2008-08-25 Neo-conservative apology

As an atheist, I was drawn to this book through the endorsement of Richard Dawkins - an endorsement I find baffling. As a number of reviewers have noted this book does not remotely deserve to be bracketed with The God Delusion and other sober critiques of religious faith.

The biggest clues to Harris' agenda are revealed by the 'authorities' he invokes to buttress his opinions: the discredited pro-Israeli 'scholar' Daniel Goldhagen; the tub-thumping neo-conservative Thomas Friedman; the Zionist Alan Dershovitz (a man demonstrably shown to have manipulated historical sources in constructing a fervent defence of Israel), and Samauel Huttington.

It is not suprising given these bed-fellows that Harris allows himself to entertain the most bellicose, 'intolerant', indeed genocidal excursions in order to deal with the 'menance' of Islam. This includes - I kid you not - a pre-emptive nuclear strike against an un-named Islamic country with designs on the bomb. (Iran, presumably).
Neither is it surprising that Harris rejects outright ANY attempt to explain the rise of political Islam by reference to political factors - such as Western imperialism, the illegal war on Iraq and the West's uncritical support for Israel. (At the same time Israel is commended for its uniquely high moral standards and remarkable restraint. Harris also brushes over Bush and Blair's disastrous attempt to re-make the Middle East by casually noting "our (sic) adventures in Iraq".)

Leaving his ideological agenda aside the work is just plain badly written. It is FULL of non-sequiturs. One notable one is his insistence that we should understand Islam through scripture alone as this unambigiuously reveals its pernicious nature. This is quickly followed by a dismissal of more benign and contradictory passages in the Koran as they offer no guide to the actual practice of Islam by Muslim governments. An under-graduate essay would be rightly pulled up for this fundamental lack of internal consistency - and disingenuity.

There ARE legitimate questions to be raised about the compatability of Islam with liberal-democratic values. Given the all-encompassing nature of Islam as a mode of living, and its prescriptive character with respect to matters such as jurisprudence, it is evidently right to ask questions of liberals who would rather avoid thorny debates in the name of 'tolerance'. However, this is not a book which attempts to address such questions with any sophistication. Instead, we are offered a polemic which completely fails to engage with the complexities of the modern world and the inter-play of religious ideology and politics.