Has the reader heard these names in the ongoing campaign in the West against Islam: Nathan Lean, Murtaza Hussain, Glenn Greenwald, and Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris? Lean, Hussain, and Greenwald are intellectuals, writers, and political commentators. On major news websites, the trio has been attacking Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris – three atheists who renounce the three monotheistic religions, but who seem to be particularly focusing their attacks on Islam. Since Hitchens died in late 2011, I will only write about him briefly. Hitchens started out as a leftist, and ended up in the ranks of the neo-conservatives, endorsed the Iraq war, and maintained a friendship with Ahmad Chalabi. This article is about Islam and not Muslims. Hitchens expressed some appalling statements about a religion he did not know much about. His view was that Islam was unable to renew itself and was averse to reforms. But one thing that may vouch for Hitchens is that he attacked the occupation of Palestinian land and criticized Zionism. Dawkins is perhaps the most renowned of the atheists. He is a university professor at Oxford, and the author of the God Delusion, which I read and referenced in this column, and which focuses on the Old Testament and its inverted logic and fabricates stories. If Dawkins limited himself to the Old Testament, he would have been talking about something he is indeed knowledgeable in. But he exposed himself when he said, “Haven't read Koran so couldn't quote chapter and verse like I can for Bible. But [I] often say Islam [is the] greatest force for evil today." But how did he know that Islam is a force for evil when he said in the same sentence that he did not know it? He has only proven that he is a bigoted racist who lacks the academic reasoning that is supposed to be his forte. The best to respond to the atheists was Greenwald, a prominent US journalist who writes in the liberal-leaning The Guardian. He said that the New Atheists were spouting and promoting Islamophobia under the guise of rational atheism, even if they denied this. While Greenwald stopped short of calling them racists, I do not. I had from the beginning decided to focus on Harris because he is the most despicable of the three atheists, based on Greenwald's information. Harris was born to a Jewish mother and a father who was a Quaker, a peaceful Protestant denomination. This means that Harris is a Jew according Jewish law. Furthermore, in his attacks on Islam, he always expresses a racist Likudnik attitude, and speaks of a war between the civilized world and millions of Muslims. Harris once said, “We are not at war with terrorism. We are at war with Islam" – and I interpret ‘we' here to mean the Likudniks of Israel. Harris even voiced his support for torturing detainees to extract confessions, and believes that Israel, a neo-Nazi racist occupation power, is morally superior to its Muslim enemies. Harris also supported the war on Iraq and Israeli aggression on and occupation of Palestinian lands. Harris has the same sense of shameless insolence as the government of Israel. Harris complained that the Muslims refuse for non-Muslims to topple tyrants and occupy Muslim land, no matter how ‘good' the intentions of the infidels are, while devout Muslims, as he said, support other Muslims automatically no matter how bad their behavior is. I don't know where to start. There never are good intentions, but only occupation and neocolonialism. In its latest wars, without going back all the way to the Crusades, the West killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims, and the victims of terrorism do not amount to even one percent of that. Harris supports Israel's occupation of Palestine and the deliberate policies of displacing and killing Palestinians and settling in their land. I thus accuse him of being an accomplice in Israel's crimes. Hitchens died and God will hold him accountable. Dawkins exposed himself and admitted to his ignorance. And Harris is the worst of the bunch, being an advocate of Israeli occupation who exploits atheism to attack Islam. This is despite the fact that his mother's Jewish faith is the worst in the world, given the accounts of genocide, prostitution, stoning, burning, and racism contained in its scriptures. It remains for Muslims to stand up to defend their faith, instead of leaving it to fair-minded Western writers. [email protected]
