The Radicals of the Religion of the “New Atheism”

The Radicals of the Religion of the “New Atheism”

As a devout Muslim, I have always been one of the strongest critics of radicalism implemented in the name of Islam. I have described, without fear and at every opportunity, using all available means, the harm that fundamentalism does to the Islamic world and the outdated, dark, low-quality and dangerous mentality of fundamentalists. In criticizing radical Islamists, I have also never neglected to state that radicalism is not only a problem of the Islamic world, but also one for Judaism, Christianity, Marxism, communism and even atheism.

One group who refer to themselves as New Atheists are typical representatives of the radical atheists I have been describing for some time. The views of the New Atheism represented of late by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the recently deceased Christopher Hitchens have even been criticized by well-known leftists; the reason is because it differs little from the radical Islamists it opposes in its use of defamatory language. They may not be blowing up restaurants and bus stations, but the toxicity of the ideas they espouse are no less dangerous.

You may not support an idea but if you can come together with the supporters of an opposing idea in mutual respect, if you can listen to them and build friendships despite your differences, than that is democracy. However, if you cannot oppose an idea with your own ideology and you start hurling insults to campaign against it instead, then that is extremism. That is the position of those people whose anti-Islamic statements have assumed the dimensions of insults and who accuse Islam of being the sole problem facing the world. These people do not have a slightest idea of what they advocate; all they know is what they do not advocate. They are generally unable to produce any idea against what they criticize, nor do they propose any alternatives or solutions to it. They are simply “anti.” All that fanaticism – and therefore fanatics – has is insults and pressure. In other words, they are the fanatics of the religion of atheism.

The main problem that Richard Dawkins, one of the fiercest proponents of the theory of evolution, has with Islam is the voices that have recently begun being raised against the theory of evolution from within the Islamic world. It is the fact that the scientific evidence works against the theory of evolution and that this evidence is being expressed much more powerfully by the Muslim community that points to fossils dating back millions of years rather than by those who believe that natural history goes back only 6,000 years and who have therefore been defeated. The powerful voices against the theory of evolution from the Muslim world have meant that Dawkins has concentrated solely on the Islamic world. Dawkins found Sam Harris’ method to be highly effective and used it: “You have to shout insults in a loud voice to silence them!” Despite having no knowledge of Islam at all, he began using insults as a weapon and initiated a campaign against Muslims, who had torn down his own ideology.

You would be wrong to think that Sam Harris himself knows anything about Islam. He uses the same method as every classic radical atheist and cites verses specially revealed to Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) “for a single war” as supposed evidence for the presence of violence in Islam. He is totally unaware that peace and brotherhood stand at the heart of the Qur’an, that until those verses were revealed our Prophet (pbuh) made no reaction to the terrible persecution inflicted by the pagans, merely migrating and moving away, and that after the revelation of those verses he only engaged in defensive warfare to protect his own people.

The problem of radical Islamists is ignorance. In the same way they are ignorant of the Islam in the Qur’an, so they are unaware of the vast world outside their own ghettoes. You may think that matters are different when it comes to the new atheists, but not so.  They know nothing about the true Islam in the Qur’an. I think that these words of Dawkins are enough to make this clear: “Of course you can have an opinion about Islam without having read the Qur’an. You don’t have to read ‘Mein Kampf’ to have an opinion about Nazism.” It seems that Dawkins is unaware that Nazism is a perverse ideology and that Islam is a religion.

If someone regards as Islam this violent modern movement that spreads terror across the world, that sends suicide bombers out to kill themselves and innocent people and regards murdering Christians and Jews as jihad, then that person needs to understand the Qur’an because only then can he grasp that the concept he criticizes is not Islam but rather the violent radical mindset. However, if he feels no need to know what the concept he criticizes really is, then this is also nothing other than radicalism.

Defamation is a facile and vulgar means of disputation. When there is no more chance of opposition by way of science, logic, respect and democracy, when defeat is inevitable, then the last refuge is to resort to insults. That is why the radicals of the religion of atheism employ this technique. Their aim is to stir things up, rather than to find a solution to problems in the world, to relieve suffering and to make the world a place of peace. Muslims who wish to build peace clearly have to do this in the face of radicals of all kinds, both internal and external.  They must create a climate of love despite all those who try to destroy their work. Yet the peace built in the face of all this will be a real and lasting peace because good outcomes require hard work and Allah loves the results of hard work. In striving to educate radical Islamists with the special language of peace, we must not forget that we can bring other radicals to the true path in the same way.