Harris and Hitchens on the NYC Mosque

See we should discuss each others views. Not each others rights to build and promote our views.

I’m not in a good position to judge if Hitchens’s characterization of Rauf is sensible, but at least both of them have the discussion on roughly the right level.

We do not have to deny, in fact we shouldn’t deny people’s rights, to have a different perspective.

Tolerance is a huge issue. I really would love to see more discussion of the notion of tolerance. To my Hitchens discussion of tolerance is too brief.

But as Popper argued, tolerance is not to tolerate intolerance. The tricky part is to identify when something is intolerant.

I’m having a hard time understanding people who oppose it.

Here ya go:

http://onestdv.blogspot.com/2010/08/clarifications-on-ground-zero-mosque.html

There’s Already a Mosque at Site of Terrorist Attack
by Ed Brayton

Did you know that there is already a mosque, built with the help and operated with the endorsement of the American government, less than 100 feet from the site of an attack on 9/11 that killed 184 Americans? In fact, it was built literally on the smoldering grounds of the attack and the altar in the mosque contains symbols of all of the victims of that day’s attack.

Talk about deliberately putting a symbol of Muslim triumph over America on hallowed ground! Every day, hundreds of Muslims gather there to say their daily prayers literally in the shadow of Ground Zero for the attack, a clear and obvious slap in the face to the families of those victims of Islamic violence. Right? Wrong. It’s in the Pentagon. And no one seems to be making a peep about it.

It isn’t a MOSQUE! It is a *rec center with a prayer room*. That is the most ridiculous part of this ordeal in my opinion.

And atheists should take note on how quickly and efficiently the media will enable a group of ignorant Christians to call out a disliked group outside of their religion and attempt to restrict their Constitutional freedoms.

Harris: This is not true of Islam, and there is simply no honest way of denying this shocking disparity.

Harris needs to improve his rhetoric. He does here what he did twice in his commentary on the Park51 project itself: he implies that anyone who disagrees with him is dishonest. This is insulting and immediately distances any reader who might disagree with him. It is also offputting to anyone who might tend to agree with him on the issues but recognizes the signs of rampant demagoguery.

Sam Harris: don’t be a dick.

Reginald Selkirk,

What is the penalty for apostasy in Islam?

Hence, we do not tend to see vast numbers of Jews and Christians calling for the murder of apostates today. This is not true of Islam

Really? The world muslum population is about 1.8 billion. Do we really observe a vast number of them calling for the murder of apostates? Where’s the reasearch? Where’s the data? Or is that an assumption based on the prevalance of terrorism “reporting” from the main stream media?

Harris is right about a big problem with Islam — there are not enough moderate Muslims speaking out against the extremists

How is this any different from there not being enough moderate Christians speaking out against Christian extremists (as we have often complained about in comments at FA)? I am not saying that this is not a problem, simply that it is not restricted only to Islam.

Islamic preaching very often manifests precisely this feature, which is why suspicion of it is by no means irrational.

Again, show me the data, or go home. Define “often.” If you can prove that even 50% of all Islamic preaching is calling for my death, I’ll start to worry about Islam. Until then, the fear is irrational.

So am assuming none of the people who are against this “mosque” would be opposed to no longer letting catholic churches be built within 2miles of any type of schooling/playground/park area because that would be a. insult/slap in the face to all the victims of child molestation and there families …… we have to do it for the children …..right?

@WishinItWas:

So am assuming none of the people who are against this “mosque” would be opposed to no longer letting catholic churches be built within 2miles of any type of schooling/playground/park area because that would be a. insult/slap in the face to all the victims of child molestation and there families …… we have to do it for the children …..right?

Great point.

Tamara, I’m with you. Whoever heard of a mosque with a cooking school and a basketball court?

But what bothers me the most is that even the most outspoken progressives are allowing the right-wing nutters to frame how they address Park 51 and still call it a ‘mosque’. And sometimes even still call it Cordoba House even though the name has been changed.

Why are we allowing the haters to tell us that we have to use a ‘fighting word’ in referring to this building when we KNOW that that isn’t the case?

“But what bothers me the most is that even the most outspoken progressives are allowing the right-wing nutters to frame how they address Park 51 and still call it a ‘mosque’”

There are plenty on the left who are opposed to Park 51 (or whatever it is being called today) and I have heard a few (but not many) on the right support it.

What bothers me most are the so-called “progressives” who insist on calling anyone who disagrees with them “right-wing nutters.”

i stopped listening to Hitch and any other atheist who talks mostly or exclusively about Islam, a long time ago. it’s racist propaganda in service to republican hypocrites and warmongerers, and it annoys the hell out of me. people who advocate genocide, racially motivated at that, are not worth my attention nor respect.

if we were to have a truly pro-atheist discussion about what kind of tolerance there would be in the world if atheists ran it, that would be fine. radicals like me would say stuff like “end construction of all houses of worship” and moderates would say stuff like “tax organized religion” and we’d meet in the middle. and be inclusive of all organized superstitions damaging our world and common future. but that’s not what people like this are doing. which is why their arguments aren’t really rational, or logical. therefore, reason tells me that they aren’t in this because they are working to spread atheism in the world, but instead cashing nice paychecks from Halliburton and other big corporations that make profit off a world of endless religious strife.

By contrast, I’ve never heard of any Christian preacher calling for murder of apostates, or any ex-Christian being murdered for apostasy, anytime in the recent past.

that’s because you’re watching too much TV. and the wrong channels at that, i’m sure. take it from me, in the equally hated “lesbian” category: xtians in this country are violent, genocidal, hateful, and murderous. any gay person who is aware of the dangers that come from outside our community understands this. this is not to say queers aren’t hated by other religions, and threatened and murdered by their adherents. but if you think american xtians aren’t murderously violent, you haven’t been paying attention. “god will kill you, faggot!” what, you’ve never seen that sign? you don’t associate that saying with one particularly famous (but far from unique) american xtian church who use those signs and harrass people on or near their own private property? if you’re an atheist, you’re next on their list.

A Mob at Work

Here’s video footage of an anti-mosque rally near Ground Zero, where a dark-skinned man trying to walk through the group is presumed by the emotionally-charged mob to be a Muslim. They crowd around him and begin to act in a clearly threatening manner. The reality? He’s a construction worker who actually works at Ground Zero…

How luck that carpenter is that Islamophobia isn’t real; just think how badly he might have been beaten otherwise.

Quite a few Christian ministers in Uganda are pushing for a law with more severe penalties for homosexual behavior (current law has jail terms). The proposed law would have the death penalty for multiple offenders. They have support from some Christians in the US (though some fairly conservative US Christians have also denounced it).

@Jeff

Had all kinds of points to reply to you with, but people actually expect me to do work… 🙁

A phobia is an irrational fear or dislike. Islamic preaching very often manifests precisely this feature, which is why suspicion of it is by no means irrational.

Yes, and not every action or opinion against a person of color is irrational or based on race, but that doesn’t mean racism doesn’t exist.

I don’t doubt Islamofobia is overused and misused to quelch perfectly rational opposition to aspects of Islam. I could even concede, purely for the sake of argument, that it may be rational to oppose Islam as a whole. However even acceping this you cannot eliminate the obvious, observable fact that there is irrational fear of Islam and Muslims. If Islamofobia doesn’t exist what do you call these people? What do you call this man:

A 21-year-old man is being held without bail on charges he stabbed a New York City cab driver in the throat after asking whether he was Muslim.

Not every fear about Islam or action taken against Muslims is the product of Islamofobia. By the same token, not every fear about Islam and action taken against Muslim is the product of rational concern. Some of it is born out of ignorance, fear and tribal hatred. And it’s these things we call Islamofobia. To argue the term is invalid is to argue that all fears and actions about Islam are fully rational, which iconveniently is contradicted by observable reality.

Palaverer wrote:

I take it, then, that you missed the Godless Monster’s take on the situation here and here.

I think the Godless Monster has some culture-of-origin issues. (As do I, btw.)

chicago dyke wrote:

Again, there’s no modern-day strain of Christianity seeking to enforce Biblical death sentences,

this is so completely not factual it’s hard to know where to begin.

Exactly right. As if centuries, right up to the present day, of western Xtian nations’ invading, colonizing, proselytizing to and converting the populations of, a multitude of foreign lands – because we western Xtian countries have a monopoly on the right way of living in this world, doncha know? – and killing millions of those lands’ people along the way, doesn’t count as the enforcement of Biblical death sentences by extended and heavily rationalized means.

In the murderous country I call home, the distinction between “democratic” and “religiously moral” is almost completely blurred, both by the common yokels and by the rulers who carry out my society’s values, in belief and in practice.

And like you, I’ve lost a lot of respect for these authors, especially Harris, as they’ve made special effort to demonize Islam by pointing out these supposed vast distinctions between the Abrahamic religions. When they do this, they’re a victim of their own cultures’ constantly reinforced biases, blatant and subtle.

Hello??? The US is an aggressive invader of sovereign territories in long, brutal wars for power, control and resources. These wars are currently going on. When a nation makes war, it always propagandizes its citizens, preying on fears and exaggerating them to suit its ends.

Has it occurred to these authors, and to ANY OF these posters here who so willingly rip into Islam and demarcate special characteristics of and requirements for it, that they are refusing to transcend their cultural mindfucks? ISLAM BAAAAAAD. Isn’t that right?

Is it possible for Hemant and the other editors here to go, say, a month without any scare stories about Muslim religiosity, or to at least even up the tally with a deserving balance of Xtian, Jewish, Hindu, etc., horror?

If the reply is, “But I’m just writing about what the hot religious issues are in our culture”, then my reply back is, “Why do you think so many of these issues bubbling to the surface these days emphasize the supposedly special evil of Islam?”

“… While the scriptures of Judaism and Christianity also contain terrible passages, it has been many centuries since they truly informed the mainstream faith. Hence, we do not tend to see vast numbers of Jews and Christians calling for the murder of apostates today. This is not true of Islam, and there is simply no honest way of denying this shocking disparity.”

There are several things here. Despite there being some truth to this statement, most of terribly regressive things being done in the name of Islam (including stonings and beatings) are at the behest of religious leaders who are de facto oppressive dictators in their communities. Most Muslims want a peaceful life, they and they want education for their daughters as well as their sons (Anyone who doubts this should read some of Greg Mortensen’s books about building schools in Pakistan an Afghanistan.)

Even if we allow there is more fundamentalism and extremism in Islam, then the task is not to suppress the religion which will likely make it worse, but try to give it a helping hand into the 21st century.

The US, if it follows its principals of freedom of religion can lead the way here. Freedom of religion means the religion still has to be practiced within the laws of the US. Transposing an old religion into a very modern and free country is going to result in modifications of that religion.

Religions are the creation of people not the other way round. As people and ideas change so do the religions. Even in my lifetime I have seen legal discrimination against people with a different skin color end, and I am seeing now discrimination against gays beginning to end. Most churches in affected areas supported the discrimination against people with more skin pigmentation, they no no longer do. In fact most churches used to support slavery, they now no longer do. Churches are still having a struggle over gays, but in time they will come round.

Islam is no more static than Christianity, it will change in time given the chance. This nonsense against the community center in New York is at least as primitive and nasty as the religion these people oppose. I always thought the US stood for freedom not bigotry.

Given the fact that Muslim extremists are willing to kill anyone who speaks out against them, WHY are you (or the “supremely intelligent” Harris) surprised that there aren’t enough (any?) moderate Muslims speaking out against the extremists?

Hitchens comments about how the “fake term Islamophobia is so dangerous: It insinuates that any reservations about Islam must ipso facto be “phobic”” are remarkably astute. One could say exactly the same thing about the fake term “homophobia”, which insinuates that any reservations about homosexual behavior must ipso facto be “phobic” as well.

As to the usual claim of “Deaths being caused in Africa by the Catholic church’s lies about AIDS and contraception, …”

Stupid.

Even secular sources have stated essentially the same thing as the supposed “lies” of the Catholic Church regarding condoms & the African AIDS stuff.

The claim that the AIDS epidemic had been spread by heterosexual sex was confirmed as an incorrect assumption by researchers David Gisselquist & Stephen Potterat.

A book by Edward Green (with an AIDS Prevention group at Harvard) reported that between 1989-2001, condom use in African countries skyrocketed – but so did the number of those infected with HIV. Was it “due to condom use”? I seriously doubt it, but the increase in condom appears to have done zilch in stemming the epidemic.

At the request of UNAIDS (the UN Program on AIDS), Dr. Norman Hearst of UCSF did a scientific review on the question of whether condom promotion was helping to reverse the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but he found that the countries that saw the greatest increases in condom use tended to have the highest HIV rates.

According to researchers, the biggest culprit seems to be the substandard level of cleanliness & sterilization in African medical care.

On to the misleading (at best) claim of “obstruction of stem cell research.” Christians aren’t opposed to stem cell research, they’re opposed to killing unborn children in order to extract stem cells. Yes, those “150-cell blastocysts with no nervous system”, who can be seen scientifically to be individual, living human beings, regardless of the fact that they aren’t as well developed as you are.

Besides, adult stem cells, which have greater potential than embryonic ones, have already been successfully used in numerous patients, while embryonic stem cells continue to remain in the “still researching possibilities” stage.

Finally, I wouldn’t worry too much about “potential atrocities” that could someday be committed by religious believers, especially since atheistic regimes in the last 100 years have directly killed over 120 MILLION people, dwarfing even the most absurd claims of religious “atrocities”.

Cheers…

I have to get up early so I’ll try to keep this short, but I had a couple comments:

@Chicago Dyke: I thought you had some good points, but one thing kept distracting me. “Muslim” is not a race. I don’t like the term “Islamophobic” much because I think it’s overused, but at least it’s a bit more accurate. People who hate Muslims might also be racist, but those are two separate things. I know all the bigots in my conservative family are purely religious ones, no racism there.

@Chris: I don’t have the time or inclination to argue abortion rights/morality, but you made one very big mistake. Very early embryos can not “be seen scientifically to be individual, living human beings”. The problem word there is “individual.” At the early stages they are a potentially infinite number of twins.

Chris,

Edward Green is basing his extraordinary claim on a small (n = 297) non-randomized controlled trial in Uganda selecting males aged 18-30 for instruction on condom use and coupons for condoms.

As for the claim of “sky rocketing” condom use in Africa, I would really like some data for that. For instance, in Uganda condom ever-use reported by females rose from 1% in 1989 to 6% in 1995 to 16% in 2000 according to Demographic Health Surveys, and that’s not the consistent use that prevents HIV infection. According to James D Shelton and Beverly Johnston who acquired data from the UN and other donors of condoms, in 1995 600m condoms were donated to Africa, in 1998 340m donated, in 1999 500m plus 210m purchased by states in Africa, that’s 724m condoms, 4.6 condoms per man aged 15-59 years, in sub-Saharan African.

Correlation does not equal causation. That condom use increased in countries with the greatest increase in HIV does not mean they’re causally connected, or in the direction the Pope and Edward Green would like to suggest.

UNAIDS, including Dr. Norman Hearst, does not accept David Gisselquist conclusions, and the WHO had a team of experts review the data, and the models came back with the vast majority transmission through heterosexual sex. In any case, their pursuit seems to have been one of anomaly hunting. Catherine Hankins of UNAIDS cited some data counter to Gisselquist’s conclusions, that Asia is estimated to have a needle problem twice as bad as Africa but not the same HIV epidemic, that if HIV was transmitted mostly through injection there would be far greater prevalence of Hep C, and that data from needlestick accidents on medical professionals suggests a 1 in 300 infection rate.

Consistent use of condoms is one very effective measure against the spread of HIV. There have been problems trying to get people in Africa to use them. In many places in Africa that’s thanks to the Roman Catholic Church, other religions, pseudo-scientists, and other forms of pricks. Where Africans are not being told using condoms is evil, they’re being told they actually spread HIV or some other bullshit. At least distributing condoms protects those that want protection.

Scientifically a blastocyst is an individual (the term is organism), is living, and is of the human species. However, it’s a bit of a stretch to call something without a nervous system a “being”. You think these things have minds and a consciousness?

I’m wondering whether theists are ignorant or dishonest when they bring up “atheistic regimes”. As if that has anything to do with motivating the killing of millions. It’s not like there aren’t ample examples of religious regimes willing to kill proportionally and within their technological means. The difference is in many cases they were directly motivated by their religious beliefs, whereas we atheists can safely say what we have in common with those murderers that happen to be atheists is as important as the men that have facial hair in common with them. If you think atheism had anything to do with murderous regimes you don’t even know what atheism is, but perhaps you don’t have enough intelligence to realize how stupid what you write is.

It’s not a mosque. Why are people still calling it a mosque? A mosque is a building that is used for prayer – this is a community centre that will *include* a prayer room. Just because a bunch of right-wingers used the term “mosque” doesn’t mean that we need to adopt their terminology!

In any case, my only real objection to the building is the use of the name “Cordoba.” I do understand what they were trying to reference, but putting a building named after a European city that was conquered by Muslims right next to one of the biggest attack by Muslims onto a Western population just strikes me as being in poor taste. However, they seem to have changed the name now, so I’m good.

My only other possible complaint is that the “artists’ rendering” of the building make it look absolutely hideous. I don’t know if they plan on improving the design at all, but holy crap it’s awful.

If people built a Christian center next to the site of the Oklahoma city federal building, the one that radical christian terrorist timothy mcveigh bombed over a decade ago, would we see the same uprising as we have with the Islamic center? People need to realize that it is the fundamental error of the religious texts that is the root of all of the problems between Arabs, Jews and Christians that has caused this terrorism and divisivness between peoplewouk would, without the cultural taint of their divisive
religion, normally get along.