Islamophobia in context of the broader assault on religion

Although most Muslims are understandably concerned with hatred and fear directed towards Muslims which has been studied in books like as Islamophobia: Making the Muslims the Enemy, it just recently occurred to me (and I will admit that sometimes it takes me a very long time to realize the obvious) to put Islamophobia ("anxiety of Islam") in the context of the broader assault on religion all together.

Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith & Letter to a Christian Nation, Richard Dawkins author of The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything are probably the biggest names (and best-selling authors) of this phenomenon.

By placing Islamophobia in context of the broader assault on religion in general, the over-glorification and even idolization of reason and science into a utopic belief system where religious beliefs and those who believe in them including Muslims are all seen as impediments and threats becomes clearer.

About "the new atheists, who attack a repugnant version of religion, [but] use it to condemn all religion," (p. 33) Chris Hedges in I don’t believe in Atheists writes:

"The agenda of the new atheists, however, is disturbing. These atheists embrace a belief system as intolerant, chauvinistic, and bigoted as that of religious fundamentalists. They propose a route to collective salvation and the moral advancement of the human species through science and reason. The utopian dream of a perfect society and a perfect human being, the idea that we are moving toward collective salvation, is one of the most dangerous legacies of the Christian faith and the Enlightenment. All too often throughout history, those who believed in the possibility of this perfection (variously defined) have called for the silencing or eradication of human beings who are impediments to human progress. They turn their particular notion of the good into an inflexible standard of universal good. They prove blind to their own corruption and capacity for evil. They soon commit evil not for evil's sake but to make a better world." (pg. 1-2)

Hedges writes that "the new-atheist attack on absurd forms of religion is also used to avoid confronting the core and most important issues taken up religious thought." (p. 100-101) Indeed, instead they

"offer an escape from moral responsibility and civic engagement. They express the dreams the dreams and desires of a morally stunted middle class. They promote, under a scientific veneer, the selfish lusts of the consumer society and the deadening provincialism of the petite bourgeoisie. Dawkins, in an example of this pedestrian vision, draws up his own list of commandments to replace the Biblical injunctions. He advises people to enjoy their sex lives as long as they don't harm anyone else. He calls on parents not to indoctrinate their children but to evaluate evidence. His are hollow, liberal platitudes that casually deny the seductive lusts of violence, evil and abuse - lusts that the biblical writers who wrote the commandments understood and feared. These atheists are suburban mutations. They are products of a moral and political landscape corrupted by too much television, rampant waste, unchecked self-indulgence, wealth, too little contemplation, the physical destruction of community and a loss of the sacred. They tell us we are good. They tell us we will get better. And they warn us not to get in the way of progress." (p. 86-87)

And among those who get in the way are Muslims:

In The End of Faith, Harris, in passages that could be lifted from a sermon by a Christian fundamentalists, calls for a nuclear first strike against the Islamic world. He defends torture as a logical form of interrogation. He, like all utopians, has reduced millions of human beings and culture he knows nothing about to primitive impediments to his vision of a better world...Harris again reduces a fifth of the world's population to a vast, primitive enemy. He argues that we may have to murder "tens of millions of people in a single day." His bigotry, and the bigotry of all who dehumanizes others, is used to justify indiscriminate slaughter and atrocity. The people to be killed, we are told, are not distinct individuals. They do not have hopes and aspirations. They only appear human. They must be destroyed because of what they represent, what lurks beneath the surface of their human form. This dehumanization, especially by those who live in a society with the technological capacity to carry out acts of massive slaughter, is terrifying."-pg. 36-37.

I haven't read Bruce Bawer's new book (2009) Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom (but unfortunately had to see it on display at Barnes and Nobles) - I wonder whether it would fit into this same utopic over-simplifying thinking of the new atheists...Paul Barrett, author of American Islam has a review in last Sunday's Washington Post which you can read here.

E-baad-e News