daniel Pipes says, \u201cRadical Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution,\u201d he\u2019s wrong?<\/p>\n Hirsi Ali:<\/strong> He\u2019s wrong. Sorry about that.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n 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\u2019ve 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\u2019ve explained many times here before<\/a>, that\u2019s wrong<\/a>\u2014and it also means\u00a0joining forces\u00a0with fundamentalist Christians<\/em>\u00a0to 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\u2019ve written about<\/a> this before too<\/a>.<\/p>\n When writing about Hirsi Ali last spring<\/a>, 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\u2019s Muslims.<\/p>\n According to the FBI, American Jews and Muslims are disproportionately<\/a> more likely than atheists to become the victims of hate crimes. In the last thirty days, shots have been fired at mosques in two<\/a>\u00a0states<\/a>, an imam with no criminal record was forcibly removed<\/a> from a flight, a Muslim community center in Montreal was vandalized<\/a> with an axe that read \u201cwe will scalp Muslims,\u201d and in New York City<\/a> 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n We need to avoid bigotry and prejudice. We need to be able to call out Christians who call for war against Islam and<\/em> atheists who declare that Islam and the West are locked in a \u201cclash of civilizations.\u201d 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.?<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t about not wanting to offend people. It also isn\u2019t about being willing to ignore reality to avoid fomenting genocide against the world\u2019s Muslims. It\u2019s also about being accurate<\/em>. Too often it seems like atheists are ready\u00a0to jump to use any\u00a0argument\u00a0they can find\u00a0against 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,\u00a0understanding things\u00a0like socio-political context, history, or even the present appears to be\u00a0unimportant. There is nothing about this that aligns with \u201creason\u201d or \u201cirrationality.\u201d It smacks more of laziness, ignorance, and even\u2014yes\u2014bigotry.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2019ll defend Hirsi Ali\u2019s right to speak, but I\u2019ll also defend her criticism of Islam as a divisive and often hateful religion, one that is, perhaps, the world\u2019s most dangerous faith.” Hirsi Ali and Coyne are far from the only well-known atheists to says such things. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[445],"class_list":["post-23331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","tag-islam"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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