CHAPTER 8

Finding an Enemy: Islam and the New Atheism

TANER EDIS

Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings. Victor J.
Stenger, the physicist who coined this saying, soon found it being adopted
as a popular slogan among religious nonbelievers. It is available on T-shirts,
stickers, coffee mugs, and more, all conveniently for sale online.
As slogans go, this one is fairly informative. Popular New Atheist writers such as Stenger celebrate natural science as a symbol of what
humans are capable of when they are not restricted by supernatural convictions. They consider theistic religion to be a social evil that must be
vigorously opposed. And one of the most spectacular recent examples of
religiously inspired violence is the attacks of 9/11, in which a band of Muslim men prepared themselves with prayers and expectations of a reward in
an afterlife, then slammed planes into buildings. September 11, the New
Atheists are liable to remark, was a faith-based enterprise.
Without 9/11, it would be hard to imagine a forceful atheist presence
emerging in English-speaking countries. In the United States, atheism
has occasionally been a subject of media attentionfor example, in the
1960s when Madalyn Murray OHair, founder of American Atheists, was
considered the most hated woman in America. Nonetheless, public expressions of atheism have been rare in the United States, not worth mentioning in Australia and Canada, and rendered moot by widespread indifference toward organized Christianity in Great Britain. In the United
States, the percentage of people who identify as atheist in surveys has only
recently been climbing upward, and even then the numbers remain small
compared to much of Europe.1
In academia and among the technocratic classes of modern Western
societies, rejection of or indifference toward religious belief is not unusual. Wide areas of intellectual life, especially the natural sciences, are

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now dominated by a naturalistic view of the world. But elsewhere supernatural beliefs are omnipresent. The notion of a divine creator explains
nothing in physics or biology, but public enthusiasm for ideas such as
intelligent design continues to put pressure on science education.2 Politicians line up to declare their appreciation of religion, especially in the
United States. Academia is still hospitable to nonbelief, and many Western Europeans have lost interest in organized religion, but active dissent from religion has not been at the leading edge of either our political
imagination or our popular culture for a long while now.
So it came as a surprise when atheism became a minor publishing phenomenon. Sam Harriss The End of Faith (2004) became a bestseller, followed by the phenomenal success of Richard Dawkinss The God Delusion
(2006). They were labeled representatives of a New Atheism and attracted
considerable media attention.3
Books urging skepticism about religion were not new. There had always
been a stream of academic and semipopular books questioning supernatural beliefs. As a philosophically minded physicist with an interest in the
relationship between science and religion, I had also contributed to this
literature.4 But I expected and experienced what happened to all books of
this sort: they received a few good reviews and went on to lead a quiet life
in the book stacks of university libraries.
The New Atheist authors changed all that. Harris and Dawkins were
joined in 2007 by the veteran polemicist Christopher Hitchens, with his
own high-profile atheist book.5 When Daniel Dennett, who has done
some influential work in the interstices of philosophy and cognitive science, decided to critically explore religious belief, his 2006 book also attracted wide interest.6 Stenger, who had long been writing about how
paranormal and supernatural beliefs collide with modern physics, set out
to debunk God, and with his 2007 book became acquainted with the nonfiction best-seller list.7
It is not entirely clear why a more aggressively polemical form of atheism has become popular recently. Part of the reason must be a backlash
against the political influence of conservative Christianity. At the same
time, atheists outside of academia have been becoming better connected
with one another through the Internet and emerging as an identity group.
This helped create a larger market for expressions of dissent from religion. Some of the leading New Atheists, however, point to 9/11 as an
important catalyst.8 Sam Harris, whose blistering polemic against faith
started the New Atheism publishing phenomenon, describes responding
to 9/11 as among the primary reasons for his 2004 book. Though layered

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with complex political motivations, the 9/11 attacks were also unmistakably religious acts; the terrorists thought of themselves as performing a
sacred duty.9 For atheists frustrated with the way religious faith is seen
as a virtue in the broader popular culture, 9/11 as an act of faith became a
perfect demonstration of the need for a more critical attitude toward religious commitments.
Such a critical attitude, encouraged by the New Atheist authors, resonated especially in the loose but growing online communities of nonbelievers in religion. In fact, many atheist leaders in the United States
specifically point to the Internet as vital to the increasing visibility and
presence of atheism.10
It is difficult to generalize about online atheism. Nonbelievers are a
notoriously individualistic constituency that is hard to organize, partly
due to the social stigma and isolation associated with rejecting religion.
The relative anonymity and easy entry and exit afforded by Internet
groups only reinforces such tendencies. Online atheism includes informal discussion groups, sites such as the Internet Infidels, and much-read
bloggers such as Hemant Mehta, P. Z. Myers, and Greta Christina. They
represent a diversity of approaches to dissent from religion; the aggressive posture of the New Atheists is hardly universal. Nonetheless, the New
Atheist authors enjoy considerable influence among nonbelievers, including those who have come to think of themselves as part of a movement
that has crystallized mainly online.
September 11 colors todays atheistic responses to Islam, often resulting in a special antipathy toward Islam that goes beyond intellectual rejection. Of course, atheists do not accept gods, prophets, or revelations.
They object to social orders centered on religious faith. But the negative
perception of Islam among the New Atheists and online atheist groups
goes beyond their distaste for those conservative forms of Christianity
that most affect the lives of most English-speaking atheists.
There are two main ways in which Islam functions in popular atheist
discourse today. First, it is taken to be an extreme case of monotheism.
Unlike Christianity, which has at least developed some liberal, watereddown forms, the New Atheists see Islam as an unreformed, secularizationresistant, scientifically backward, particularly rigorous form of traditional
faith. Atheists usually think of themselves as defenders of the European
Enlightenment and its ideals of social progress. Due to cases of Muslim
repression of religious dissent, consistent Muslim support for patriarchal
gender roles, and a common Muslim desire for societies guided by reli-

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gious orthodoxy, Islam is a particularly intense representative of everything about monotheistic religion that atheists dislike.
New Atheist antipathy to Islam does not stop with political opposition
to conservative Islam. It occasionally shades into a second function of
Islam that depends on unreflective associations of Muslims with terrorism
and similar Islamophobic themes. In such cases, Islam is not just imagined
as an intellectual and political rival; it is made into an enemy. Finding an
enemy can be invigorating for an emerging movement centered on an
atheist identity, but it also stands in tension with most atheists expressed
commitment to empirical accuracy.

Freedom Of Expression and the Limits Of Freedom

The New Atheist writers sound themes that often accompany religious
dissent. They favor freedom of expression and freedom from obligatory
religion in the public sphere. Their emphasis, however, is on the legitimacy of providing vigorous public criticism of faith-based claims, regardless of whether this is perceived as offensive.11 The New Atheists observe
that most public discourse, even in ostensibly secular environments, exhibits a pattern of deference to religion. As a result, positions based on
religious faith are insulated from public criticism, often in the name of
respecting religious beliefs. The New Atheists take this to be a demand
for unearned respect and consider religious faith to be a legitimate target
not just of criticism but of satire or even contempt.
Many atheists today, including those in online atheist communities,
have been persuaded that they should actively oppose the deference
enjoyed by religion. In 2009 the Center for Inquiry, a leading secular
humanist organization, initiated an International Blasphemy Rights Day,
celebrated on the anniversary of the 2005 publication of the Danish cartoons satirizing Muhammad. This, together with similar events such as
Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, held in 2010 to protest censorship of
the satirical television series South Park, expresses resistance to deference
to religion and is representative of an online style of activism that characterizes atheism in Western countries today.
The New Atheist opposition to faith goes beyond standing against theocracy or organizing to prevent traditional religions from deploying state
poweraims that would be shared by many liberal religious people. The
New Atheists claim that supernatural beliefs are not only false but socially

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harmful. This could be a difficult position to advocate because religion

shapes the social ideals of many devout people. Nonetheless, the New
Atheists share a sense of moral universalism with their religious opponents, even though they argue that religious faith, rather than a lack of
religious commitment, is an obstacle to human flourishing.
Such an uncompromising stance is an assertion of atheist identity. Defense of an identity often relies on drawing a contrast with a different, perhaps threatening alternative. The post-9/11 image of Islam provides just
such a contrast. Nonbelievers can define themselves not just by their rejection of Christianity or Judaism or New Age spirituality, but also by their
rejection of Islam. It makes little difference that Islam might be barely
present in their environment or that adopting Islam has never been a live
option for them. After 9/11, many people became more aware of Islam, or
at least of a picture of Islam shaped by the mass media. This Islam stood
in stark opposition to secular, liberal, Enlightenment values. Opposing
Islam, therefore, could help in delineating the identity of atheists who
felt under attack. If Islam had little presence in their everyday lives, that
would only mean that Islam was easier to stand against than the religion
of family and friends.
In fairness, however, there is more depth to atheists concerns about
freedom of expression and Islam. From the point of view of nonbelievers,
Muslim countries and communities today provide much to worry about.
For example, some Western countries retain laws against blasphemy or
have other means of imposing penalties on perceived insults to religion.
But such penalties are almost never enforced and are rarely more onerous
than a fine. By contrast, in Muslim-majority countries conviction of blasphemy often entails loss of liberty or even of life. Even in Western Europe
the present debate over blasphemy laws is strongly influenced by demands
from Muslim immigrant communities, including concerns about inflammatory speech concerning Muhammad.12
Many Muslim-majority states criminalize open nonbelief. Informal
sanctions against unorthodoxy are common in conservative Muslim environments. For example, in Turkey, smoking in public during Ramadan can
invite a beating by locals, which is typically ignored by the police,13 and
public expression of atheism is often considered an unacceptable provocation.14 Formal sanctions against atheist expression are not uncommon.
In April 2013 the renowned Turkish pianist Fazl Say was convicted of insulting Islam. He had made the mistake of stating his atheism and making
some mildly mocking remarks about Islam on Twitter, including quoting
Omar Khayyam. He then was summoned to the public prosecutors office

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in Istanbul to be investigated for violating a Turkish law against insulting

religion.15 After his trial Say received a suspended sentence, though later
the verdict was thrown into doubt, and a retrial was ordered due to procedural irregularities.16
Similar news from Muslim countries is common. In January 2012 in
Indonesia, civil servant Alexander Aan posted a message on a Facebook
group saying, God does not exist. He was arrested on blasphemy charges
and sent to prison for two and a half years.17 Alber Saber, an Egyptian
atheist blogger, was convicted of contempt of religion, was released on
bail, and fled the country.18 Another atheist blogger, Imad Eddin Habib,
was sought by Moroccan police.19 In the spring of 2013 Bangladesh was
convulsed by violence from Islamists demanding, in part, the punishment of atheist bloggers. At least one blogger was murdered by a mob,
and others were arrested.20 Hence a special concern among atheists about
freedom of expression in Muslim contexts is not surprising.
Instances of suppression of religious dissent in Muslim-majority countries are especially interesting because of the considerable social support
behind such acts. It is not just that news from these contexts includes a
constant stream of censorship, blasphemy prosecutions, and fatwas enjoining violence against critics, artists, and musicians. It is also that, especially in these decades of Islamist political ascendancy, persecution of
religious nonbelief finds wide approval and can even enjoy democratic
legitimacy. Muslim populations have long suffered under authoritarian
regimes, and it is not difficult to find rhetorical support for the freedom
of expression. And yet very often such support comes in the context of a
cultural conservatism that considers religiosity to be integral to an Islamically acceptable public order. Hence even Muslim advocates of the freedom of expression often draw the line at criticism of fundamental religious beliefs.21 There are limits to freedom, and offenses against religious
feelings are invariably beyond these limits.
New Atheists suspect that censoriousness is inherent to monotheistic
religion, and the common reluctance about endorsing full freedom of expression in Muslim-majority cultures is particularly salient for them. For
New Atheist authors such as Harris, Islam is the ultimate bad example,
an intolerant religion that suppresses dissent to the extent of casually accepting the justice of killing apostates: It is . . . a current reality under
Islam that if you open the wrong door in your free inquiry of the world,
the brethren deem that you should die for it. We might well wonder, then,
in what sense Muslims believe that there should be no compulsion in
religion.22

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Critiques like Harriss are not models of nuance and sophistication.

The New Atheist literature often explicitly positions itself as a vehicle for
consciousness raising rather than scholarly critique.23 Movement building and rallying the troops inevitably require some oversimplification and
broad-brush characterizations that can shade toward stereotyping. Online atheism, which often favors superficial discussions and caters to short
attention spans, only intensifies such tendencies.
This invites a common and legitimate criticism: New Atheists indulge
in essentialism, taking the more conservative, censorious varieties of Muslim religiosity as the most authentic representatives of a timeless essence
of Islam.24 This sidelines more liberal-minded Muslims who support freer
expression by drawing on their own religious culture and experience.
Since atheists value criticism highly, it is worth pointing out that criticism of Islam that leans heavily on stereotypes or essentialism can misrepresent Muslim culture and religion. It is not criticism of a high standard.
Nonetheless, it is possible to make too much of deficiencies in New
Atheist portrayals of Islam. There are some significant, probably unavoidable conflicts between the social ideals of most atheists and most devout
Muslims. The New Atheists defend an uncompromising version of secular liberalism. Most Muslims, in contrast, take a culturally conservative
position. They want to give religion a prominent role in underpinning the
social order and providing overall political legitimacy. This is true even if
we take into account vigorous debates among devout Muslims on exactly
what this would mean, and even if we recognize that theocracy in the form
of clerical rule is not very popular.25
Therefore neither conservative Muslims nor atheists are mistaken to
perceive the other groups social ideals as threats. If a proper social order
depends on religious loyalties, public expressions of nonbelief are suspect
as a corrupting influence. Many, perhaps most devout Muslims think it
only reasonable that freedom should have limits, particularly where insults to religion are concerned. Human rights treaty ratifications by Muslim countries are full of reservations and exceptions in this regard.26 From
a New Atheist point of view, on the other hand, a better social order does
not rely on a sense of the sacred, but instead deploys human ingenuity to
the fullest extent possible. Concessions to religious sensibilities, such as
protecting communities from criticism they perceive as insults, restrict
human capabilities for improving our worldly lives.
When the New Atheists use the present state of Islam as a cautionary tale, they enter a complex political debate over the role of religion in
modern life, exposing deep conflicts of interest and underlining impor-

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tant rival conceptions of civilized life. Certainly invidious stereotypes

and hasty essentialisms abound in the public debatestereotypes about
atheist immorality no less than those about piety dominating all aspects
of life for Muslims. And addressing these mistakes should not obscure the
deeper, possibly irresolvable political conflicts involved.

Accommodation Or Confrontation?
New Atheist social ideals give a prominent place to science. Many of the
prominent New Atheist authors are scientists: Dawkins is a biologist,
Harris a neuroscientist, and Stenger a physicist.
As a result, New Atheist literature and online atheist polemics are
highly invested in a debate over whether scientific and religious institutions should accommodate one another. Intellectually a certain friction
between science and religion is probably unavoidable, given that modern
science continually casts doubt on notions of supernatural agency. Some
critics of the New Atheism, however, point out that religion is socially
powerful and that most people favor religious belief over science when
they perceive a conflict. They argue that it is in the best interest of science
to promote an accommodation between science and religion by favoring
liberal theologies.27 Because this implies muting science-based criticism
of supernatural claims, the New Atheists reject accommodation, preferring confrontation.28
The role of Islam in this debate is, again, that of a bad example. Scientists regularly worry about the common conservative monotheist rejection of Darwinian evolution by natural selection, and especially about
the poor state of acceptance of evolution in the United States.29 As it happens, the Muslim world exhibits perhaps the worlds strongest resistance
to Darwinian evolution and is host to a wide range of popular pseudoscientific beliefs motivated by religion.30 So the Muslim example might
support a confrontationist position such as that of atheist biologist Jerry
Coyne, who argues that monotheistic religion is the root cause of creationism and should be confronted as such.31 But scientists from a Muslim background engaged in debates over science and religion favor an accommodationist position,32 and the interests of scientific institutions and
atheist movements sometimes conflict.33
The debate over accommodationist and confrontationist approaches
to religion, with Islam serving as a bad example, is not confined to matters of science. A similar dynamic can take hold whenever the secular

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Enlightenment outlook of atheists comes into conflict with ideals centered on religious faith. Historically nonbelievers have often criticized the
monotheistic religions for subordinating women to men. Questions about
accommodating religion also arose in the nineteenth-century American
womens movement. Some early feminists, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
were convinced that Christianity was a major obstacle to womens emancipation and tried to confront religion. Others, like Susan B. Anthony,
observed that criticizing religion would only alienate most women. Movements for social change invariably face opposition by conservative religiosity that sanctifies the existing social order. And it is always a difficult
question whether it is best to confront religious beliefs or hope that more
congenial interpretations of a religion will gain the upper hand.
Today atheists usually continue to oppose traditional monotheistic
views of gender roles and sexuality. And Islam represents a patriarchal
extreme. This is not just a response to media stereotypes: available social
scientific information suggests that Whether we focus on status in public life, popular attitudes, or structural inequalities in well-being, females
tend to fare relatively poorly in places where Muslims predominate.34 To
atheists, Islam comes across as a particularly virulent form of monotheist
patriarchy, with practices ranging from modesty measures imposed on
women to persecution of homosexuals.
Atheist concern about Muslim patriarchy goes deeper than the regular polemical use of Islam as a bad example. For example, the philosopher
and influential atheist blogger Ophelia Benson strongly criticizes common Islamic practices in the context of monotheists treatment of women
in general. After all, todays most prominent examples of the oppression
of women are connected to Islam.35 Defending an uncompromising secular liberal position on gender roles, Benson naturally considers conservative Islam to be very problematic.
The agenda of the atheist movement overlaps with that of some prominent women who have renounced Islam and who denounce the conservative Muslim views of gender that predominate in their countries of birth.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose renunciation of religion was strongly influenced
by her experiences of injustices perpetrated against women in the name of
Islam, is well-known, but she cannot be described as an activist for atheism
per se. Figures who have more influence on the online and activist atheist community include Taslima Nasrin, an author exiled from Bangladesh
due to her criticism of Islam, and Maryam Namazie, who is exiled from
Iran and is now spokesperson for the Council of ex-Muslims of Britain.
Generally feminist atheists such as Nasrin and Namazie are not im-

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pressed with attempts to construct an Islamic feminism, let alone with

apologetic arguments that traditional Islam offers a way of life more in
tune with womens created nature. And yet their arguments are posed
against a background of a Western feminism that is clearly accommodationist in character: mainstream feminists tend to celebrate feminist theologies and attempt to reclaim religious traditions for womens interests.
One reason that feminist atheism has had limited appeal beyond already secular people is that, as sociological studies consistently indicate,
most women are religiousindeed, more religious than men. Regardless
of the stage of life in question and, in nearly all cases, regardless of the
kind of religious system and accordant beliefs at stake, women express
interest in religion, affirm personal religious commitment, attend religious services, read religious materials, and pray more frequently than
men.36 Many Muslim women are unhappy with their traditional status,
especially in modernizing environments, but their aspirations remain religious, or at least are expressed in broadly religious terms.
It is awkward for atheists to use Muslim patriarchy as an illustration of
the evils of faith. After all, the New Atheism is very much a mens club.
Online atheism and organizations skeptical of religion have noticeably
male majorities, both in leadership and in membership. Online atheism
is regularly convulsed with debates over whether atheism should have a
broader social justice agenda37 and with observations that most atheists
appear to operate within a framework of white male privilege.38 Although
commitment to gender equality has deep roots in movements of religious
nonbelief, atheists are not univocal about feminism. Some atheists clearly
use accusations of patriarchal oppression as a way to denigrate monotheisms such as Islam while ignoring their own implicit support of male
privilege. This follows a historical trend in Western criticism of Islam:
British colonialists and Egyptian Westernizers denounced the Muslim
treatment of women while being less than supportive of Western feminist demands.39
Therefore, it is difficult for atheists to insist on confronting Islam on
gender inequality. While New Atheist authors may suggest that religious
faith is an obstacle to the liberation of women, in practice seeking some
sort of accommodation will seem more politically sensible even to feminists who are not personally religious.

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Approaching Islamophobia
Atheists are not usually drawn toward the political right, since conservatism typically is allied with religion. Nonbelievers are often very aware of
being part of a small and disorganized minority, and in the United States,
atheists also encounter severe distrust from the Christian majority. Indeed, Americans think less of atheists than even Muslims.40 For these and
other reasons, atheists skew liberal in their politics.
Where Islam is concerned, however, some leading figures among the
New Atheist authors have expressed views similar to those of political conservatives who appear to desire a civilizational war against Islam. Harris
is the worst offender in this regard. In The End of Faith, Harris portrays
Islam as a particularly violent form of faith-based madness, contemplates
the use of nuclear weapons against Muslims, and endorses torture of terror suspects. According to Harris,
To see the role that faith plays in propagating Muslim violence, we need
only ask why so many Muslims are eager to turn themselves into bombs
these days. The answer: because the Koran makes this activity seem like
a career opportunity. Nothing in the history of Western colonialism
explains this behavior (though we can certainly concede that this history
offers us much to atone for). Subtract the Muslim belief in martyrdom
and jihad, and the actions of suicide bombers become completely unintelligible, as does the spectacle of public jubilation that invariably follows
their deaths; insert these particular beliefs, and one can only marvel that
suicide bombing is not more widespread.41
The bottom line is that devout Muslims can have no doubt about the
reality of paradise or about the efficacy of martyrdom as a means of getting there. Nor can they question the wisdom and reasonableness of killing people for what amount to theological grievances. In Islam, it is the
moderate who is left to split hairs, because the basic thrust of the doctrine is undeniable: convert, subjugate, or kill unbelievers; kill apostates;
and conquer the world.42

More recently on his blog, Harris advocated profiling to target Muslims at transportation hubs.43 Hitchenss writings also give the New Atheism a neoconservative coloration, due to his advocacy of the American
conquest of Iraq and interpretation of warfare against Muslim countries

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as a way of advancing Enlightenment values.44 All of this is an interesting

reversal of the stereotype of atheists as weak-kneed, left-wing academic
types. But Harris especially comes across as a fanatic who demonizes
whole populations of people. Critics such as the reporter Chris Hedges
have argued that the Harris and Hitchens variety of atheism is dangerously utopian, exaggerating the evils of religion while brushing aside the
crimes associated with secular utopian projects such as communism.45
The critics are right about Hitchens and Harris. Especially in a work
championing reason, it is hard to ignore how Harris disregards intellectual norms. His description of Islam is unrecognizable to anyone who
has studied the religion. Indeed, his footnotes mention only a few books
from an American and Israeli nationalist point of viewnothing notable
from the extensive scholarly literature relevant to his subject. Certainly a
writer of a popular book has no obligation to attend to academic details,
but he should care enough to get things right and at least have a basic acquaintance with the territory. Instead, Harris goes straight to the Quran
to find out how Muslims might be drawn to violence, treating Islam as if
it were a form of Protestant scriptural literalism. Such an approach completely ignores how most ordinary Muslims mediate their understandings
of their sacred texts.46 It is intellectually irresponsible.
Evidently, the New Atheist desire for vigorous criticism of religion
does not always result in high-quality criticism. But Harris and Hitchens
are important figures in the New Atheism, with considerable influence
on the online atheist movement. And they present an essentialized Islam
as an enemy, in a tone of moral panic. This raises the question of whether
the New Atheism is infected with Islamophobia.
An accusation of Islamophobia, however, is problematic because it can
easily become an instrument for silencing legitimate criticism. Muslim
interest groups have been quick to accuse critics of Islamophobia, just
like Jewish organizations sometimes portray opposition to Israeli policies as anti-Semitism and conservative Catholic pressure groups eagerly
denounce public policies involving contraception as violations of religious liberty. For example, feminist atheists criticizing traditional Islamic
views have often been charged with Islamophobia; they find themselves
repeatedly having to explain that political and cultural opposition to practices commonly associated with Islam is not analogous to racism.47 Indeed, among atheists Islamophobia is often seen as a false concern because atheists so often encounter the charge as part of efforts to restrict
freedom of expression.48 Academic uses of the term Islamophobia are not

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comforting from an atheist standpoint either, as academic explorations of

Islamophobia often leave unclear what kind of opposition to Islam would
be considered acceptable.49
So the notion of Islamophobia exposes a significant fissure between atheists and the political leftor at least the postmodern, antiEnlightenment left. The uses of postmodern ideas in antiscientific forms
of Islamic apologetics have been remarked upon,50 and some human rights
advocates have accused Anglo-American leftists of uncritically supporting Islamists.51 The postmodern lefts tendency toward a kind of pluralist
cultural conservatism naturally collides with various concerns of atheists,
who usually identify with secular, Enlightenment-inspired politics.
As a result, some atheist critics of Islam have found themselves gravitating toward conservative institutional settings more congenial to treating Islam as a threat and a civilizational enemy. A well-known example
is Hirsi Ali becoming affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute.
Another important figure is the anti-Islamic polemicist Ibn Warraq, who
wrote the influential Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995). He has had an increasingly hard-line trajectory, including a recent stint with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neoconservative Washington, DC,
think tank. His recent criticism of Islamnot just as a religion but as a
culture and a civilizationcenters on conservative themes of Western
superiority.52
Even with all this, it would be inaccurate to say that the atheist movement has developed a conservative quality. Harriss advocacy of profiling
Muslims, for example, has met with a largely negative reception in the
atheist blogosphere.53 Atheists from a Muslim background have forcefully pointed out the Islamophobic elements in Harriss views.54 Though
Harriss call for unapologetic criticism of religion remains much-admired
among online atheists, his politics regarding Islam do not inspire as much
enthusiasm.
A comparison between atheists and the Christian Right in the United
States is illuminating in this regard. Christians and culturally Christian
atheists share some elements of a culture shaped by Christendoms historical rivalry with Islam, and they also share a media environment full
of stereotypes about violent Muslims. We can assume that almost everyone who has commented on Islam online has heard of the seventy-two
virgins.
But the Islamophobia found in the Christian right is shaped by a sense
of religious competition. Atheist distrust of Islam is comparatively superficial. For example, much recent conservative Christian rhetoric about

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Islam in the United States is inflected with Christian Zionism and tends
to portray Muslims as terrorists in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In the apocalyptic Protestant imagination, the most right-wing settler elements of Israel enjoy divine favor, and Muslims and Jews have roles in an
End Times drama about to culminate in the second coming of Jesus. For
a long time Muslims have played one of the villains in this story, often
associated with the biblical Gog and Magog, which will assault Israel.55
Today, even a well-known Jewish Islamophobe such as Pamela Geller has
a regular column on WND, formerly WorldNetDaily, a popular Christian Right news site notorious for its support of conspiracy theories and
its lurid Islamophobia.56 Atheists in the United States, who generally react negatively to conservative Christian culture, have little to do with this
aspect of paranoia about Islam.
On the other hand, atheists are also unlikely to explore common interests with Muslims in the manner of some conservative Christians who
express admiration for the very visible social conservatism of Muslim
populations.57 Neither are they likely to respond positively to Muslim
leaders who present Islam as a tolerant religion by emphasizing respect
for other faiths and who call for religious unity against secularity. When
Feisal Abdul Rauf writes that The real divide is therefore not between
Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Buddhists, but between godly believers
and ungodly peoplewhich includes religious hypocrites,58 the ungodly
will not be impressed. The 2012 presidential election in the United States
has occasioned much analysis about the rise of the nonesreligiously
nonaffiliated individuals who now make up about 20 percent of the countrys population.59 While explicit atheists are a minority among the nones,
this is largely a secular constituency that reacts against a strong presence
of religion in politics and public life.
Though atheists lack some of the deeper Islamophobic cultural elements associated with the Christian right, they are wary of religious alliances against secularity perceived as corruption. Perhaps atheists can be
faulted for being too focused on their own concerns about freedom of
expression to notice serious and indisputable examples of Islamophobia.
Nonetheless, atheist reservations about the term Islamophobia are worth
taking seriously. Too often charges of Islamophobia obscure substantial
and legitimate political differences rather than provide analytic clarity.
Consider, for example, the rapid growth of a religiously conservative
Muslim population in Western Europe. Amid the diversity of atheist responses to this growth, there is a noticeable undercurrent of concern. This
concern is best understood in the context of broader atheist interests. For

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secular people, Western Europe is a success storyone of the few places

where religion is no longer a dominant feature of public life. When nonbelievers want to argue that widespread lack of faith is no barrier to a
good society, they point to examples such as the Scandinavian countries.60
Going further, they bring up research showing strong correlations between secularity and indicators of societal well-being.61 But there are also
serious arguments that demographic trends, including Muslim growth,
stand against continuing secularity in Europe and elsewhere.62
Growing Muslim populations in Europe, then, present challenges to
the secular liberal ideals of common citizenship favored by most atheists. Tight-knit Muslim communities may be accommodated by corporatist varieties of multiculturalism,63 but these approaches conflict with
more individualistic understandings of secular liberalism. Indeed, Islam
has become central to debates about the limits of multiculturalism and
secularity.64
Some atheist responses to such challenges no doubt exhibit undue
distrust of Muslims. But this should not be confused with, for example,
American conservatives working themselves into an Islamophobic panic
at the imaginary prospect of sharia influence on their legal system. Since
atheists have much at stake in social experiments such as a secular Europe,
signs of fragility in this secularity are a matter for concern. Moreover, the
New Atheists retain the Enlightenment hope of universal social progress,
of which secularization is a part. This may well be a naive reading of history and of social dynamics today, but fundamentally concerns about conservative Muslim growth are due to secular liberal political aspirations.
For atheists, Muslims need not be the enemy, but Islam is still a rival.

To Advance Secularity
For the New Atheists, the figure of Muhammad can occasion indifference
or disrespect. Among online atheists, Muhammad is many things: yet another Middle Eastern prophet with a dubious message, someone so mythicized he is almost a fictional character, or, for those intent on confirming
the Internets reputation for generating more heat than light, a pedophile.
Atheists did not construct a new image of Muhammad after 9/11; they
just reused what was already available that opposed Islam, including crude
polemical material. This is largely because, even if the New Atheism was
catalyzed by 9/11, Islam has been a secondary concern for the emerging
atheist movement. Atheists have concentrated on mobilizing and con-

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Finding an Enemy!187

necting people who were already skeptical about religion, trying to convince them that a degree of public engagement centered on an atheist
identity was a good idea.65 The everyday annoyances that may have galvanized participation have usually had to do with Christianity or a perception of special privileges granted a generic religiosity. Cultural Muslims with skeptical leanings, who may identify with Muslim tradition and
civilization without accepting its supernatural beliefs, have not been a
significant atheist constituency.
This is not to say that a reinvigorated Western atheism has had no influence on cultural Muslims. The relative anonymity and ability to connect with like-minded people far away afforded by the Internet has been
put to use by skeptics in Muslim countries as well. The New Atheist literature is often, for culturally Muslim nonbelievers, also accessible. For
example, Dawkinss The God Delusion has been translated and made available in Turkish, including pirated versions placed online. Furthermore,
the influential atheist website of the Richard Dawkins Foundation must
have at least some minor influence because for a while a Turkish court had
it banned for Internet users in Turkey.66 Nonetheless, especially with the
waning attraction of Marxism, atheism is an insignificant public presence
among Muslim populations worldwide.
So the effect of todays atheist movement on Muslims who live in a
Muslim-majority environment has probably been small, perhaps negligible. Few Muslims see a need to respond to the New Atheism specifically.67 The presence of atheism might worry some conservative community leaders, who might see it as yet another corrupting influence
transmitted by the Internet.68 But then the guardians of Muslim identity could also benefit from finding an enemy. There is no shortage of
Muslim resources online that use opposition to an unspecific atheism to
strengthen faith.
For devout Muslims in the West, where Islam is a minority religion,
the New Atheism is another unwelcome source of hostility.69 Nonetheless, compared to right wing nationalist groups in Europe or the crusading elements of the Christian right in the United States, even the Islamophobic elements in todays atheism cannot be a significant concern. After
all, active religious nonbeliefas opposed to indifference to religion
remains small and disorganized.
There may even be some common interests that Muslims and atheists
can act upon. Religious nonbelief is still largely associated with political
liberalism and the left, even if it is the modernist left of the Enlightenment tradition. Atheists are reliable supporters of rights that minorities

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benefit from, as long as these rights are conceived of in individual and

universal terms. For example, the particular sensitivity the New Atheism
exhibits about freedom of expression should extend to the criminalization
of radical Muslim expression in the United States. The 2012 terror-related
conviction of Tarek Mehanna for what amounts to speech alone, with no
violence committed, illustrates the problem.70 Too many Muslims in the
United States live with well-founded worries about surveillance and the
criminalization of dissent. Atheists should be able to sympathize.
Even with some possible areas of common ground, the dynamism
and expanding influence of modern Islam will continue to inspire atheist opposition. The vigorous secular liberalism typically favored by atheists71 best accommodates more fragmented, privatized forms of spirituality. Atheists usually want to achieve a public environment where religion
is optional, or even better, invisible. This kind of secularity has taken root
among comparatively few Muslims. Instead, that secularism is ungodly
and undesirable is almost a consensus position among Muslim thinkers,
even though they harbor a diversity of views about the appropriate institutional distance between religion and state. This is partly because of negative experiences with secular regimes that suppressed religiously inspired
dissent.72 But Western forms of secularism need not attract many Muslims either, even though for Muslims in the West secularism promises to
mitigate the advantages Christianity enjoys as a majority religion. Liberal
individualism and attendant secularism restricts the scope of community
and law-oriented forms of religious life. Many Muslims think that a completely secular public order impedes their ability to live fully according to
their religious commitments.
In that case, the serious political differences between most atheists and
Muslimsparticularly between assertive nonbelievers such as the New
Atheists and more tradition-minded Muslimsare here to stay. Atheists
will likely continue to draw contrasts with conservative Islam to sharpen
their own identity as nonbelievers.
The New Atheism often elicits ambivalent responses from secular
people. I share the New Atheist incredulity about the supernatural. I can
only agree with anyone who celebrates natural science and prefers a secular politics. But while conservative religious movements do not help,73 I
am inclined to think that faith in the benevolence of the invisible hand of
the market is more of a menace today than faith in invisible gods. And I
find that too many atheists today do not appreciate the sheer ordinariness
of Muslimshow Islam is mostly a faith of homemakers and shopkeepers
who almost never take to the streets to call for the blood of cartoonists.

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With any luck, the newly energized atheist movement will eventually
settle down and focus on defending and advancing secularity, which has to
be done together with liberal religious people, including Muslims. Meanwhile, it seems that atheism has emerged from its academic ghetto, and it
is still not clear where it will go.
Notes
1. Norris and Inglehart, Sacred and Secular; Green, John C. The Fifth National Survey of Religion and Politics.
2. Young and Edis, eds., Why Intelligent Design Fails.
3. Wolf, The Church of the Non-Believers.
4. Edis, The Ghost in the Universe.
5. Hitchens, God Is Not Great.
6. Dennett, Breaking the Spell.
7. Stenger, God.
8. Stenger, The New Atheism.
9. Lincoln, Holy Terrors, 16.
10. See Mehta, How The Internet Is Reshaping Humanism; Silverman, The
Future Of (Secular) Humanism (Or So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades).
11. Stenger, New Atheism.
12. Blackford, Freedom of Religion and the Secular State, 180187.
13. Cumhuriyet, Erzincanda, Alevi yurttaa oru daya.
14. Shankland, Islam and Society in Turkey, 170.
15. AFP, Atheist Pianist to Turn Back on Turkey.
16. BBC, Turkish Pianist Fazil Say Convicted of Insulting Islam; Hrriyet
Daily News. Turkish Pianist Fazl Say to Be Retried on Blasphemy Charges.
17. Amnesty International. Indonesia.
18. Aboulenein, Alber Saber.
19. Benchemsi, Wanted for Atheism!
20. Chalmers, Islamist Agitation Fuels Unrest in Bangladesh.
21. Edis, An Illusion of Harmony, chapter 6.
22. Harris, End of Faith, 116.
23. See Dawkins, God Delusion.
24. Edis, A False Quest for a True Islam.
25. Esposito and Mogahed, Who Speaks for Islam?, chapter 2; Fish, Are Muslims
Distinctive?, chapter 2.
26. Chase and Ballard, Status of Human Rights Treaty Ratifications, with
Notable Reservations, Understandings, and Declarations.
27. See Mooney and Kirshenbaum, Unscientific America.
28. Stenger, God and the Folly of Faith.
29. Numbers, The Creationists.
30. Edis, Illusion of Harmony.
31. Coyne, Science, Religion, and Society.
32. Guessoum, Islams Quantum Question.

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33. Edis, Science and Nonbelief.

34. Fish, Are Muslims Distinctive?, 201.
35. Benson and Stangroom, Does God Hate Women?
36. McCauley, Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not, 266.
37. Christina, Why Atheism Demands Social Justice.
38. Reed, All In.
39. Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, chapter 8.
40. Edgell, Gerteis, and Hartmann. Atheists as Other.
41. Harris, End of Faith, 32, 33.
42. Ibid., 113.
43. Harris, In Defense of Profiling.
44. Cottee and Cushman, eds., Christopher Hitchens And His Critics.
45. Hedges, I Dont Believe in Atheists.
46. Edis, False Quest.
47. Benson and Stangroom, Does God Hate Women?, chapter 7.
48. Namazie, Charges of Offence and Islamophobia are Secular Fatwas.
49. See contributions to Esposito Ibrahim Kaln, eds., Islamophobia.
50. Edis, Illusion of Harmony, chapter 5; Aydn, Postmodern agda slam ve Bilim.
51. Tax, Double Bind.
52. Ibn Warraq, Why the West Is Best.
53. Myers, No Racial Profiling, Please.
54. Sayeed, Sam Harris, Uncovered.
55. Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth
56. Geller, Who Polices the Police?
57. DSouza, The Enemy at Home.
58. Abdul Rauf, Moving the Mountain, 43.
59. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Nones on the Rise.
60. Zuckerman, Society without God.
61. Paul, Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with
Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies.
62. Kaufmann, Europes Muslim Future.
63. Modood, Multiculturalism, chapter 4.
64. Kaln, The Context Of Islamophobia.
65. Niose, Nonbeliever Nation.
66. Butt, Missing Link.
67. See Legenhausen, The New Atheism and Islam.
68. Al-Sarami, Saudi Arabia.
69. Winston, New Atheists Emerge From 9/11.
70. Greenwald, The Real Criminals in the Tarek Mehanna Case.
71. See Blackford, Freedom of Religion.
72. Hashemi, Islam, Secularism, and Liberal Democracy, chapter 4.
73. Saxton, Religion and the Human Prospect.

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