Home Deliberation New atheism as the new Islamophobia industry

New atheism as the new Islamophobia industry

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“Dear Islam! If you want to fulfill your arrogant boast that you will rule the world, you might start by learning some science. You will need it,” tweeted ‘New Atheist’ Richards Dawkins on December 17,2O15. Well Dawkins may bank decrees like these on any untraced “Gene Morale “to justify his political morality!  What it really reveals is Prof Dawkins’s ignorance about science-driven, multi-cultural Islamic civilization that used to exist in the medieval times before it headed towards a gradual decline. The same Dawkins who said “Well the God of Quran I don’t know so much about” to Mehdi Hassan on Al Jazeera’s show ‘Head to Head’, today comes up with a claim that caters to the neo-imperialistic agenda, aids Islamophobia &  thrives on scientific supremacism. So, who is Richard Dawkins? What is this “New Atheism” about?

Known for his bestsellers ‘God Delusion’ and ‘Selfish Gene’, evolutionary biologist Clinton Richard Dawkins was the former professor for Public Understanding of Science at University of Oxford. Notorious for making obnoxious declarations, Dawkins is one of the faces of ‘New Atheist’ movement.

First used by Wired magazine in 2006, the phrase “New Atheism” or “Positivism Redux” is a social and political movement. It states that only statements capable of being testified by sense experiment are true. Thus, a statement can hold true only if it passes empirical tests. Science, logic or pure mathematics are the only “meaningful” fields. Metaphysics, aesthetics, religion or ethics are meaningless for they couldn’t be verified under a microscope(empirical method).

The lexicon definition of Empiricism is “pursuit of knowledge purely through experience and observation or experimentation”. Any unobserved fact beyond the realm of Empiricism is manifestly taken as false analogy. This leads us to the “Paradox of Empiricism” because life, consciousness, thought and the self are well-established realities. No collider or electron microscope of any lab has any justifications for them. When Dawkins in the International Atheist Conference Dublin (Ireland) was asked, “What about the philosophy of science (way we reach to certain conclusion from a particular experiment)?” He replied readily “Just do the Science.” Empiricism has serious flaws when it comes to logical conclusions. Its outcomes can’t go beyond observational facts and it has no say on axiomatic truths like moral or ethical truths, mathematical and logical truths, causality or deductive logic.

Alice Calaprice in her book “The Quotable Einstein” quotes Einstein, “I’m not a Positivist. Positivist states that what can’t be observed doesn’t exist. This conception is scientifically indefensible, for it’s impossible to make valid affirmations of what people ‘can’ or ‘can’t ‘observe. One would have to say ‘only what we observe exists, ‘which is obviously false.”

Empiricism has serious flaws when it comes to logical conclusions. Its outcomes can’t go beyond observational facts and it has no say on axiomatic truths like moral or ethical truths, mathematical and logical truths, causality or deductive logic.

Empiricism governs via “induction principle”, which in itself is fallible. In the philosophy of science, “Induction” is a specific form of reasoning in which premises of argument supports a conclusion. Inductive arguments are based on “sub set analysis” which is then applied to “full set”. The problem with induction is that it can never produce cent percent certainty about a fact. “Any observation for me can hold different meaning for another observer,” argued 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume in his book, “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.”

For several decades, The Steady State Model of universe which stated that space and time are not created, but have always existed had a great philosophical appeal for many scientists. Bertrand Russell said, “Universe is a brute fact. It has no beginning, no end.” However with the advances in the space science and the discovery of cosmic background heat radiation in 1965, the elegance and simplicity of this theory was shattered. The views Stephen Hawking held on “black holes” two decades ago don’t hold true today. Unlike Quran which is constant, science is in fact constantly evolving and is subjective.  This doesn’t belittle the stature of science, which is one of the great tools to unravel the mysteries of universe. In the Quranic parlance, we call it Taffakur(ponder) and Tajjasus(research).

Belief or disbelief is neither a geopolitical construct nor a postmodern phenomena. Since time immemorial, both have existed with their respective philosophies to deconstruct conundrums hidden in the cosmos. Both have stimulated human intellect, including Empedocles, Socrates, Pluto, Aristotle, Heidegger, and Foucault to Al gazelle, Ibn Tayymiyah & Alama Iqbal. Atheism does it at times by ‘shooting God’ and sometimes under the veil of “secular humanism. Islam does vice versa with the philosophy of Life, Death & Resurrection. Intellectual engagement with the compassionate case should be the epistemological driving force to engage within the both discourses. ‘New Atheists’ who take science as “new Gospel” reveal a troubling tendency when they try to impose it as a “dogmatic belief” with blanket versions and self-righteous arrogance. Things become worse when New Atheists give intellectual cover to the neo imperialism, which breeds injustice & massive Islamophobia in the world.

Late Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris (known for his best seller ‘God is Not Great’) and Richard Dawkins, also called the “unholy trinity”, are the poster boys of New Atheist movement. Through pseudo scientism, farce statistics, and typical sophistry, with some great public outreach via tech savvy media, they have manufactured profitable ventures with their version of sensational Atheism.

Both Hitchens and Harris campaigned for Iraq War to civilize the (un)civilized East by the ‘civilized west’. It was a war grounded on the claims by yellow journalists, political pundits and self-styled geo-strategists that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Five percent of Iraqi population was wiped out. Hundreds of thousands died. Properties worth trillions were plundered, looted and vandalized with no trace of “weapons of mass destruction.” Iraq was burned in invented sectarian tussle and left ruined. A huge political vacuum gave rise to the mess Middle East is in now. Sam Harris believed Iraq invasion was a “humanitarian mission” and justified torture as “ethically necessary”. Hitchens said the neo imperialistic adventure in Iraq would bring about a “world ruled by reason and virtue.”

In the wake of recent Paris attack, Dawkins tweeted, “Veil is not compulsory in Islam. How about removing it now as a gesture of Islamic solidarity with Paris?” While Dawkins may have never flipped any book on Islam or Islamic traditions (which he has already confessed), what is awful is his “conscious naivety” about the geopolitical implications of Paris attack on Muslim world, including anti-immigration laws, brewing Islamophobia and harsher state surveillance.

In another online rant, Dawkins called Islam “the greatest force for evil today” and even equated Quran with Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”

In the name of liberation, dehumanization of brothel is proudly boasted as “Sex Work”. In the name of equality lands are invaded, economies destroyed, cultures ruins and evils manufactured. In the name of economic emancipation, a trap of mirage is laid.

 CJ Werleman author of “Crucifying America” writes in an essay,” Educated, predominantly white, and middle class, New Atheists live comfortably in the well- to- do suburbs of developed nations. They don’t know what’s it’s like to survive on less than $2 per day under a regime that crushes personal liberty and freedom .New Atheists don’t know what’s it’s like to be racially vilified, profiled by security agencies, tortured, bombed, occupied and imprisoned without trial. Nor do they know what it feels like to have absolutely no control over their future. There Utopian dreams gave us scientific racism, the pogroms, Nazi & Communist sterilization programmers and the anti religious slaughters of the 20th century”.

According to Pew Research Think Tank, New Atheism is the second largest growing ideology after Islam, which has intellectual and public appeal. In colleges and universities, New Atheism grows more “out of fashion” than any intellectual gymnasium. To appease masses in their public debates, chat forums and lectures, New Atheists make brouhaha in the beginning with red herrings & clichés & end up mudslinging some ‘theistic rituals’. If their world view is based on the tenants of emancipation of humanity by “killing religion”, then engagement with the competing world view should be philosophical, intellectual and of course empirical, rather than rhetorical.

With Muslim civilization having ditched its political voice for nearly a century, after the fall of the last vestige of Ottoman Caliphate in 1922 followed by gruesome secular atheistic world wars, the pathetic Cold War, disintegration of mighty Soviet Union, failing Christianity and the rise of monopolar hegemonic West along with new cultural appendage, Islam today is back on central stage. Discussed, debated, demonized, mocked, maligned, abhorred, loved, cherished and embraced, this faith is the most talked about faith in the world today.

The time we live in is a great catastrophe. In the name of free speech toddler washed ashore by ‘human constructed ills’is made a laughing stock. . In the name of liberation, dehumanization of brothel is proudly boasted as “Sex Work”. In the name of equality lands are invaded, economies destroyed, cultures ruins and evils manufactured. In the name of economic emancipation, a trap of mirage is laid.

Amidst all this ideological warfare, scaremongering, loathing, demeaning and delegitimization, if Muslims believe they have a “civilizational narrative” that will rescue humanity from the mess it’s trapped in, then they need to come out of the oppressed, wailing, apologist, rhetorical, confrontational and weak narrative. Muslim intelligentsia, think tanks and scholars (ulama) have a great role to play in this by sensing the changing paradigms and challenges posed by “pestilential reformers” within and outside Islam. The phenomenon of ‘New Atheism’ can’t be seen in isolation from a construct that has jeopardized the world in materialistic pursuit by annihilating its spiritual dimensions. This can only be debunked by studying narratives, developing counter narratives and by presenting a healthy and optimistic case for Islam.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Really well written article, I agree with most of the part. These atheists, among which some are scientists, could have done much better if their real focus had been finding out more scientific evidences in their respective areas. Merely, sitting and criticising the religion is not going to help much. But still there is something that I would like to say about the article.

    Of course science does change but towards precision and perfection. From the evidences we only know that the universe was not the same at the earlier time as it is right now. Evidences only confirm that universe was very hot and dense state of matter/radiation having very low entropy state at very beginning. If we extrapolate, only then we can assume that it had the beginning or we don’t know yet actually what happened before that stage. It’s true that there are some unknown dark corners like origin of all physical laws and our consciousness at which science does not throw the light. Hence religious theories can sit at those corners easily. The relevant concern is what happens when religious scripture contradicts with well established Empirical facts produced by the science at many places. Then constant looking religion also changes with the help of some modern scholars. The flat earth changed to ostrich egg like shape within religious scripture. It included black holes, quarks, Higgs bosons etc without changing the text of the scripture only and only after science confirmed their existence. Of course science deals with the empirical facts only as it does not deal with anybody’s fantasies.

    The more relevant question is, Does religion fit in the present modern world? Some religious people (E.g. CII, council of Islamic Ideology) still advocates child marriages as it has been the part of their religious tradition. Can these people be convinced that they are wrong? No way! as their beliefs are not subjected to Empirical facts but to the religious scripture. Does religion protect the democracy, basic human rights and it’s values? The countries which practice religious laws have failed to protect them. Again there is nobody to convince them. The pursuit of religion always try to drag the present world to the same medieval period. No scholar seems to convince the people how it can be fit in present world. If those scholars exist, it is pretty sure that they will be highly criticized by other present scholars.

    Also the term Islamophobia is very relative. Sometimes a person quoting some particular verses( which moderate muslims do not share) from Qur’an is regarded as Islamophobe. People’s declination towards the religion is not by choice but it is just the natural outcome of critical thinking which does not require campaigning done by those mentioned atheists.

  2. Replying to Chetan Verma, Islam and its scriptures have little to contradict with empirical sciences; and Islamic scriptures have very limited fantasy compared to Greek, Biblical or Hindu mythologies. It is well known today that the intellectual works of Muslim scientists and philosophers in the ‘Dark Ages’ were actually the influences behind Renaissance intellectuals like Moses Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, Nicolaus Copernicus, Rene Descartes and probably David Hume. You might also want to learn about some obscure names as Jamaluddin Afghani, Abdus Salam, Ahmed Zewail, Muhammad Yunus and Tawakkul Karman.

    Now, the event that most clearly reveals the deep seated prejudice of Occidental intellectuals against Muslims was the arrest of the ‘clock boy’ Ahmed Mohamed in USA, September 2015. While Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg had posted on Facebook giving assurances to Ahmed and invited him to science events, the scientist intellectual Richard Dawkins became a total right-wing conspiracy theorist.

    Ahmed’s very personality seems to have threatened Dawkins down to his core. African, Black, Muslim, immigrant, teenage schoolboy, Ahmed was everything that Dawkins was not. Dawkins perhaps felt (intellectually and culturally) like King Leonidas from the movie 300, leading the small Greek army against the invading Persian hordes. So, Dawkins tweeted and later emphasised that Ahmed was doing this as a part of an elaborate evil plan, and compared it to ISIS.

    Follow the video in the link: https://youtu.be/DtMEg4vZLY0

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