Mosque at Ground Zero: Hitchens 1 - Coyne & Harris 0

By Massimo Pigliucci

Well, three of the New Atheists have now spoken on the “issue” of the “mosque” “at” Ground Zero.” (In case you are wondering, the quotation marks are there because this really ought to be an non-issue, it ain’t a mosque, and it’s not at Ground Zero. But anyway.) Hitchens is in favor, Coyne and Harris don’t think it’s a good idea, though they seem to express different degrees of discomfort, with Harris’s being stronger than Coyne’s.

Coyne and Harris fans fear not, this isn’t yet another post where I chide their heros for not knowing their philosophy. And of course this is the sort of thing where disagreement, as Coyne puts it, shows that atheists “by no means march in intellectual lockstep” — though I doubt any additional evidence of that fact was actually necessary to make the point (you know the old adage about organizing free-thinkers being like herding cats).

Okay, so Hitchens has said that banning the proposed Islamic center in Lower Manhattan is a bad idea for two reasons. First, it would be a flagrant violation of the First Amendment. Second, it would be an action that “borrows straight from the playbook of Muslim cultural blackmail.” That is, banning the center is one (more) step toward the kind of closed society Bin Laden and his thugs actually want to establish.

Not so, says Harris. In his opinion, “honest reasoning declares that there is much that is objectionable — and, frankly, terrifying — about the religion of Islam.” He continues: “Anyone who elides these distinctions [among Islam, Judaism and Christianity], or who acknowledges the problem of jihad and Muslim terrorism only to swiftly mention the Crusades, Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, the Tamil Tigers, and the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma, is simply not thinking honestly about the problem of Islam,” concluding that “the erection of a mosque upon the ashes of this atrocity will also be viewed by many millions of Muslims as a victory — and as a sign that the liberal values of the West are synonymous with decadence and cowardice.”

What about Coyne? Along with Harris, he doesn’t “see much evidence of the friendlier, kinder Islam touted by accommodationists” and while acknowledging that it would be wrong to prohibit the building of the cultural center, he states that “it’s no better an idea than would be building an American cultural center near Ground Zero in Hiroshima. It was Islam, after all, that propelled those planes into the World Trade Center nine years ago.”

Now for my take. In this case, I pretty much completely agree with Hitchens’ view (which is not always the case, I still think he was nuts endorsing the Bush-II administration invasion of Iraq, and that he is smart enough to have known better than to so easily buy into neocon after-9/11 propaganda). Like Harris, I do find plenty of objectionable, and yes even terrifying, things about Islam. But I object to and am terrified just as much by the other two Abrahamic religions.

Harris says — without argument or evidence — that people who bring up the Crusades, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, etc. “do not think honestly.” I think what is really dishonest is to accuse people of intellectual dishonesty on the mere ground that they disagree with you. Yes, the Crusades happened centuries ago, but nothing like that is possible for Christianity today because it no longer has temporal power and armies at its disposal, not because the religion is intrinsically kinder. And the Israelis are committing systematic atrocities against the Palestinians as we speak (who, in turn, keep committing acts of violence against Israeli civilians), and those atrocities are incited and justified by orthodox Judaism.

More crucially, Harris is missing the really broad picture. If you mention 9/11 to most South Americans their thoughts will likely go to September 11, 1973, when the democratically elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende was overturned and Allende assassinated — with American support — resulting in the establishment of the brutal Pinochet dictatorship, responsible for thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of cases of unlawful imprisonment and torture. By Harris’ reasoning, then, the United States is an international terror state, and maintaining an embassy in Chile ought to be considered an affront to the dead of that country. If the latter suggestion seems preposterous to you, ask yourself what exactly is the difference with what Harris and Coyne are saying.

Coyne doesn’t see much evidence of moderate Islam. Obviously, he hasn’t looked hard enough. Has he considered, for instance, the entire country of Turkey, one of the best examples (albeit far from perfect) of how a predominant Muslim society can live in a secular fashion? Or how about the largest Islamic country in the world, Indonesia? After they got rid of the (US-backed) Suharto dictatorship, they have quickly evolved into a democracy with many peaceful ties to the West.

And Coyne’s comment that building a cultural center in Lower Manhattan is akin to building an American center in Hiroshima is both inaccurate and grossly misses the point. First, the Peace Monuments in Hiroshima web site lists nine monuments sponsored or co-sponsored by the United States. I guess the Japanese are more tolerant than we are (and they lost a lot more people to the bomb than we did in 9/11). Second, and most importantly, Coyne and Harris make the same mistake that Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich make (and I don’t mean the comparison to be flattering): Hiroshima (or the Nazis, in the case of Palin-Gingrich) was a case of a nation state bombing innocent civilians. 9/11 was caused by a (well organized) small band of true nutcases, no different in nature from domestic terrorists a la Timothy McVeigh or Scott Roeder (the miscreant who killed Dr. George Tiller) — Harris’s accusations of intellectual dishonesty notwithstanding.

All the historical and cultural caveats aside, I find it disturbing that atheists are even having this discussion at all. Hitchens is absolutely on the mark here, and it should make us feel more than queasy to find ourselves suddenly making statements that sound very much like those uttered by the most intolerant conservative voices in this country. Yes, none of us likes religion, of any sort. And a very good argument can be made that there are more than enough “places of worship” of any kind, everywhere in the world. But that’s another discussion. In the words of a leading freethinker, Voltaire, “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Amen to that.