Evolutionary biologist and famed atheist Richard Dawkins has advocated for the separation of church and state for decades. However, it has become clear with time that mosques are what truly concern him.
In early 2024, the scientist referred to himself as a “cultural Christian” and added that he “feel[s] at home in the Christian ethos” as he expressed his qualms with the growing visibility of Ramadan in his native country of England. He even went on to state that Christianity is “fundamentally decent” unlike Islam, citing the latter’s hostility toward women and gay folk to substantiate this undisguised double standard.
Though the 83-year-old has always been critical of religion across the board, singling out Muslims has become a staple of his public persona over the past decade. Due to this fattening Orientalist fixation, Dawkins seems to have lost touch with the very logic he has been brandishing throughout his career.
Toward the end of September, he passed through Los Angeles to promote his new book, The Genetic Book of the Dead. During the event’s Q&A at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, I reminded him of Christianity’s longstanding history of inspiring hate, accommodating human-rights violations and prompting countless other atrocities. With that established, I asked him what he attributes said horrors to if not the faith’s fundamentals, and why he doesn’t grant Islam the same leniency.
“I think certainly Christianity in the past has an appalling record, and not that long ago,” he responded. “Certainly in Medieval times, Christianity had an appalling record, but it’s just that nowadays Islam is somewhat worse, that’s all. Christians don’t throw gay people off high buildings, they don’t impose a death penalty for apostasy, they don’t kill women for the crime of being raped, which is what you get in places where Islam has sway over the government or the people.”
When I reiterated that my question pertained to Christianity’s history of violence and abuse, and asked once more what he blames that on, he took a few more steps away from providing a straight answer.
“Absolute faith that what you believe is correct, not because it’s based upon evidence but because it’s handed down by tradition, by revelation, by faith,” he replied. “Faith is a great evil. Faith is the belief in something which has no evidence in its favor, and if you have faith in something, then it’s not simple to argue against it. That’s fundamentally what the problem has always been with the evils of religion. That’s why it’s possible for religions to persecute heretics, which they’ve done throughout the ages.”
Few would dispute the brilliance of Dawkins’s work in the field of science, though his temporal drive is quite evidently falling apart. It appears that Christianity is a religious problem to him whereas Islam has more to do with specific types of people and their core beliefs — how he has managed to separate the two is quite baffling considering he fancies himself a champion of reason. His repeated mentions of women and gay people’s maltreatment at the hands of Muslims fails to consider that the Christian West still barefacedly stifles both, sometimes even through legislation protected by the cross.
These factors have no bearing on the Oxford fellow’s vision, which has deteriorated with age and rendered him incapable of second-guessing his reductive impression of terrorism and orthodoxy in countries where people look nothing like him.
Back when the United States invaded Iraq, he was among those who criticized President George W. Bush’s flimsy reasoning for the intervention. Likewise, he has also viciously condemned the Catholic Church for harboring child abuse on numerous occasions in the past. Today, religion is something he criticizes with a fraction of the above vigor as he has shifted his focus mainly to Islam, and his response to the ongoing violence in Palestine is the clearest example of this pivot.
A few months after the October 7 attacks in Israel last year, Dawkins responded to an article by The Times about a march against antisemitism in London and wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “Sorry I couldn't be there, marching with them.” In a similar spirit, he made an appearance at the Dissident Dialogues conference in May and criticized the student demonstrations against the escalating bloodshed in Gaza by saying, “The protests that are going on in American universities at the moment look to me a lot more like anti-Jewish antisemitism.”
His inability (or refusal) to even talk about the nuances of the conflict or the desperate conditions that prompted the ambush by Hamas belies his nominal propensity for reprimanding the ill effects of religion on sociopolitical conditions. Israel’s conception as well as all that turmoil has followed in the region ever since is fueled by a holy mandate upheld by a fanatical branch of Judaism — despite being older than the Zionist state, the veteran academic has never properly covered the extremist beliefs that fuel it even though he has had his entire life to do so.
Richard Dawkins has always claimed to stand for fairness in his continued advocacy for secularism. Unfortunately, he no longer adheres to his own standard. Over time, he has gone from diligently putting different religions under the microscope to making it clear that there is one in particular he is exceedingly wary of. In doing so, he has actively ignored the West’s cultivation of Arab and Muslim frustrations and conveniently branded retaliation of any kind as backward Islamic fundamentalism and unprovoked hostility.
Comments