Richard Dawkins Islamophobia: A Black Muslim Response

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February 15, 2017
by Hakeem Muhammad

Along with Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennet, and Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins is known to be one of the four horsemen of the contemporary neo-atheist movement. Their criticisms of Islam generally evoke secular enlightenment discourse from whence their worldview of secular humanism emerges.

At the core of Dawkins belief is the perception that Islam is archaic and at odds with modernity. Within his writings and public statements, Dawkins seeks to inculcate the viewpoint that Islam is a uniquely violent religion and the foremost impediment to peace.

Neo-atheist discourse often attributes profound social problems in the Muslim world not to colonialism but the failure of the Muslim world to undergo an enlightenment.

Yet, Dawkin’s romanization of the secular enlightenment as a progressive period in history and his discourse which seeks to make a hyperbolic threat of Islam does a profound injustice to Black Muslims. In the article, we will offer a Black Muslim critique of Richard Dawkins.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/truthtopower/2017/02/richard-dawkins-islamophobia-black-muslim-response-pt-1/

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1. Recommended.

Dawkins is not as brutally Islamophobic as Pamela Geller, but he differs only slightly.

This, from the article says it quite well:

In his assessment of the world’s greatest evils, Dawkins ignores the violence perpetuated in the name of theories solidified by the European enlightenment.  Dawkins does this in order to promote the notion that it is those Muslim boogeymen who are seeking to impose their will.

Non-theists who attempt to frame religious belief as uniquely evil, or uniquely responsible for evil, prove nothing but the fact that non-theists can be just as narrow minded as the worst of the theists whom they despise.