Hiero
30th June 2012, 06:39
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/06/sam-harris-uncovered.html
The Devil sucks in the most devout. In theology fanatics make for easier marks for conversion than moderates because of the jitters and fright common to all such breeds who fear their minds will be colonised by the Satanic advance of the secular world. I’m a living testament to the perils of monkeying with fundamentalism. Years ago, long before God outgrew his diapers, I was a devout Muslim who took shelter in the sanctum of the mosque from the sweet offerings of the land because frequenting the bars and clubs of town threatened to rob my faith. The laidback Muslim, conversely, has no fear that downing a bottle of whiskey will corrupt his deathless soul provided he affirms the elemental doctrines of Islam; but it was my unhappy fate to be drawn into the clericalism of the Salafi crowd among whom I studied and got my Islamic training.
I soon found that my literalism contained the seeds of its own euthanasia for if the Quran was the literal and immovable word of Allah, then I would be a good sight happier sweating in the warmer climes of hell.
By the time I got round to reading Sam Harris then I was fairly acquainted with the atheist canon tenanted by thinkers like Russell, Mencken, Ingersoll and other torchbearers of reason who had reconfigured my synaptic wiring to banish any supernaturalism. And I was keen to add Harris to this proud tradition of God slayers. Happily, it was an easy task getting to like Sam: His prose style is readable with a gift for the bon mot, vital traits of the intellectual worthy.
Any review of Sam Harris and his work is a review essentially of politics. And from there I will begin my examination of his thought and work my way back to the question of religion for which he is better known. Harris gave a revealing interview recently to Tablet (http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/100757/qa-sam-harris/5) that best sums up the key themes of his political writing on the Middle East, Israel and the Western relation to Muslims :
“The Israelis are confronting people who will blow themselves up to kill the maximum number of noncombatants and will even use their own children as human shields. They’ll launch their missiles from the edge of a hospital or school so that any retaliation will produce the maximum number of innocent casualties. And they do all this secure in the knowledge that their opponents are genuinely worried about killing innocent people. It’s the most cynical thing imaginable. And yet within the moral discourse of the liberal West, the Israeli side looks like it’s the most egregiously insensitive to the cost of the conflict.”
It’s a claim recycled from his book The End of Faith (http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Faith-Religion-Terror/dp/0393327655) (2005), in which he maintains that Israel upholds the human rights of Palestinians to a high standard. His source? Alan Dershowitz. The spirit of the Zionist law attorney infuses a book in which he is approvingly quoted and in which he provides the basis for Harris’s ticking time bomb defence of torture. It’s not for nothing Dershowitz blurbs the book. But is it true as Harris gushes that Israel’s moral capital lies in the fact “They’re still worried about killing the children of their enemies”?
I think this is a revealing criticism of new-Atheism's right wing tendencies and its atheistic morals as a cover for neo-conservatism, imperialism and Zionism. Zayeed only looks at Harris and one publication, but do people find this as common in the works of Dawkins, Hitchens and other new atheist approaches to politics?
Also take a look at this clip of Sam Harris:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww
I am not too concerned about universal morals (which usually fall apart on their own contradictions when faced with world ethnographies), I get more frustrated at some basic flaws of his argument. For one he talks about how "we" are going to treat women, Women are removed from the solution, they are victims who can do better in another system if "we" choose to intervene and create rational political systems. The treatment of women are the measurement of mans (an here male) moral progression.
When Harris brings up the case of how in Afghanistan the Taliban would throw battery acid into the faces of girls who went to school, he provides zero context. He doesn't place this into a time period, or clearly conveys who the victim and perpetrator are. We are simply lead to believe that they "Muslims" do this to girls because they are morally wrong. It places the girl into absolute and collective victim and male Muslims as collective perpetrators, "they treat their women wrong". The solution is a radical change in their political system to a rationalist and liberal politics.
He does not explore nor provide any background for throwing battery acid in girl’s faces (or any specific examples but let’s ignore that for now). For one the Taliban in their time of power were a theocratic dictatorship who engaged in state terrorism to maintain power. It was "they" the Taliban who throw acid into girls faces to create a terror in the populace, their intended victim is not just girls, but the mothers and fathers who may have chosen to secretly send their girls to school. Harris however purposefully misleads the audience to believe that Afghani Muslim men we supporting and participating in the restriction of "their" women’s access to schooling and education; and that they condone of punishing women by throwing battery acid in their faces. For Harris, this is indicative of their lack of love for their daughters (he actually says this in the later part of the clip and imagines a science that could read people’s brains to determine if they actually do love; he states that “culture effects the brain”, a mix of pseudo science with pseudo sociology and anthropology). Again we are led to believe that the fathers of the female victims of Taliban state terror did not feel or mourn for their daughters, and that they lack the capability because they are Muslims (remember culture changes the brain), and Islam is specifically more morally flawed then other religions or political ideologies.
This example is clear how deceitful Sam Harris really is. He misleads the audience with an easy question “Is it morally wrong to throw battery acid into a young girls face for attending a school” The obvious answer is “yes, this is a universal wrong”. And it is wrong, and Afghani Muslims think it is wrong too, that is why Fathers and mothers were sending their daughters to school in secret, they did not want the Taliban to catch them. But Harris talking to a predominantly western and white audience does not mention or talk about the Muslims and Afghani resistance and opposition to patriarchal Islam and the Taliban.
I find Harris (I am not sure of the other prominent new-Atheists) worrying in the fact he is revitalising enlightenment ideas in a neo-con and Zionist frame work. For Harris Islam is so backward that the Orient lacks the ability that the Occident possessed and created during its move out of religious fundamentalism. What the Orient lacks is the freedom to develop resistance to religious regimes, it is for too long been under the influence of backward ideas (to the point it has changed their brain) that unlike the Occident who overthrow their religious fetters during the Bourgeois revolutions of Europe, the Orient needs the Occident’s intervention to overthrow religious fundamentalism. Harris purposeful omits the history of secular movements in places like the Middle East and Muslim conflicts over political control that occur in the contexts of ethnic conflict and the wider imperialist wars. But that is the easiest way to justify and enforce a universalist moral framework, simple omit all the complexities that cause problems for thoose universal morals.
The Devil sucks in the most devout. In theology fanatics make for easier marks for conversion than moderates because of the jitters and fright common to all such breeds who fear their minds will be colonised by the Satanic advance of the secular world. I’m a living testament to the perils of monkeying with fundamentalism. Years ago, long before God outgrew his diapers, I was a devout Muslim who took shelter in the sanctum of the mosque from the sweet offerings of the land because frequenting the bars and clubs of town threatened to rob my faith. The laidback Muslim, conversely, has no fear that downing a bottle of whiskey will corrupt his deathless soul provided he affirms the elemental doctrines of Islam; but it was my unhappy fate to be drawn into the clericalism of the Salafi crowd among whom I studied and got my Islamic training.
I soon found that my literalism contained the seeds of its own euthanasia for if the Quran was the literal and immovable word of Allah, then I would be a good sight happier sweating in the warmer climes of hell.
By the time I got round to reading Sam Harris then I was fairly acquainted with the atheist canon tenanted by thinkers like Russell, Mencken, Ingersoll and other torchbearers of reason who had reconfigured my synaptic wiring to banish any supernaturalism. And I was keen to add Harris to this proud tradition of God slayers. Happily, it was an easy task getting to like Sam: His prose style is readable with a gift for the bon mot, vital traits of the intellectual worthy.
Any review of Sam Harris and his work is a review essentially of politics. And from there I will begin my examination of his thought and work my way back to the question of religion for which he is better known. Harris gave a revealing interview recently to Tablet (http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/100757/qa-sam-harris/5) that best sums up the key themes of his political writing on the Middle East, Israel and the Western relation to Muslims :
“The Israelis are confronting people who will blow themselves up to kill the maximum number of noncombatants and will even use their own children as human shields. They’ll launch their missiles from the edge of a hospital or school so that any retaliation will produce the maximum number of innocent casualties. And they do all this secure in the knowledge that their opponents are genuinely worried about killing innocent people. It’s the most cynical thing imaginable. And yet within the moral discourse of the liberal West, the Israeli side looks like it’s the most egregiously insensitive to the cost of the conflict.”
It’s a claim recycled from his book The End of Faith (http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Faith-Religion-Terror/dp/0393327655) (2005), in which he maintains that Israel upholds the human rights of Palestinians to a high standard. His source? Alan Dershowitz. The spirit of the Zionist law attorney infuses a book in which he is approvingly quoted and in which he provides the basis for Harris’s ticking time bomb defence of torture. It’s not for nothing Dershowitz blurbs the book. But is it true as Harris gushes that Israel’s moral capital lies in the fact “They’re still worried about killing the children of their enemies”?
I think this is a revealing criticism of new-Atheism's right wing tendencies and its atheistic morals as a cover for neo-conservatism, imperialism and Zionism. Zayeed only looks at Harris and one publication, but do people find this as common in the works of Dawkins, Hitchens and other new atheist approaches to politics?
Also take a look at this clip of Sam Harris:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww
I am not too concerned about universal morals (which usually fall apart on their own contradictions when faced with world ethnographies), I get more frustrated at some basic flaws of his argument. For one he talks about how "we" are going to treat women, Women are removed from the solution, they are victims who can do better in another system if "we" choose to intervene and create rational political systems. The treatment of women are the measurement of mans (an here male) moral progression.
When Harris brings up the case of how in Afghanistan the Taliban would throw battery acid into the faces of girls who went to school, he provides zero context. He doesn't place this into a time period, or clearly conveys who the victim and perpetrator are. We are simply lead to believe that they "Muslims" do this to girls because they are morally wrong. It places the girl into absolute and collective victim and male Muslims as collective perpetrators, "they treat their women wrong". The solution is a radical change in their political system to a rationalist and liberal politics.
He does not explore nor provide any background for throwing battery acid in girl’s faces (or any specific examples but let’s ignore that for now). For one the Taliban in their time of power were a theocratic dictatorship who engaged in state terrorism to maintain power. It was "they" the Taliban who throw acid into girls faces to create a terror in the populace, their intended victim is not just girls, but the mothers and fathers who may have chosen to secretly send their girls to school. Harris however purposefully misleads the audience to believe that Afghani Muslim men we supporting and participating in the restriction of "their" women’s access to schooling and education; and that they condone of punishing women by throwing battery acid in their faces. For Harris, this is indicative of their lack of love for their daughters (he actually says this in the later part of the clip and imagines a science that could read people’s brains to determine if they actually do love; he states that “culture effects the brain”, a mix of pseudo science with pseudo sociology and anthropology). Again we are led to believe that the fathers of the female victims of Taliban state terror did not feel or mourn for their daughters, and that they lack the capability because they are Muslims (remember culture changes the brain), and Islam is specifically more morally flawed then other religions or political ideologies.
This example is clear how deceitful Sam Harris really is. He misleads the audience with an easy question “Is it morally wrong to throw battery acid into a young girls face for attending a school” The obvious answer is “yes, this is a universal wrong”. And it is wrong, and Afghani Muslims think it is wrong too, that is why Fathers and mothers were sending their daughters to school in secret, they did not want the Taliban to catch them. But Harris talking to a predominantly western and white audience does not mention or talk about the Muslims and Afghani resistance and opposition to patriarchal Islam and the Taliban.
I find Harris (I am not sure of the other prominent new-Atheists) worrying in the fact he is revitalising enlightenment ideas in a neo-con and Zionist frame work. For Harris Islam is so backward that the Orient lacks the ability that the Occident possessed and created during its move out of religious fundamentalism. What the Orient lacks is the freedom to develop resistance to religious regimes, it is for too long been under the influence of backward ideas (to the point it has changed their brain) that unlike the Occident who overthrow their religious fetters during the Bourgeois revolutions of Europe, the Orient needs the Occident’s intervention to overthrow religious fundamentalism. Harris purposeful omits the history of secular movements in places like the Middle East and Muslim conflicts over political control that occur in the contexts of ethnic conflict and the wider imperialist wars. But that is the easiest way to justify and enforce a universalist moral framework, simple omit all the complexities that cause problems for thoose universal morals.