Jihad Watch: "Hitchens simply cannot be this stupid"

December 22, 2007

"Hitchens simply cannot be this stupid"

I wrote my book Religion of Peace? to try to make a case for Western civilization as worth defending. The fundamentally most misunderstood and overlooked aspect of the defense against the global jihad is the challenge that the jihadists make to Western values, which are in large part Judeo-Christian. This is combined with a historical critique which relentlessly portrays the West as the aggressors against the rest of the world, and as uniquely responsible for its evils -- thus sapping our will to defend something as rotten as Western civilization. This myopia about slavery is just part of this problem.

From "Bad Faith Bestseller," Jeremy Lott's review of Christopher Hitchens' book god is Not Great in The American Spectator:

It's not a rhetorical question. Some assumption of good faith by the author is an important part of how critics operate, but Hitchens simply cannot be this stupid.
Exhibit A: In his discussion of slavery, Hitchens focuses entirely on the American experience so that he can damn Christianity for the peculiar institution. He overlooks the role of the Catholic Church in abolishing slavery in Europe and gives scant attention to the role of the Muslim slave trade in starting it up again in the new world, and he manages to gloss over the fact that slavery predates organized religion.

One of the most common criticisms of Christianity centers on its posture toward slavery. Taken at face value, the Bible condones the practice. The Apostle Paul says flatly: “Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as to Christ” (Ephesians 6:5). In his time, he wasn’t saying anything remotely controversial (and of course has been criticized for apparently accepting the cultural status quo instead of challenging it). No culture on earth, Christian or otherwise, ever questioned the morality of slavery until relatively recent times.

But Hitchens reflects the popular view, which is that the onus for slavery is squarely on the West. When Britain commemorated the two hundredth anniversary of its abolition of the slave trade in March 2007, Prime Minister Tony Blair called it “an opportunity for the United Kingdom to express our deep sorrow and regret for our nation’s role in the slave trade and for the unbearable suffering, individually and collectively, it caused.”

Britain’s role in the slave trade? Some Americans might be surprised to learn that the British, or anyone besides American southerners, ever owned slaves, since after coming through American schools as they stand today many people no doubt have the impression that slavery was invented in Charleston and Mobile. “The American education system,” observes Mark Steyn, “teaches it as such -- as a kind of wicked perversion the Atlantic settlers had conjured out of their own ambition.”

However, as Steyn details, it was a cross-cultural fact of life for centuries: “In reality, it was more like the common cold -- a fact of life. The institution predates the word’s etymology, from the Slavs brought from eastern Europe to the glittering metropolis of Rome. It predates by some millennia the earliest laws, such as the Code of Hammurabi in Mesopotamia. The first legally recognized slave in the American colonies was owned by a black man who had himself arrived as an indentured servant. The first slave owners on the North American continent were hunter-gatherers. As Metaxas puts it, ‘Slavery was as accepted as birth and marriage and death, was so woven into the tapestry of human history that you could barely see its threads, much less pull them out. Everywhere on the globe, for 5,000 years, the idea of human civilization without slavery was unimaginable.’”

Likewise unacknowledged has been the role that Christian principles played in the abolition of slavery in the West, which was an enterprise unprecedented in the annals of human history. The roots of abolitionism can be traced to the Church’s practice of baptizing slaves and treating them as human beings equal in dignity to all others. St. Isidore of Seville (560-636) declared that “God has made no difference between the soul of the slave and that of the freedman.” His statement was rooted in what St. Paul told the slaveowner Onesimus about his runaway slave Philemon: “Perhaps this was why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but as more than a slave, as a beloved brother” (Philemon 15-16).

Once it was recognized that the slave had a soul just as did the master, it could not forever be justified that he be another person’s chattel. In the year 649, Clovis II, king of the Franks, married a slave – who later began a campaign to halt the traffic in slaves. The Catholic Church now honors her as St. Bathilda. Charlemagne and others later also opposed the practice in Christian Europe. According to historian Rodney Stark, “slavery ended in medieval Europe only because the church extended its sacraments to all slaves and then managed to impose a ban on the enslavement of Christians (and of Jews). Within the context of medieval Europe, that prohibition was effectively a rule of universal abolition.” And in the New World, when the Spanish conquistadors were energetically enslaving South American Indians, and importing black Africans as slaves as well, their chief opponent was a Catholic missionary and bishop, Bartolome de las Casas (1474-1566), who was instrumental in compelling the Spanish crown to enact a law in 1542 prohibiting the enslavement of the Indians.

Still, there was no consensus about slavery within Christendom. Slavery persisted, and was at times even given ecclesiastical sanction. In the antebellum United States, there was no shortage of Southerners who used Scripture to support the morality of slavery. Typical of such expositions was one delivered in 1822 by the Rev. Dr. Richard Furman, President of the South Carolina Baptist State Convention, to South Carolina Governor John Lyde Wilson. Although slavery was not in 1822 the nation-rending controversy it would become in the succeeding decades, Furman was already feeling pressure from the arguments against slavery that abolitionists were advancing on Christian principles. He complained that “certain writers on politics, morals and religion, and some of them highly respectable, have advanced positions, and inculcated sentiments, very unfriendly to the principle and practice of holding slaves,” and had even attributed those positions “to the Holy Scriptures, and to the genius of Christianity.” On the contrary, Furman affirmed that “the right of holding slaves is clearly established by the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example. In the Old Testament, the Israelites were directed to purchase their bond-men and bond-maids of the Heathen nations; except they were of the Canaanites, for these were to be destroyed. And it is declared, that the persons purchased were to be their ‘bond-men forever;’ and an ‘inheritance for them and their children.’”

Furman goes on to assert that “had the holding of slaves been a moral evil, it cannot be supposed, that the inspired Apostles, who feared not the faces of men, and were ready to lay down their lives in the cause of their God, would have tolerated it, for a moment, in the Christian Church.” And moreover, “in proving this subject justifiable by Scriptural authority, its morality is also proved; for the Divine Law never sanctions immoral actions.”

Such arguments held no water for the abolitionists, who read from the same Bible as did the slaveholders. The abolitionist movement was predicated upon the Christian principle of the dignity of all the redeemed in Christ. The pioneering English abolitionists Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) and William Wilberforce (1759-1833) were both motivated to work for an end to slavery by their deep Christian faith; so was the American anti-slavery crusader William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), who remarked in a speech in Charleston, South Carolina on the day Abraham Lincoln was shot: “Abolitionism, what is it? Liberty. What is liberty? Abolitionism. What are they both? Politically, one is the Declaration of Independence; religiously, the other is the Golden Rule of our Savior.”

Abraham Lincoln was himself much preoccupied with Genesis 3:19, “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.” In May 1864 he wrote to a delegation of Baptists, “To read in the Bible, as the word of God himself, that ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,’ and to preach there-from that, ‘In the sweat of other mans faces shalt thou eat bread,’ to my mind can scarcely be reconciled with honest sincerity.” Later that same year he replied to the wife of a Confederate prisoner who had appealed to him for the release of her husband: “You say your husband is a religious man; tell him when you meet him, that I say I am not much of a judge of religion, but that, in my opinion, the religion that sets men to rebel and fight against their government, because, as they think, that government does not sufficiently help some men to eat their bread on the sweat of other men’s faces, is not the sort of religion upon which people can get to heaven!” He gave this theme its most lapidary formulation in his Second Inaugural Address, saying of the opposing sides in the Civil War:

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.

This is, of course, the view that has prevailed in the Christian world: that it is indeed “strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.” And this was the view that was instrumental in the global abolition of slavery.

In the Islamic world, however, the situation is very different. Muhammad owned slaves, and like the Bible, the Qur’an takes the existence of slavery for granted, even as it enjoins the freeing of slaves under certain circumstances, such as the breaking of an oath: “Allah will not call you to account for what is futile in your oaths, but He will call you to account for your deliberate oaths: for expiation, feed ten indigent persons, on a scale of the average for the food of your families; or clothe them; or give a slave his freedom” (5:89). Jihad theorist Sayyid Qutb adduces this as evidence that in Islam “there is no difference between a prince and a pauper, a seigneur and a slave.” Nevertheless, while the freeing of a slave or two here and there is encouraged, the institution itself is never questioned. The Qur’an even gives a man permission to have sexual relations with his slave girls as well as with his wives: “The believers must (eventually) win through, those who humble themselves in their prayers; who avoid vain talk; who are active in deeds of charity; who abstain from sex, except with those joined to them in the marriage bond, or (the captives) whom their right hands possess, for (in their case) they are free from blame…” (23:1-6). A Muslim is not to have sexual relations with a woman who is married to someone else – except a slave girl: “And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess. It is a decree of Allah for you” (4:24).

Why should such passages be any more troubling to anyone than passages in the Bible such as Exodus 21:7-11, which gives regulations for selling one’s daughter as a slave? Because in Islam there is no equivalent of the Golden Rule, as articulated by Jesus: “So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12). The closest Islamic tradition comes to this is one hadith in which Muhammad says, “None of you will have faith till he likes for his (Muslim) brother what he likes for himself.” The parenthetical “Muslim” in that sentence was added by the Saudi translator, and does not appear in the original Arabic; however, “brother” is generally not used in Islamic tradition to refer to anyone but fellow Muslims. Also mitigating against a universal interpretation of this maxim is the sharp distinction between believers and unbelievers that runs through all of Islam. The Qur’an says that the followers of Muhammad are “ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another” (48:29), and that the unbelievers are the “worst of created beings” (98:6). One may exercise the Golden Rule in relation to a fellow Muslim, but according to the worldview presented by such verses and others like them, the same courtesy is not properly to be extended to unbelievers.

That is one principal reason why the primary source of slaves in the Islamic world has been non-Muslims, whether Jews, Christians, Hindus or pagans. Most slaves in Islam were non-Muslims who had been captured during jihad warfare. The pioneering scholar of the treatment of non-Muslims in Islamic societies, Bat Ye’or, explains the system that developed out of jihad conquest:

The jihad slave system included contingents of both sexes delivered annually in conformity with the treaties of submission by sovereigns who were tributaries of the caliph. When Amr conquered Tripoli (Libya) in 643, he forced the Jewish and Christian Berbers to give their wives and children as slaves to the Arab army as part of their jizya [tax on non-Muslims]. From 652 until its conquest in 1276, Nubia was forced to send an annual contingent of slaves to Cairo. Treaties concluded with the towns of Transoxiana, Sijistan, Armenia, and Fezzan (Maghreb) under the Umayyads and Abbasids stipulated an annual dispatch of slaves from both sexes. However, the main sources for the supply of slaves remained the regular raids on villages within the dar-al-harb [House of War, i.e., non-Islamic regions] and the military expeditions which swept more deeply into the infidel lands, emptying towns and provinces of their inhabitants.

Historian Speros Vryonis observes that “since the beginning of the Arab razzias [raids] into the land of Rum [the Byzantine Empire], human booty had come to constitute a very important portion of the spoils.” The Turks, as they steadily conquered more and more of Anatolia, reduced many of the Greeks and other non-Muslims there to slave status: “They enslaved men, women, and children from all major urban centers and from the countryside where the populations were defenseless.” The Indian historian K. S. Lal states that wherever jihadists conquered a territory, “there developed a system of slavery peculiar to the clime, terrain and populace of the place.” When Muslim armies invaded India, “its people began to be enslaved in droves to be sold in foreign lands or employed in various capacities on menial and not-so-menial jobs within the country.”

Slaves faced pressure to convert to Islam. Patricia Crone, in an analysis of Islamic political theories, notes that after a jihad battle was concluded, “male captives might be killed or enslaved…Dispersed in Muslim households, slaves almost always converted, encouraged or pressurized by their masters, driven by a need to bond with others, or slowly, becoming accustomed to seeing things through Muslim eyes even if they tried to resist.” Thomas Pellow, an Englishman who was enslaved in Morocco for twenty-three years after being captured as a cabin boy on a small English vessel in 1716, was tortured until he accepted Islam. For weeks he was beaten and starved, and finally gave in after his torturer resorted to “burning my flesh off my bones by fire, which the tyrant did, by frequent repetitions, after a most cruel manner.”

Slavery was taken for granted throughout Islamic history, as it was, of course, in the West as well up until relatively recent times. Yet while the European and American slave trade get lavish attention from historians (as well as from mau-mauing reparations advocates and their marks, guilt-ridden contemporary politicians), the Islamic slave trade actually lasted longer and brought suffering to a larger number of people. It is exceedingly ironic that Islam has been presented to American blacks as the egalitarian alternative to the “white man’s slave religion” of Christianity, since Islamic slavery operated on a larger scale than did the Western slave trade, and lasted longer. While historians estimate that the transatlantic slave trade, which operated between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, involved around 10.5 million people, the Islamic slave trade in the Sahara, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean areas began in the seventh century and lasted into the nineteenth, and involved 17 million people.

Also, the pressure to end it moved from Christendom into Islam, not the other way around. There was no Muslim Clarkson, Wilberforce or Garrison. In fact, when the British government in the nineteenth century adopted the view of Wilberforce and the other abolitionists as its own and thereupon began to put pressure on pro-slavery regimes, the Sultan of Morocco was incredulous precisely because of the audacity of the innovation that the British were proposing: “The traffic in slaves,” he noted, “is a matter on which all sects and nations have agreed from the time of the sons of Adam...up to this day.” He said that he was “not aware of its being prohibited by the laws of any sect” and that the very idea that anyone would question its morality was absurd: “no one need ask this question, the same being manifest to both high and low and requires no more demonstration than the light of day.”

However, it was not the unanimity of human practice, but the plain words of the Qur’an and Muhammad that were decisive in stifling abolitionist movements within the Islamic world. Slavery was abolished under Western pressure; the Arab Muslim slave trade in Africa was ended by the force of British arms in the nineteenth century.

There is evidence that slavery still continues beneath the surface in some majority-Muslim countries as well -- notably Saudi Arabia, which only abolished slavery in 1962, Yemen and Oman, both of which ended legal slavery in 1970, and Niger, which didn’t abolish slavery until 2004. In Niger, the ban is widely ignored, and as many as one million people remain in bondage. Slaves are bred, often raped, and generally treated like animals.

Some of the evidence that Islamic slavery still goes on consists of a spate of slavery cases involving Muslims in the United States. A Saudi named Homaidan Al-Turki was sentenced in September 2006 to 27 years to life in prison, for keeping a woman as a slave in his home in Colorado. For his part, Al-Turki claimed that he was a victim of anti-Muslim bias. He told the judge: “Your honor, I am not here to apologize, for I cannot apologize for things I did not do and for crimes I did not commit. The state has criminalized these basic Muslim behaviors. Attacking traditional Muslim behaviors was the focal point of the prosecution.” The following month, an Egyptian couple living in Southern California received a fine and prison terms, to be followed by deportation, after pleading guilty to holding a ten-year-old girl as a slave. And in January 2007, an attaché of the Kuwaiti embassy in Washington and his wife were charged with keeping three Christian domestic workers from India in slave-like conditions in al-Saleh’s Virginia home. One of the women remarked: “I believed that I had no choice but to continue working for them even though they beat me and treated me worse than a slave.”

Slavery is still practiced openly today in two Muslim countries, Sudan and Mauritania. In line with historical practice, Muslim slavers in the Sudan primarily enslave non-Muslims, and chiefly Christians. According to the Coalition Against Slavery in Mauritania and Sudan (CASMAS), a human rights and abolitionist movement founded in 1995, “The current Khartoum government wants to bring the non-Muslim Black South in line with Sharia law, laid down and interpreted by conservative Muslim clergy. The Black animist and Christian South remembers many years of slave raids by Arabs from the north and east and resists Muslim religious rule and the perceived economic, cultural, and religious expansion behind it.”

One modern-day Sudanese Christian slave, James Pareng Alier, was kidnapped and enslaved when he was twelve years old. Religion was a major element of his ordeal: “I was forced to learn the Koran and re-baptised Ahmed. They told me that Christianity was a bad religion. After a time we were given military training and they told us we would be sent to fight.” Alier has no idea of his family’s whereabouts. The BBC reported in March 2007 that slave raids “were a common feature of Sudan’s 21-year north-south war, which ended in 2005….According to a study by the Kenya-based Rift Valley Institute, some 11,000 young boys and girls were seized and taken across the internal border -- many to the states of South Darfur and West Kordofan….Most were forcibly converted to Islam, given Muslim names and told not to speak their mother tongue.” Yet even today, while non-Muslims were enslaved and often forcibly converted to Islam, their conversion does not lead to their freedom. Mauritanian anti-slavery campaigner Boubacar Messaoud explains that “it’s like having sheep or goats. If a woman is a slave, her descendants are slaves.”

Anti-slavery crusaders like Messaoud have great difficulty working against this attitude, because it is rooted in the Qur’an and Muhammad’s example. Particularly when the slaves are non-Muslims, there is no verse of the Qur’an corresponding to Lincoln’s favored Bible verse, Genesis 3:19, that anti-slavery Muslims can invoke against those who continue to approve of and even to practice slavery.

Hitchens isn't this stupid, and neither are his readers. But they have not troubled to learn this history, and no one is telling them about it.

Posted by Robert at December 22, 2007 9:56 AM
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At the height of the Roman empire it is estimated that as much as 40% of the population were slaves. The modern equivalent might be considered the "working poor" and even parts of the "middle" class. While modern corporate overlords do not wield life and death authority over its cubicle-bound "slaves", there are plenty of slavish metaphors to be found in today's corporate sweat shops.

Posted by: DrMack

at December 22, 2007 11:06 AM

Yes, Hitchens can be that stupid. For years he defended and swallowed Arab propaganda re the "Palestinians", thereby displaying his gullibility. More recently, he has defended the democratization campaign in Iraq, failing to show enough skepticism about it to to be called a realist.
Obviously, religion has good and bad aspects, perhaps because religions are reflective of human nature.
Hitchen's response to religion probably reflects his view of human nature in wanting to throw it all out so as to expunge the bad parts. Once again, we have an "intellectual" who wants to perfect human nature. I'll take imperfection, thanks.

Posted by: jewdog

at December 22, 2007 11:29 AM

Slavery was also practised in Asia. During the Joseon Dynasty in Korea, 30-50% of the population consisted of slaves (source). I'm sure they learned that from white Christians, though.

Posted by: Jesus Christ Supercop

at December 22, 2007 11:30 AM

I'm only halfway through it so far but I can already see that this is an extremely important essay that deserves maximum exposure. I recommend reworking it complete with footnotes and references and pitching it for a major periodical that entertains such commentary.

Posted by: Archimedes2

at December 22, 2007 11:40 AM

Archie,

Many thanks. Already done.

Cordially
Robert Spencer

Posted by: jihadwatch

at December 22, 2007 11:45 AM

Hitchens likes to think of himself as a brave iconoclast, speaking-truth-to-power and all that I'm-George-Orwell-of-this-age-and-I-take-no-prisoners sort of thing. I've mocked him before at this site, many times, quand il fait son petit Orwell but the longest whack at him, with Hitchens providing the evidence against himself, is the piece "Hitchens and Said" which, by the way, is listed at the Wikipedia entry for Hitchens. It appeared on Feb. 21, 2007 at www.newenglishreview.org.

Here it is:

Wednesday, 21 February 2007
Hitchens and Said

There are many examples that one can find on-line of the work of this "good egg" who "writes like a dream." [these were phrases used about Hitchens by someone who objected to some previous mocking of Hitchens by me]

A great friend and unctuous admirer of Edward Said, and though his tribute to Said does not reach the bathetic depths, or yawning heights, of Hamid Dabashi's tribute (google "Hamid Dabashi" and "Edward Said" -- you won't regret it), Hitchens own tribute to Said is memorable, for the same reasons, on a slightly different scale:

"The loss of Professor Edward Said, after an arduous battle with demoralizing illness that he bore very bravely, will be unbearable for his family, insupportable to his immense circle of friends, upsetting to a vast periphery of admirers and readers who one might almost term his diaspora, and depressing to all those who continue hoping for a decent agreement in his birthplace of Jerusalem.

To address these wrenching thoughts in their reverse order, one could commence by saying quite simply that if Edward's personality had been the human and moral pattern or example, there would be no "Middle East" problem to begin with. His lovely, intelligent, and sensitive memoir Out of Place was a witness to the schools and neighborhoods in Jerusalem and Cairo where fraternity between Arabs, Jews, Druses, Armenians, and others was a matter of course. (His memory also comprised a literary Beirut where the same could be said.) He took an almost aesthetic interest in the details, eccentricities, and welfare of his own particular confession—the Anglican Christians of Jerusalem and especially St. Georges school in the eastern part of the city—but it's hard if not impossible to imagine anyone with less sectarian commitment. When talking to him about the various types of sacred rage that poison the region, one gained the impression of someone to whom this sort of fanaticism was, in every declension of the word, quite foreign.

Indeed, if it had not been for the irruption of abrupt force into the life of his extended family and the ripping apart of the region by partition and subpartition, I can easily imagine Edward evolving as an almost apolitical person, devoted to the loftier pursuits of music and literature. To see and hear him play the piano was to be filled with envy as well as joy: One was witnessing a rather angst-prone person who had developed the perfect recreation to an extraordinary pitch. To ask him for a tutorial and a reading list, as I more than once did, was to be humbled by the sheer reach of his erudition. I can still hear the doors that opened in my mind as he explicated George Eliot's rather recondite Daniel Deronda.

On one occasion in New York, after giving us a tremendous tour of the Metropolitan Museum during its show on the art of Andalusia (and filling out the most exquisite details on the syntheses and paradoxes of Islamic, Moorish, and Jewish Spain), he took my own wife on a tour of the shops to advise her expertly on the best replacement for a mislaid purse. I never met a woman who did not admire him, and I never knew him to be anything but gallant. As I look back, I am inclined to be overcome at the number of such occasions, where his bearing and address were so exemplary and his companionship such a privilege.

His feeling for the injustice done to Palestine was, in the best sense of this overused term, a visceral one. He simply could not reconcile himself to the dispossession of a people or to the lies and evasions that were used to cover up this offense. He was by no means simple-minded or one-sided about this: In a public dialogue with Salman Rushdie 15 years ago, he described the Palestinians as "victims of the victims," an ironic formulation that hasn't been improved upon. But nor did he trust those who introduced pseudo-complexities as a means of perpetuating the status quo. I know a shocking number of people who find that they can be quite calm about the collective punishment of Palestinians yet become wholly incensed at the symbolic stone he once threw—from Lebanon! Personally, I preferred his joint enterprise with Daniel Barenboim to provide musical training for Israeli and Palestinian children. But for Edward, injustice was to be rectified, not rationalized. I think that it was, for him, surpassingly a matter of dignity. People may lose a war or a struggle or be badly led or poorly advised, but they must not be humiliated or treated as alien or less than human. It was the downgrading of the Palestinians to the status of a "problem" (and this insult visited upon them in their own homeland) that aroused his indignation. That moral energy, I am certain, will outlive him.

I knew and admired him for more than a quarter-century, and I hope I will not be misunderstood if I say that his moral energy wasn't always matched by equivalent political judgment. Indeed, it should be no criticism of anyone to say that politics isn't their best milieu, especially if the political life has been forced upon them. Edward had a slight tendency to self-pity, and the same chord was struck even in the best of his literary work, which often expressed a too-highly developed sense of injury and victimhood. (I am thinking of certain passages in his Orientalism and some of the essays in Culture and Imperialism as well.) He was sometimes openly alarmed at the use made of his scholarship by younger academic poseurs who seemed to despise the classical canon of literature that he so much revered. Yet he was famously thin-skinned and irascible, as I have good reason to remember, if any criticism became directed at himself. Some of that criticism was base and outrageous and sordidly politicized—I have just finished reading the obituary in the New York Times, which in a cowardly way leaves open the question as to whether Edward, or indeed any other Palestinian, lost a home in the tragedy of 1947-48—but much of it deserved more patience than he felt he had to spare. And he was capable of stooping to mere abuse when attacking other dissidents—particularly other Arab dissidents, and most particularly Iraqi and Kurdish ones—with whom he did not agree. I simply had to stop talking to him about Iraq over the past two years. He could only imagine the lowest motives for those in favor of regime change in Baghdad, and he had a vivid tendency to take any demurral as a personal affront.

But it can be admirable in a way to go through life with one skin too few, to be easily agonized and upset and offended. Too many people survive, or imagine that they do, by coarsening themselves and by protectively dulling their sensitivity to the point of acceptance. This would never be Edward's way. His emotional strength—one has to resort to cliché sometimes—was nonetheless also a weakness.

I was astonished, when reading his memoirs, to learn that such a polished and poised fellow had never lost the sense that he was awkward and clumsy. And yet this man of enviable manners could be both those things when he chose. He did come, as a member of Yasser Arafat's Palestine National Council, to meet at Reagan's State Department with George Shultz. (Indeed, he could claim to have been the intellectual and moral architect of the "mutual recognition" policy of the PLO at the Algiers conference in 1988.) When invited to the summit between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat in Washington in 1993, however—which I happen to know that he was earnestly entreated to attend by the Clinton White House—he told me that it was quite simply beneath his dignity to take part in such a media farce. Now, by no standard did the 1993 meeting sink below the level of the Shultz one, and by no means had Arafat become on that day any more contemptible than Edward later discovered him to be. But it wasn't just that inconsistency that distressed me: It was the feeling that Edward was on the verge of extreme dudgeon before I could press the matter one inch further. I can't shake the feeling that a microcosm of the Israeli-Palestinian agony is contained in this apparently negligible anecdote.

There is at present a coalition, named the Palestinian National Initiative, which never gets reported about. It is an alliance of secular and democratic forces among the Palestinians that rejects both clerical fundamentalism and the venality of the Palestinian "Authority." It was partly launched by Edward Said, and its main spokesman is Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, a distinguished physician and very brave individual, to whom Edward introduced me last year. In our final conversation a few weeks ago, Edward challenged me angrily about my failure to write enough on this neglected group, which certainly enjoys a good deal of popular support and which deserves a great deal more international attention. Perhaps then I can do a last service, and also dip a flag in salute to a fine man, if I invite you to direct your browsers toward the sites for Barghouthi and the PNI."

From first to last, this is unbearable, stupid and sentimental and in many places, flatly false. As for that writing "like a dream" - it would take about two minutes to edit the piece, cutting here and there, to make the prose, awful as it is (there's nothing to be done about the thoughts and feelings of this "good egg"), much better.

Said was dismembered in feline fashion by Bernard Lewis in "The Question of 'Orientalism'." Last year Robert Irwin's "For Lust of Knowledge," a refutation of Said, essentially a book-length footnote to Lewis' article, appeared. Irwin demonstrates conclusively what many (but not Christopher Hitchens) knew, that Said's misrepresentations of several centuries of distinguished Orientalists was comical in the things he got wrong, the things he left out, his inability to comprehend disinterested curiosity or disinterested scholarship, so foreign were they to the mind and even imagination of Edward Said. Everything that he could get wrong, Edward Said got wrong.

A few months from now Ibn Warraq's "Defending the West: A Response to Edward Said" will be published. I have read the manuscript. That book deals with how Edward Said, and his acolytes and worshippers and epigones, have so crudely misconceived and misrepresented the nature of the Western world and its art, its literature, its scholarship, its openness to what Said and friends like to call "the Other" and to then claim for that "Other" a long history of victimisation. At long last, that Saidian wind that kills, and has had chilling and killing effects for nearly thirty years on innocent students and on fearful or careerist teachers, who have been bullied by Saidism in how they learn about, how they write about, how they teach about,how they comprehend or fail to, works of lasting artistic and literary value produced in the maligned West, works that always and everywhere, in the impoverished and thoroughly politicized mental universe of Edward Said were always reduced to ideological counters,and playthings, and weapons. For one example, consider only Said's comments on Jane Austen, and the reasons for his dismissal of her. Is that the work of a critic? Is that what Samuel Johnson, or Coleridge, or Matthew Arnold, or Jacques Barzun, or Vladimir Nabokov, or anyone of sense at all, would regard as legitimate literary criticism? Said did, and so did his worshippers. And among those worshippers was, for several decades, Christopher Hitchens, who is a "good egg" and who "writes like a dream." And Said did the same in his treatment -- not exactly reminiscent of Gombrich or Panofsky, is Edward Said -- of painters on Oriental themes (and this, too, is dealt with magnificently by Ibn Warraq).

Said's "Orientalism" gave license not only for him but for others to offer the same approach to books and paintings, and the results we see, circumspectly, all about us. And "Orientalism" was not the only ludicrous work that Said produced. There is his work of blatant propaganda, "The Question of Palestine" which a week in the library would cure anyone of taking seriously. It is so full of falsity, so easily rebutted, but apparently a great many people never took the trouble to rebut, the same people who go about prating about the "Palestinian people" who since time immemorial have been tilling the soil of a place called "Palestine." One wishes that those who took Said's work seriously, as Hitchens did, to have the decency, before continuing to spout off, to read something sober on the matter, such as the studies by the the Australian scholar of jurisprudence Julius Stone, and then the nonsense would stop. But Christopher Hitchens never had time to spare, and still doesn't, to engage in such reading, though he continues to hold all kinds of self-assured views on the "Palestinians" and on Israel, views entirely unaffected, one might note, by the glimmer of understanding he is beginning to show -- but just a glimmer -- about Islam. Nor would he likely to engage in a thorough study of the demographic and cadastral history of the area known as "Israel" or "Palestine," over the past two millennia or over the past few centuries, or even during the period from the establishment of the Mandate for Palestine. Why should Christopher Hitchens, at any time during the past three decades of pontificating about "Palestine" and the "Palestinians," ever have bothered to study the exact terms and intentions of the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations in establishing that particular Mandate, and how the Charter of the U.N. requires it to honor those terms and intentions, not to change them. That's too much for Christopher Hitchens. He's got a column to write. He's got lectures to give. He's got appearances on television to get ready for. He's got to have opinions on so many things. So many opinions to give, so little time. It would be like asking him to discuss Resolution 242, what those who carefully crafted it intended that Resolution to mean, and who opposed its adoption, or tried before its adoption to change its wording, or who afterwards deliberately denied that it meant what they knew perfectly well it meant (which is why they had tried so long to change it), and endowed it with a different meaning, one which they then convinced many others to accept. Does Christopher Hitchens have the time to find out Lord Caradon said, and Ambassador Arthur Goldberg, and British Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart, about Resolution 242, or such "details" and that little phrase "secure and defensible borders"? Of course he doesn't. It's too complicated, for the broad sweep of that truth-to-power legitimate heir to Orwell, Christopher Hitchens.

Hitchens never saw through Edward Said -- but Edward Said was a collection of things that could be seen through, and were seen through, by those whose, such as Bernard Lewis or Clive Dewey or Keith Windschuttle or a thousand other historians, art historians, literary scholars, were not for one minute taken in by, or inveigled to agreeing with, the primitive notions of art and literature and history that Edward Said held, and put into practice, and preached. This should not be forgotten or forgiven just because more recently Hitchens has properly denounced George Galloway (is that an achievement?)and others of that ilk. If the bar is to be set that low, then all should win the glittering prizes.

What is offered here is just a sample of the quality of the thought, and of the prose, of Christopher Hitchens. Some are apparently satisfied with little here below -- Norman Mailer, say, rather than Nabokov or Joyce. Some may find Hitchens is perfectly acceptable, a "good egg" who even, another someone suggests, "writes like a dream." But I allow myself to believe that not everyone is so easily pleased, and that many not-easily-pleased souls come to this website because they expect something better, from those not so easily pleased. .

Much more might be offered into evidence, but I don't have the time. All kinds of things have come up. But for now that is enough. That is more than enough.

Posted by: Hugh

at December 22, 2007 11:46 AM

Hitchens isn't this stupid, and neither are his readers. But they have not troubled to learn this history, and no one is telling them about it.

Actually, the reviewer is this stupid. Anyone who thinks that Hitchens is soft on Islam isn't paying attention.

Hitchens criticises the Christian role in slavery, in order to counter the criticism that Christianity helped abolish it. Yes, it did, but it also persisted in it for centuries. Dropping the context of Hitchens's argument is disingenuous at best. I think that you, Sir, will know full well what it is like dealing with disingenous reviews.

I also note that this reviewer doesn't take up Hitchens's point of the disgraceful alliance of fascism and Catholicism.

Take the following, just for starters:

His argumentation has been found flimsy by philosophers and rhetoricians; riddled with errors by biblical scholars and theologians; sloppy and tendentious by historians of religion; unrigorous by social scientists; breezy and brazen by literary critics; and obnoxious by most readers of good will.

What philosophers, rhetoricians, biblical scholars, theologians, historians, social scientists, literary critics, and readers is this man talking about? No answer. It's not hard to see why this answer is lacking. I have followed the "Four Horsemen" closely, and they - Hitchens's especially - tend to eat their rhetorical opponents for breakfast. Invoking 'biblical scholars' is particularly asinine, as Hitchens typically knows the Bible better than most of his opponents.

BTW, "god is not Great" contains a long section on Islam, which is as good an introduction to the subject as one could wish. It is also worth noting that Christopher Hitchens has been fighting particularly fiercely against the apologists and sympathizers of Islam, ever since 9/11.

Now, and I will stress this, none of this translates into a justification of Islam and its horrors. Anyone who thinks that Hitchens is an apologist for Islam is a fool.

And it is worth noting that if we are want to maintain our "Judeo-Christian" values (I maintain our civilisation is far more Graeco-Roman, but nevermind) two of the four Horsemen are on record and wanting the Bible studied and taught, and a third - Daniel Dennet - has argued that alot of the legacy of Christianity is positive.

Honestly, this kind of feuding is ridiculous. And I do think it is a little cheap to attack someone's position based on a review of their work, as opposed to the work itself.

Posted by: Fanusi Khiyal

at December 22, 2007 11:48 AM

The slave trade between the New World and Africa was aided by other black Africans. It was a way for tribes to weaken their adversaries. I guess Hitchens would deny this.

Hitchens is not stupid, but he is not too bright either, and he is one of those hate filled atheists who cannot see beyond his eyelashes. He, like Admiral Halsey who let is military judgement get pre-empted by his hatred of the Japanese, hates Christians and therefore let his hatred pre-empt what little intellect he has. He is one atheist whom I wish had had never learned to write.

Posted by: Pelayo

at December 22, 2007 11:49 AM

N.B. By "the reviewer" I mean whoever penned that thing for American Spectator.

Posted by: Fanusi Khiyal

at December 22, 2007 11:49 AM

Robert,

Wow! Great post.
Your comments about St. Paul had me thinking about how I have had conversations with secular feminists who use St. Paul's writings about, "suffering a woman not to teach," as a sticking point for rejecting Christianity. Yet, as you brilliantly pointed out concerning slavery, he was just "accepting the cultural status quo instead of challenging it."

Just like those who choose to deny the respect St. Paul showed towards Philemon the slave, secular feminists turn a blind eye towards St. Paul's avant-garde use of (and respect towards) women in his ministry.

Oh well, I'll get down off my soapbox, now. It's just that your post had me really thinking about how the secular community likes to rewrite history in an attempt to derogate America's Judeo-Christian values.

Thank you for the great article.

Cheers

P.S. - I've linked to it on our website under the heading,"Myth Busting.

Cheers

Posted by: Doctor Bulldog

at December 22, 2007 12:15 PM

Hitchens is not soft on Islam. He even acknowledges it as the most threatening of ideologies currently, but where he falls short is that he states Islam's current status as being on top of the global ideological threat list, as circumstantial. That lack of comprehension and foresight is commonplace amongst the atheistic, self-proclaimed intellectual elites.

His major flaw is not being able to rate faith based ideologies on any real and permanent scale, as is indicative with his arguments about slavery in the above referenced piece. This is a standard ideological moral equivalence position and it is no less patently false, even when someone like Hitchens attempts to validate it.

Speaking of slavery, what strikes me noticably is the current population of Muslims worldwide, many of whom take great pride in their willing submission and revel in their self-imposed slavery to Allah. I don't believe this to be a mainstream belief in any of faith based ideology that I am aware of.

Posted by: awake

at December 22, 2007 12:16 PM

Slavery in Western Europe gradually withered away during the Middle Ages, until by their end, slavery was almost unknown there. To be sure, many Europeans still remained in some degree of servitude, as serfs, but this was much different from chattel slavery. For one thing, serfs could not be bought and sold by their masters.
Slavery in the western world was re-invigorated by the great discoveries. In the Americas, the annihilation of the natives by Old World epidemic diseases meant that there was no labor force for the plantations of the new European overlords. Where better to turn than Africa, where the great discoveries had brought Europeans into contact with the great slave-trading empires of West Africa. Europeans might have supplied the labor force, but they would have had to be enticed by various means, such as land grants, freedom from various taxes, freedom to maintain their own churches, freedom from a military draft, etc. All these were familiar to Europeans, and had been used for centuries by eastern European princes to encourage westerners to settle in their lands -- thus the German enclaves from the Elbe to the Volga, and in the Baltic region. How much easier it was to simply buy slaves in the West African kingdoms. One didn't need to offer them any special privileges, and they were just as resistant to epidemic disease as the Europeans. One of the real "weasel words" in current usage is "enslaved" when used to describe blacks in the Old South and Caribbean. Very few African blacks brought to the New World were actually enslaved by the Europeans, in the true meaning of the term, i.e. that they were free men in Africa who were kidnapped and brought to America and sold as slaves. No, they were already slaves in Africa, and were simply bought by Europeans (instead of Arabs or other Africans) in the great slave-marts of West Africa and transported to America. To be sure, the European purchases gave added impetus to the trade, by opening a vast new market, and thus encouraging the predatory African rulers to round up even more victims from weaker tribes, but the Europeans did not create the slave-trade. West African blacks were, by and large, "enslaved" by other West African blacks.
And, as noted in the posting, it was Christian Europe that criticized the slave trade almost from its beginning, and that eventually put an end to it, except for the remnant still being practiced in some Moslem countries.
Also, it might be noted that over 80% of those in the trans-Atlantic trade went to Brazil and the West Indies. Less than 10% were brought to the American South.

Posted by: ebonystone

at December 22, 2007 12:38 PM

In reality it is not possible to own another person.
But we don't live in reality. We live in a lie society, where everything is twisted to fit an agenda. Because the lie is constantly presented as the truth, people will begin to believe, and then live the lie. This process has been going on ever since Adam told God, 'The woman made me do it'.
Mohammad made good use of the oft told lies.
The idea that it is possible to own another person is a lie. Money can be paid, paperwork exchange, laws obeyed, and it is still a lie.
Slavery is restraint. Humans cant stand to be restrained and will always try and escape, either physically or mentally or both. If you tie someone up, they will try to wiggle loose, if you lock someone up, they will try to escape, if you enslave someone, they will escape if possible. Or endure what is not natural to them. Slavery is an unnatural condition, forced on some people by by those inflicted with gross materialism of the worse kind. The appeal to personally own another people is a self centered, arrogant, supremacist, egotripping, and an un-human attitude based on lies. The idea that it is permissible to rob another of their liberty, even for a moment, as in slavery, is an act of black magick. And then evil.
Scripture that seems to make slavery ok, needs to be read with a raised eyebrow. It is not OK, not now, not thousands of years ago...never.

Posted by: duh_swami

at December 22, 2007 1:03 PM

There is a big difference between being atheist and being anti-Christian.

Posted by: special_guest

at December 22, 2007 1:04 PM

There is a big difference between being atheist and being anti-Christian.
Posted by: special_guest

That is a fact and applies in my case. I am a type of atheist (what type is not appropriate here) LOL,
but am not the least bit anti-Christian, and in fact regularly defend Christianity, sometimes from Christians. I love it when Mormons or Jehovah's
Witnesses come to my door. Talking to these folks is something I am really good at LOL. I did not invite them so I don't let them do all the talking. When they leave, they shake my hand, thank me very much, and are happy on departing, but they do depart.
They simply don't know what to think of me,
I put them in a state of awe, especially when I bring up Allah and Mohammad. Most of them never heard of Aiesha...what a revelation that is...gets em every time...cheers...

Posted by: duh_swami

at December 22, 2007 1:35 PM

Islam has two Achilles' heels in its doctrine that need to be constantly brought before the public, the woman's lack of equality with the man and the acceptance of slavery, both made sacred, unchangeable and eternal by the koran and sunnah.

One antidote:
http://www.politicalislam.com/Submission_of_Women_and_Slaves.htm

Posted by: the poetess

at December 22, 2007 2:08 PM

Speaking of slavery, I've read that between 1609, and 1800, two-thirds of all white people who came to America, came against their will, and were forced to work as slaves.

Europeans from Ireland and England, were literally kidnapped off the streets and forced to come to America.

The word kidnapping actually comes from this time and comes from "kdnabbing" since children were taken off the streets and taken to America to work as slaves.

By the way, I know christians, my cousin is one, who still defend slavery because it is accepted in the bible.

Posted by: Voltaire

at December 22, 2007 2:33 PM

I'm confused.

Isn't slavery evil?

Wasn't it always evil?

So shouldn't the Judeo-Christian God been able to figure this out despite the fact that his creations, the humans, were not? Shouldn't he have given them some specific guidance on this?

Sorry, but you are still addicted to making excuses for the faults of Christianity. I'm with Hitchens.

Christianity has managed to go with the flow and now it is anti-slavery (just as now it opposes the similarly unfashionable Judeocide about which it mostly kept quiet when it really mattered). Islam follows a different flow, in fact hardly flows at all. Its faults, compared to those of Judaism and Christianity, are pretty much set in concrete, because Muhammad the perfect man set his example with mass murder, rape, robbery, and child molestation.

Posted by: Karl Pov

at December 22, 2007 2:43 PM

Some of this anti-Christian sentiment is absolutely ridiculous. Can any of you Athiests honestly say that the world would have been better off without it?

Hitchens is a typical Athiest, a self-proclaimed genius who's too smart to listen to another opinion. Who no doubt believes people of faith are no different then witchdoctors and fortune tellers.

People like him are unreachable, once someone believes they know it all they can't be taught. Afterall what's left to learn?

Arrogance leads to ignorance.

Posted by: GuitarBob

at December 22, 2007 3:38 PM

The main problem with Hitchens (like Dawkins) is he stretches facts and history to make an argument. I don’t think many “radical atheist” realize how important Christian theology played in most of the major movements in post-black death western history. They view it as a fight between non-Christian vs. Christian, when in truth it was a fight between two different views of Christian dogma.

An example:

The Scientific Revolution: Was one group of Christians who wanted to get closer to god by studying nature (science) vs. those who thought that was against the faith. Most of the greats like Kepler, Newton, Galileo, Descartes etc. were driven by their Christian views. Those that opposed them may have belonged to the same religion, but that should not change the fact they were motivated by their views of Christianity. If you listen to a typical “radical atheist” tell it they were all anti-Christians, yet the three greatest physicist of all time: Newton (Christian), Maxwell (Christian) and Einstein (Jewish) were all open about their work being inspired by their religion. That should say something about the Christian-Judaic tradition….even if you don't accept it as devine.

Posted by: greatcometof1577

at December 22, 2007 3:40 PM

mistake above...

divine = devine

Posted by: greatcometof1577

at December 22, 2007 3:43 PM

Karl Pov

Christianity didn't oppose slavery because it became popular to do so. Christainity was the thing that made opposing slavery popular.

You had it backwards, but hey if you need to attack Christianity to feel better about your own beliefs (or lack of) then go ahead. I just find it ironic that an Athiest fearful of Christian dogma, would start inventing his own anti-christian dogma.

Posted by: GuitarBob

at December 22, 2007 3:46 PM

Some of this anti-Christian sentiment is absolutely ridiculous. Can any of you Athiests honestly say that the world would have been better off without it?

Are you serious?

Without Christianity, we would not have had to deal with the sweltering horror of the Dark Ages, and nor would we have now to contend with the bastard offspring of Christianity and Judeism - Islam. And given that "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" comes straight out of the Acts of the Apostles, we would have been spared the nightmare of Communism too.

And then there's this nonsense:

The Scientific Revolution: Was one group of Christians who wanted to get closer to god by studying nature (science) vs. those who thought that was against the faith. Most of the greats like Kepler, Newton, Galileo, Descartes etc. were driven by their Christian views. Those that opposed them may have belonged to the same religion, but that should not change the fact they were motivated by their views of Christianity.

You may remember the reception that Galileo recieved at the hands of his fellow Christians, including such luminaries as Martin Luther.

Newton (Christian), Maxwell (Christian) and Einstein (Jewish) were all open about their work being inspired by their religion. That should say something about the Christian-Judaic tradition….even if you don't accept it as devine.

Excuse me, but Einstein was not motivated by his religion. While he did make use of the term 'God', he used it in the metaphorical, Spinoza sense, to express his wonder of the Universe. It is hogwash to claim otherwise.

Posted by: Fanusi Khiyal

at December 22, 2007 3:57 PM

greatcometof1577

The fact that the scientific revolution began in a Christian society is no coincidence either. The belief in an orderly universe created by a rational god meant that the universe could be studied.

Much of the western world's strength comes from our embrace of science, which would not have been possible without Christianity.

Even non-believers should recognize that Christianity has largely been a positive force for the world.

Posted by: GuitarBob

at December 22, 2007 4:00 PM

It's a shame some reviewers comment on a book, and the authors perceived position, without reading it first. Or perhaps they are being deliberately misleading....That aside;

greatcometof1577, I agree with you that those scientists may have initially set out trying to understand their god, but where exactly did their research lead? Did they come to understand god or did they realise there may be another answer?

Also, Einstein went on record to state he did not believe in a personal god, as he was fed up with 'believers' trying to claim him as 'one of their own'.

GuitarBob, I believe Christianity was equally persuasive in both advocating and then abolishing slavery.

Christianity is good as it accepts change, whereas Islam is stuck in a rut, refusing even to discuss possible change.

Posted by: Xeno

at December 22, 2007 4:04 PM

Excuse me, but didn't ancient Greeks know about the atom?

Or are you going to say that christianity is responsible for that too?

Just because brilliant thinkers just happened to live in a society where the dominant faith was christianity, doesn't mean that christianity had anything to do with their discoveries.

Posted by: Voltaire

at December 22, 2007 4:09 PM

Robert:

If you’re planning to publish your essay (as you suggest), then there’s a line that you might want to modify. You state:

“No culture on earth, Christian or otherwise, ever questioned the morality of slavery until relatively recent times.”

You may get away with that statement because of your use of the word ‘culture’, but it would be more accurate if you acknowledged that many individuals, probably throughout history, saw the evils of slavery. What comes to mind is what Euripides wrote in about 425 BCE:

“Slavery... that thing of evil, by its nature evil, forcing submission from a man what no man can yield to.”

www.zenofzero.net

Posted by: nick222

at December 22, 2007 4:37 PM

Those here who think that it was the EEEVIL nasty wicked Christians and their horrible, repressive Biblical text, who were solely responsible for the so-called 'Dark Ages' - go read Tom Cahill, "How the Irish Saved Civilisation" (strictly, it should be: 'western latin civilisation'). Go on. Read it.

Pagan Ireland was a slave-keeping, head-taking, human-sacrificing society. It was a great place to be, sure - but only if you were top of the heap. Not so great if you were one of the slaves.

Dark Age Ireland was converted to Christianity BY ONE OF ITS SLAVES - a Christian Briton who was grabbed by Irish slave raiders, lived in Ireland, escaped...and went back to Ireland, and transformed it. NOT with an invading army. He didn't take so much as a sword with him. The Irish were not 'colonised' or 'conquered' by any 'christian' power. Nobody was forced to convert. Nope. Just Patrick, on his own two feet, with ...a story.

And guess what? - after Ireland was Christianised slavery kind of faded out of the picture. The whole society became quite distinctively different - and, to judge from the explosion of art, building, poetry, and general humming busyness of human activity, quite a bit more peaceful and happier, until the pagan Vikings started invading some centuries later.

The fact remains - in human history, the one and only civilisation that has nurtured people who seriously and consistently questioned slavery and determinedly - and mostly successfully - attempted to wipe it out, was a civilisation deeply shaped by Christianity. Because, as Robert has pointed out, and as I have noted as regards St Patrick, that questioning of slavery, in Christendom, long pre-dates the 'Enlightenment'.

Indeed, it goes back all the way to the Exodus: the one and only sacred story in which a god actually cares about what happens to SLAVES. Look up Joshua Berman, "God's Alliance With Man", and get your head around the idea that we may just possibly owe the original kernel of the concept of the dignity and agency of the human person - of every human person, not just of Kings, Heroes and Really Important People Who Boss Others Around - to...the Sinai Covenant, the spiritual magna carta of humanity.

Few today are capable of seeing just how thoroughly subversive, how dangerously liberating, the Genesis and Exodus narrative actually are, as regards every other 'origin myth' on offer.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy

at December 22, 2007 4:47 PM

Slight correction: final phrase above should read, "as compared to every other 'origin myth' on offer in the ancient world".

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy

at December 22, 2007 4:50 PM

dumbledoresarmy:

Come on, now, get real. Genesis and Exodus abundantly show that the Jewish god cares only for his “chosen people” – a con pulled off by Ezra to gain control over the Israelites.

As for earlier myths about PEOPLE caring about what happens to slaves (not gods, since no evidence is available to suggest that any god ever existed), check out the much earlier Yoruba genesis myth:

“Once, there was only the solitary being, the primogenitor of god and man, attended only by his slave, Atunda… However, the slave rebelled. For reasons best known to himself he rolled a huge boulder onto the god as he tended his garden on a hillside, sent him hurtling into the abyss in a thousand and one fragments.”

Good for Atunda! Would that he were still around to send the rest of the concocted gods “hurtling into the abyss in a thousand and one fragments.”

www.zenofzero.net

Posted by: nick222

at December 22, 2007 5:30 PM

I think both sides of the discussion are broad brushing what effect religion had in society. It is a lot more complicated than that. I just checked out an autobiography on John Westley. Have not got very far into it but it is clear that there was positive and negative aspects related to Judo Christian beliefs in his time (1700-1800). This was when the slave trade was going that Hitchens refers too.

The Bible says that believers are the salt of the earth. This I take as a preservative function (as in meat not rotting). Or to put it another way a restraint against evil and wickedness. Islam is the rot. The other thing to remember is who are Christians. The detractors tend to label everyone in a society as Christian. The advocates identify only know Christian who have made a positive contribution. Net net Christianity has made and is a positive influence on society and these attacks are disingenuous and have another motive behind them.

As far as slavery is concerned, God has bigger fish to fry that men enslaving men.

Romans 6:16-23 Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone {as} slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in {further} lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If men headed what is discussed above the slave issue would be nonexistent.

6:16-23 الرومان الم تعلم انه عندما لكم انفسكم على هذا النحو احدهم () عبيدا للطاعة ، أنتم عبيد من احد منهم انك تطيع ، اما الخطيئة التي ادت الى الوفاه ، او من الطاعه مما ادى الى الصواب؟ ولكن بفضل الله ليكون على الرغم من ان كنتم عبيدا للخطيءه ، وأصبح مطيعا لكم من القلب لأنه شكل من أشكال التعليم التي كنت قد ارتكبت ، وبعد أن تحررت من الخطيئة ، وأصبحت عبيدا لكم من الصواب. وانا اتكلم من الناحية الانسانيه بسبب ضعف الخاص بك لحم. مثلما عرضتموه الخاصة بك لاعضاء كرقيق الشوائب ، والى الخروج على القانون ، مما ادى الى مزيد من () الفوضى ، وحتى الآن هذا حسابك اعضاء كرقيق الصواب ، مما اسفر عن التقديس. عندما كنت لعبيدا للخطيءه ، كنتم الحرة في الشأن الصواب. ثم ما هي فائدة لكم ثم المستمده من الاشياء التي أنت الآن بالخجل؟ لنتائج تلك الأمور هي الموت. ولكن الآن وبعد ان تحررت من الخطيئة والمستعبدين الى الله ، انت جني المنافع الخاصة بك ، مما ادى الى التقديس ، ونتائج ، والحياة الابديه. لالاجور الخطيئة هي الموت ، ولكن هدية مجانيه من الله فهي حياة أبدية في المسيح يسوع ربنا.

Oh, and Merry Christmas!

Posted by: Im.mad.as.HELL!

at December 22, 2007 5:45 PM

Secularists seem to want to claim every societal advance in Western society, when historically their numbers have been so small as to make them marginal players, at best. The most predominantly secular movement in Western history, bar none, was socialism/communism and its variants. Although theoretically anti-slavery, those movements, and the secularists who led them, willingly enslaved entire classes of people. On a proportional basis, I doubt secularists, once in actual power and not just "speechifying" have any more to be proud of than any other group of people.

Not that I'm anti-secularist, but a little self-criticism seems warranted. And the excuse, "But Communism was really a religion!" is pretty weak. We don't let the leftists ascribe non-Islamic rationales to Islamic radicals' actions, so why should we allow secularists to ascribe non-secularist rationales to Communism?

Posted by: venividivici

at December 22, 2007 5:52 PM

I can't think of a major, world culture which did not indulge in slavery, including the New World indian cultures (Aztecs, Mayans, etc.), Hindus (untouchables), and of course the Chinese, which only abolished it in 1910. Great piece, Robert. Totally fascinating.

Posted by: Seymour Paine

at December 22, 2007 5:58 PM

@venividivici

We don't let the leftists ascribe non-Islamic rationales to Islamic radicals' actions, so why should we allow secularists to ascribe non-secularist rationales to Communism?

To keep in line with the discussion I would change the above phrase to read
"so why should we allow secularists to ascribe non-secularist rationales to Christianity?"

Posted by: Im.mad.as.HELL!

at December 22, 2007 6:01 PM

"Without Christianity, we would not have had to deal with the sweltering horror of the Dark Ages, and nor would we have now to contend with the bastard offspring of Christianity and Judeism - Islam. And given that "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" comes straight out of the Acts of the Apostles, we would have been spared the nightmare of Communism too."

Posted by : Fanusi Khiyal

That is so absurd I don't even know where to begin. To even suggest that the dark ages wasn't caused by the various Germanic tribes that invaded the Roman Empire, but instead by people converting to Christianity is simply insane.

But why be objective about history when you can distort it to fit your deluded world views.

My only question to you is why do you hate Christianity? And don't tell me it's because of history or research. It's obvious from your post that you hated Christianity first and then sought out reasons to justify it.

Posted by: GuitarBob

at December 22, 2007 6:04 PM

dumbledoresarmy

Also don't forget that one of the main reasons for the end of the Viking era was their conversion to Christianity. The pagan religion of the Vikings promised eternal life in Valhalla only to warriors who died bravely on the battlefield.

When people no longer believed that murder and plunder would grant them a place in the afterlife they became less inclined to go do it. Which is something to keep in mind when dealing with the Jihadi threat.

Posted by: GuitarBob

at December 22, 2007 6:14 PM

Please don't let this topic devolve into a contest between Christianity and atheism. Christopher Hitchens is not the Pope of Atheism.

There are of course anti-religious atheists, including anti-Christian ones. But as special_guest and duh_swami say, many atheists are not at all anti-Christian, including many of us on this forum.

I am a default atheist since I don't subscribe to any religion but I am also friendly towards most religions and have serious issues with only ONE religion (try to guess which one that might be).

In fact I am a defender of Christianity and only worry that it might not be strong enough to resist Islam in the long run due to its pacifist elements and desire to forgive and love an enemy (which, in Islam's case will never be reciprocated).

So before painting ALL atheists as one way or another vis-a-vis religion, remind yourself that many atheists are FRIENDS of Christianity and stand alongside you in the fight FOR Western Civilization and AGAINST the scourge of Supremacist Islam (which seeks to subjugate all of us under its UNforgiving yoke).

Merry Christmas! (and I mean that sincerely).

Posted by: alexon

at December 22, 2007 8:10 PM

To the question that constitutes the title, the answer should be clear: Of course he can.

Posted by: Hugh

at December 22, 2007 8:21 PM

Hugh, you blow me away either your write a page and a half or more then out of the blue I had to read the author of this last post twice. LOL

As someone once said, "Stupid is as stupid does."

Posted by: Im.mad.as.HELL!

at December 22, 2007 8:42 PM

Slaves are bred, often raped, and generally treated like animals.

It gets worse, from 2003:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/22/1053585643490.html

Posted by: pez

at December 22, 2007 8:58 PM

My feeling is that there is something funny with the numbers. How can there be an estimated 1 million slaves in Dar al-Islam today and yet over 12 centuries only 17 million slaves under Islam? This is considering that, although the practice is still rampant in Dar al-Islam, it has "officially been outlawed in most of that part of the world for several generations now, so it must take place in dark corners and covertly; it cannot flourish en masse as it has done for centuries.

I have seen the 1 million figure in a number of places; apparently left wing human rights advocates and right wing pro-western commentators agree on it, so let us say that it is a reasonable estimate.

Let us say that this number has been roughly constant since the caliphates first spread over a significant part of the globe, and the whole machinery of Islamic slave trade was in full swing. I'll take that conservatively to be the beginning of the 9th century, so that's 12 centuries.

Further, although slaves tend to have much shorter life expectancies than freemen in any society, let us generously say that they lived, on average, for 50 years.

With these conservative estimates a back-of-the-envelope calculation gives a lower bound of about 24 million slaves under Islam. I think this is still too small, by perhaps an order of magnitude, but it is perhaps the best that can be done without making questionable assumptions.

I have seen it demonstrated elsewhere that a significant part (over half?) of the "Atlantic" slave trade was simply on the consumer end of the Islamic trade -- Europeans purchasing slaves through the Islamic marketing system, which was already in place, and which had a corner on the market throughout much of Africa.

Now this certainly does not absolve the christian men who supported this market, either as slave owners or middle men of the market from guilt -- but it does argue that there is some ambiguity in assigning the blame for this atrocity to "Christendom", when it appears that it was inflicted by a loose partnership between Christendom and Islam.

A shameful but undeniable part of Christian history, and one I do not seek to erase, but if we're to mete the balance of guilt out to civilizations in any sensible way, let us say that of the 10 million slaves within Christendom something just under half (again, to make my estimate conservative), say 4 million, were of this variety, and divide the blame equally between the civilizations, that attributes 26 million to Islam and 8 million to Christendom.

Somehow tallying the numbers like this seems such an impersonal way to calculate blame for human misery, it is almost like being a "trader". There is no absolution in the numbers and any way one turns broken lives into statistics feels like an opening of an old wound. However, an accurate picture of what happened is essential for us to understand the world in which we live, the ideological forces at play, and the likely shape of things to come.

Posted by: Archimedes2

at December 22, 2007 9:12 PM

I hope this essay can even be turned ino a book about the detailed history of slavery in the Islamic world. Such a history needs to be written.

Posted by: Christian

at December 22, 2007 9:15 PM

Mad as Hell,

To keep in line with the discussion I would change the above phrase to read
"so why should we allow secularists to ascribe non-secularist rationales to Christianity?"

I'm a bit confused, but if you mean that we shouldn't allow secularists to ascribe secular rationales to Christians, I agree. Newton, in particular, made many references to God in his work, from what I know.

As I recall, it was LaPlace who was really the first scientist to dispense with the idea of God in the late 1700s, so until them no one should really speak of a secular science. Yet, paradoxically, the scientists before LaPlace did sound work, for their times. Even today, many scientists profess one or another Christian or Jewish faith. Even LaPlace was trained in theology, so one could argue that his hypothesis that the universe is rational and mathematical could be ascribed to that theological training.

Not sure, but my point was that Communists have to stand as a black mark against secularism, whatever secularists might say to the contrary.

Posted by: venividivici

at December 22, 2007 9:23 PM

Fanusi Khiyal

You say..

“You may remember the reception that Galileo received at the hands of his fellow Christians, including such luminaries as Martin Luther.”

So what? I am not defending the Catholic Church or Martin Luther, but instead stating a fact. He may not have followed the idiotic rules of the powers that were in charge of the Catholic church at that time but that does not change the fact he was a CHRISTIAN by his own definition.

Then you say…

“Excuse me, but Einstein was not motivated by his religion. While he did make use of the term 'God', he used it in the metaphorical, Spinoza sense, to express his wonder of the Universe. It is hogwash to claim otherwise.”

So what? My point was he was no atheist...

Einstein was motivated by GOD. His entire life’s work was in search of god. It was a real and physical thing (not a personal god, true) to him not some metaphorical concept. Otherwise he would not have been so dead set against the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and some aspects of Quantum Mechanics (which I would agree was a mistake probably). Yes he was a fan of Spinoza, however, if you look at his strong Jewish up brining and his support of Zionism and Israel, you would be foolish to say Judaism did not have a major impact on him.

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." Albert Einstein
Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium, 1941

My point is this: The Christian-Judaic tradition played a important role in western civilization for the POSITIVE. Like it or not it is one of the founding stones of the west.

Posted by: greatcometof1577

at December 22, 2007 9:36 PM

nick -

You wrote: "Genesis and Exodus abundantly show that the Jewish god cares only for his “chosen people” – a con pulled off by Ezra to gain control over the Israelites." You are wrong.

Please broaden your mind a little: Tom Cahill, "The Gifts of the Jews"; David Bentley Hart, "The Beauty of the Infinite" (just the chapter "The Consolations of Tragedy and the Terrors of Easter"); and G K Chesterton, "The Everlasting Man".

Try Abraham Heschel, 'God in Search of Man'; or Rosenzweig, "The Star of Redemption"/ L'Etoile du Redemption, or just Spengler's essay "Christian, Muslim, Jew - Franz Rosenzweig and the Abrahamic Religions" in the journal First Things - October 2007. Or Jacques Ellul: "The Meaning of the City" - it covers the whole sweep of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, and will probably annoy the hell out of you.

The charge that YHWH only cares about the 'chosen' people and not about anyone else, is, quite simply, false. The Hebrew Bible makes it clear that YHWH loves everything that He has made, not just Israel, not just all humans, but every living thing, and beyond - "He calls the stars by their names". The Noah story ends with G-d making "a covenant with the Earth".

I know what I am talking about. I have read the entire OT several times. The account of the creation of humanity, and the account of the Flood, show that the LORD cares about everything that he has made. The scattering of the tower of Babel is a cautionary tale for all who dream of Empire and World Domination.

Israel is chosen not for their own benefit - and certainly not because they are stronger, prettier, smarter, faster or nicer - but as the Servant of God, to be 'a light to the nations'; Abraham is told, 'in you SHALL ALL THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD BE BLESSED'.

Read Isaiah 53. Christians read it as about Jesus; its original meaning is Israel as god's suffering servant. Their job is not to conquer the globe; their job is to be holy, to bear witness, to teach and to heal (think how many Jews are healers or psychologists!). Think how SMALL is the 'promised land', within whose restricted bounds they appear to be required to be content to stay - how tiny and poor compared to the vast territories of the Empires of the ancient or the modern world.

More and more I am driven to believe that the World HATES the Jews and continually tries to destroy them, to silence them, to erase their very name and memory, because it hates YHWH the Liberator.

Here is Jacques Ellul, French leftist intellectual, who underwent a catastrophic Pascal-style encounter with the Biblical god, and spent the rest of his life working out what it meant. Someone called Victor Shepherd wrote as follows, in a short online biography of Ellul:

"Two parallel columns of books have poured from his pen: one a thorough-going sociological analysis which speaks to secularists turned off by pietistic cliches; the other a biblical exploration for earnest Christians who want to discern the Word of God in its vigour amidst the world's illusions and distresses. The Technological Society and The Meaning of the City represent the two aspects of his mature thought."

"Ellul has always insisted that the self-utterance and "seizure" of the living God frees individuals from their conformity to a world which blinds and binds, even as it renders them useful to God and world on behalf of that kingdom which cannot be shaken."

"Not surprisingly, Ellul has continued to magnify the place of prayer, contending that as we pray God fashions a genuine future for humankind; indeed, God's future is the only future, all other "futures" being but a dressed-up repetition of the Fall."

"When moved by the bleakness of destitute juvenile delinquents, the university professor befriended and assisted them for years, seeking to render them "positively maladjusted" to their society. He wanted them to be profoundly helpful to it without adopting it.

"He has urged as much in interviews, sermons and the forty books and several hundred articles he has written. In them all he has reflected his most elemental conviction: God's judgement exposes the world's bondage and illusion for what they are, even as God's mercy fashions that new creation which is the ground of radical human hope." (End quote).

Whether gods exist or not, it matters very much what KIND of gods god-believing people believe in. YHWH is, in fact, unique; unlike all the other 'gods' on offer - and radically, radically different from the Muslims' 'allah'. YHWH loves; allah merely commands from a vast distance, arbitrarily, as a tyrant his slaves.

At least give the Jews credit for telling a different story - don't you DARE promulgate the vicious falsehood that the god to whom the Jews (and Christians also, taught by Jesus the Jew) bear witness, is a selfish parochial god of tyranny and slavery, alien to mercy and hope.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy

at December 22, 2007 10:10 PM

Furthermore, since we're on the topic of the 'Abrahamic' religions - and what behaviours they promote - let's hear from Ayaan Hirsi Ali, apostate from Islam, Enlightenment atheist.

In an interview with Rogier van Bakel in 'Reason' magazine November 2007, she said:

"I accept that there are multitudes seeking God, seeking meaning, and so on, but if they reject atheism, I would rather they became modern-day Catholics or Jews than that they became Muslims."

" Because my Catholic and Jewish colleagues are FINE.

" The concept of God in Jewish orthodoxy is one where you’re having constant quarrels with God.

" Where I come from, in Islam, the only concept of God is you submit to Him and you obey His commands, no quarreling allowed. Quarreling or even asking questions means you raise yourself to the same level as Him, and in Islam that’s the worst sin you can commit.

" Jews should be proselytizing about a God that you can quarrel with.

"Catholics should be proselytizing about a God who is love, who represents a hereafter where there’s no hell, who wants you to lead a life where you can confess your sins and feel much better afterwards.

"Those are lovely concepts of God. They can’t compare to the fire-breathing Allah who inspires jihadism and totalitarianism."

Implied: if you can answer back to GOD, then you can certainly answer back to mere humans. And if your GOD loves and forgives, then love and forgiveness surely apply in human relationships, too. Whereas Islam's allah both models and justifies tyranny (no questions allowed) and war (no forgiveness).

There is also, of course, the awkward fact that Muslims who have left Islam after reading the Bible, universally insist that there IS a radical difference between Christianity and Islam, and that it manifests in such things as being friends with God in Christianity (rather than merely a slave of allah, as in Islam), or in peacefulness as opposed to aggression - one such convert, a Kurd from Turkey, explains that Christian culture derived from the Gospels teaches patience, flexibility, conciliation as ways of dealing with disagreement, whereas "in Islam, you would always fight".

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy

at December 22, 2007 10:52 PM

Killer post by Robert Spencer. I want more.

dumbledoresarmy, isn't it true that somewhere in the Old Testament someone (Moses?) actually rebukes God, or at any rate remonstrates with God, and in response, God, astonishingly, accepts the rebuke and changes His divine behavior? I swear I recall such a passage somewhere in there. The Old Testament certainly involves humans quarreling with or struggling with God. The examplss that come immediately to mind for me are Jacob and the angel, and Job. Do you know of others?

Posted by: traeh

at December 22, 2007 11:25 PM

"Just because brilliant thinkers just happened to live in a society where the dominant faith was christianity, doesn't mean that christianity had anything to do with their discoveries."

That's got to be about the stupidest comment I've ever read here.

Posted by: Isabellathecrusader

at December 22, 2007 11:34 PM

traeh, good to see you posting again. or maybe i'm the one who's been a.w.o.l. lately but it seems like you haven't been around as much. i always find your posts to be thoughtful and engaging.

has Natasha been around lately? talk about engaging!

Posted by: alexon

at December 23, 2007 12:27 AM

I have enjoyed reading the article and the comments, I would point out that I am a Christian and I do enjoy reading some of Hitchens works. Though like all people it seems to me he has a blind spot his blind spot involves religion.

When interacting with some of the more strident atheists I usually point out the atheistic nature of some of the most brutal regimes of the last century, those of lenin, mao, pol pot et al.

It seems that part of our human nature is to make the claim that our membership in some group is some substitute for virtue, rather like those people whose research into genealogy always seems to turn up the learned and the illustrious and seldom focusses on the mundane and the common.

So while the Christian may tout those who were martyred for faith or suffered persecutions or who did remarkable acts of faith and charity, the atheist usually claims the giants of science and intellect as if by attaching the label atheist to a clod they partake of the genius of a spencer or a darwin.

It seems our Islamic brethern are more apt to identify with the raider, the fierce warrior who carves a kingdom out of the desert and becomes superior to the civilization that they topple.

Which is rather like an arsonist claiming power over the architect because he can undo and mar the others works.

dumbledores armys comments about the argumentation of men with God was well stated, making bargains with God may be so ubiquitous among western culture that we do not even realize how much it is impressed into the culture, to a Muslim who sees the scriptures corrupted by Jewish writers, which they must hold in order to believe that the Jewish faith ever had any merit to be superceded by Islam, such passages as Mose arguiing with the fate of the people after they had reverted to idolatry must be rejected out of hand or the revelation of a man hearing voices which must be obeyed unquestioningly becomes less a matter of faith and more one of compulsion and obssession.

Posted by: stickman

at December 23, 2007 1:31 AM

@traeh

Take a look at the account of Abraham with God before Sodom was destroyed. The address is Gen 18:17-33.

There are other accounts as well. Jacob wrestled with a man all night. Many say this is the pre-incarnate Christ.

Clearly God is interesting enough and interested enough in us to interact in what would be considered non conventional ways buy 'religious people'. That is what I find so fascinating about him. The other thing he never compromises his character.

Isa 46:8-10
Remember this, and be assured; Recall it to mind, you transgressors. Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and there is no other; {I am} God, and there is no one like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, 'My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure'.

عيسى 46:8-10
نتذكر هذا ، وتكون مضمونة ؛ يذكر انه الى الذهن ، وكنت المتجاوزون. نتذكر السابق الاشياء الطويلة الماضية ، لاني والله ، وليس هناك غيره ؛ (إنا لله) ، وليس هناك أحد مثلي ، معلنا نهاية من البداية ، وأشياء من العصور القديمة ، التي لم يتم انجازه ، وقال : 'بلادي الغرض ستنشأ ، وسأقدم كل ما لدي انجاز جيد السرور'.

Allah does not clam this because he does not honor free will.

Posted by: Im.mad.as.HELL!

at December 23, 2007 2:21 AM

dumbledoresarmy I agree completely with Ayaan Hirsi Ali's assessment. My criticism here is of the idea that Hitchens's is somehow an apologist for Islam. Which is ludicrous.

Yes, he may have the wrong end of the stick when it comes to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but then again, so does virtually everyone. And I would like to take this moment to thank Hugh for publishing the first reasonable criticism of Hitchens that I have read. I would actually like to see a debate between the two of you on this subject. In fact, that seems like a good idea.

Einstein was motivated by GOD. His entire life’s work was in search of god. It was a real and physical thing (not a personal god, true) to him not some metaphorical concept.

Hogwash, plain and simple. Einstein's God was the totality of physical reality. The basic order of the Universe. This is as far as one can get from the prayer-answer, afterlife-bestowing, cruel-and-jealous god of theism as it's possible to get.

And it is worth noting that at the time, Eintein came under severe fire from the faith-based community for saying this. The same community that is now trying to claim him as one of their own. So much for intellectual integrity.

GuitarBob, your question is so insulting and so presumptuous that it does not deserve to be dignified with a response.

Posted by: Fanusi Khiyal

at December 23, 2007 4:43 AM

I agree with Fanusi that attacking Christopher Hitchen's position based on a review of his work, as opposed to the work itself, is somewhat cheap... more so when the review itself is so off-base in representing Hitchen's view-point. I can think of noone else (except our own tireless Robert Spencer) who is more vociferous in his attack on Islam and Islamic theology than Mr. Hitchens. Yes, Mr. Hitchens is quite scathing against all faith-based religions (including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism etc.) but he is by no means a moral equivalentist. Anyone who has taken the time to read him or hear him speak will realize that Hitchens is clear on the one point we all agree upon, i.e. that Islam poses the greatest civilizational challenge to all of us and that it needs to be confronted head on.

Posted by: Razdan

at December 23, 2007 4:53 AM

Isabellathecrusader, perhaps you could elaborate as to why that is the "stupidest comment I've ever read here". I’d go as far as saying the poster was stating the obvious but I wouldn’t call them stupid for it.

greatcometof1577, Einstein was neither atheist or theist as is quite apparent from his writings. It is obvious he was guided by evidence (or lack of evidence) which is why he is somewhere in the middle of atheism and theism - deist. He was not willing to accept a personal god (the Jewish god) but would not accept atheism either as he saw that as just another group of people with no evidence to back up their position (although the lack of evidence is a strong pointer to there being no god). He was a scientist through and through:

"The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive. However, I am also not a "Freethinker" in the usual sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition. My feeling is insofar religious as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insuffiency of the human mind to understand deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature." It is this consciousness and humility I miss in the Freethinker mentality. Sincerely yours, Albert Einstein."

—Letter to A. Chapple, Australia, February 23, 1954

Personally I cannot believe people still try to argue their position based on passages from a 'holy' book that has been shown to be full of errors. It contradicts itself, it is historically inaccurate and it's scientifically inaccurate. It also challenges common sense. Einstein had to choose his position based on the understanding of the world around him at the time he was alive. Perhaps if he was still alive his position would be different in light of all the discoveries since his death (you can thank science for that). However the whole point of what someone does or doesn't believe is moot as someone's personal beliefs are irrelevant where proof is concerned. In other words, Einstein’s beliefs are irrelevant; it's the evidence for a particular position that is important.

Christianity may be responsible for our world nowadays or you could say that we are here in spite of Christianity but that doesn't matter. What matters is we are here and how we intend to continue forward. Islam, for me, is not an option.

Posted by: Xeno

at December 23, 2007 4:53 AM

dumbledoresarmy:

You misunderstood and misrepresent both me and the Bible. I repeat:

“Genesis and Exodus abundantly show that the Jewish god cares only for his ‘chosen people’ – a con pulled off by Ezra to gain control over the Israelites.”

I, too, have read the entire OT (and the NT, the Quran, and the Book of Mormon) several times (e.g., see my reviews at www.zenofzero.net ), but I would encourage you to study more – in particular, not any “holy book” but its history and origins.

As just a single example (which you mention), the OT story of Noah is a totally obvious plagiarism of Sumerian and Babylonian myths (from ~2,000 years before Ezra and his co-conspirators concocted the OT) known as the Epic of Ziusudra, the Epic of Atrahasis, and the Epic of Gilgamesh (in particular, about Utnapishtim). In their plagiarism, Ezra et al. changed the (much better!) moral of the Sumerian myth about Atrahasis to suit their priestly purposes (so they could control the Jews) – but there is absolutely zero evidence that any god (or in the Sumerian and Babylonian cases, any gods) ever had anything to do with any of it. Instead, all is consistent with what Seneca the Younger saw, ~2,000 years ago:

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers [such as Ezra] as useful.”

As for your statement

“More and more I am driven to believe that the World HATES the Jews and continually tries to destroy them, to silence them, to erase their very name and memory, because it hates YHWH the Liberator.”

I’m very, very sorry that you’ve reached such a conclusion – but I can understand it, given the terribly long history of the horrible treatment of the Jews by Christians and by Muslims. I gather that you are attributing such a feeling to me, but if so, you’ve made an enormous error. As I’ve written elsewhere, many times: “Many of my friends and most of my heroes are Jews.”

Further, and as I’ve written in my book (already referenced): “I’m not anti