Was curious what the major four atheists (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett) had to say about Park51... surprisingly, Hitchens seemed to have the most reasonable position. Dawkins, of course, believes Islam is the "great threat facing humanity in the world" or some shit. But anyways, found a debate between Sam and Islam scholar Reza Aslan. Decided to transcribe it.
Here's the original (audio file), btw: http://www.scpr.org/programs/patt-morrison/2010/08/18/ground-zero-mosque/
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Sam Harris (SH): I should say I don't have any special concern about this mosque. As you know, I'm not a fan of mosques in general—or synagogues and churches, for that matter—because I think they have less to do with our deepest wisdom at this point, and rather a lot to do with divisive ignorance that we should outgrow. But I think that people are noticing that it is at least in bad taste to build a mosque so close to Ground Zero. But I don't for a moment think there should be laws against this kind of bad taste; and certainly, American Muslims should be free to build a mosque wherever churches and synagogues would be allowed. So in that sense we can probably stop the conversation right where President Obama wanted to, with just a mere acknowledgement of the First Amendment.
But what does worry me, and which was really the core of my article, is this idea that any notion—any noticing of a unique problem with Islam at this point in history—is a sign of bigotry. And this idea seems to be universally subscribed [to] by my fellow liberals; and it's quite a destabilizing, and I think dangerous idea. And in fact no one should be more concerned about the unique liabilities of Islam at this moment than so-called moderate Muslims. I mean, no one suffers more from Muslim terrorism and bullying and intolerance and misogyny, and the stirrings of theocracy that we see throughout the Muslim world, than other Muslims. And it's simply not a sign of intolerance to notice this.
MODERATOR (M): Well then let's talk to Reza Aslan as well. Is it, as Sam Harris says, do you think something that moderate Muslims should be saying—“we acknowledge—and of course we have a constitutional right...”—but there is a question of taste, and choice in this, and it may be interpreted as being “in-your-face” by people who now all the more will not make a distinction between moderate ad extreme Islam?
Reza Aslan (RA): Well let's get our facts straight here—this is not a mosque; and I can't understand why people keep referring to it as such. It's being built by the Cordoba Initiative, which is a multi-faith non-profit organization. It's purpose is to improve relations between Muslims and all religions, but also it's meant to be a place of interfaith dialogue; a place to promote peace and tolerance, particularly between the three faiths of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Thirteen stories—it has a museum, a community center; on the board of advisors are Christians and Jews; there are Hindus and Buddhists who are involved in the construction of it. Yes, there is a space amongst these thirteen stories in which Muslims can pray; but there's also place for worship for Christians and for Jews as well. So the idea that this is about a mosque being built at Ground Zero I think is a deliberately false way of putting it. But to the larger question—
M: But who's paying for it though—who's paying for it, Mr. Aslan?
RA: It's a private property that hasn't actually been paid for yet. The purpose of it is that it's going to cost a lot of money, and that money is going to come from contributors all around the world. The New York Charities Bureau, and also the U.S. Treasury Department, have already been enlisted to review all of the donor lists, to ensure that all funding sources are going to be vetted. The trustees and the advisory board are going to go through every single funding [source]. So I also think this question of where the funding comes is also kind of a red herring. But the larger point though is, the question that you asked, is about this idea of the difference between religious freedoms and sensitivity. I personally believe that there can be no “but” in the sentence, “I believe in religious liberties, but...” This idea that Constitutional rights should be somehow privy to the sentiments of people—the sensitivities of people—to me that has just been absolutely rejected. We don't put to vote whether mixed race couples can marry each other; we don't put to sensitivities whether homosexuals should be able to marry one another; and we don't put to sensitivities whether people, of whatever faith they are, are allowed to build whatever they want to build on private property. So I have a hard time accepting the argument that this is just about sensitivities; particularly ... because the people that are behind the protests against the Cordoba Institute—the Stop Islamization of America, as it's known—are also fronting similar protests in Tennessee; in New York; in California in San Diego; in Wyoming. So it's quite clear that this is specifically about Islam.
M: Well let me go back... it may be very specifically about a specific iteration of Islam, or a misinterpretation of Islam, as the 9/11 terrorists conceived it. So Sam Harris, are people able to suss out the kind of distinctions that Reza is talking about?
SH: The core issue is that Islam merits special concern at this point. Now I fully agree with what Reza said about religious liberty and the Constitution and the building of mosques; and that's just a—that's not the core of the issue. The core of the issue is that peoples' fear about Islam at this moment in history is warranted; and we have to an intelligent discussion about... and no one should be more afraid about these trends in the Muslim world than Muslims. And this, I think, will be true for quite some time. But the problem that we have to get our heads around is that not every religious community is equally likely to produce an endless supply of suicide bombers, or kidnap journals and aid workers and saw their heads off, or seek to perpetrate an act of nuclear terrorism. And it is not bigotry to notice this; and the people who are defending this mosque, and the people who are rightly criticizing the racism and bigotry of many people on the political right in this country, insist upon saying things like “September 11 had nothing to do with Islam.” And denying that there's anything different about Islam at this moment in its history—given its actual theology and actual doctrine, than any other religion—and that is something—that is a politically correct myth that we have to find some way of penetrating, still retaining our good will, and tolerance of diversity, and our political liberalism.
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[CALLER]: I think the issue about sensitivity is masking some pretty hardcore xenophobic attitudes. And Pat, I'd like to point out your comment about you equating this mosque being built to McVeigh. I also heard recently about comparison, swastika next to synagogue. I think those are really poor comparison; because I think we're painting the entire Muslim community with a pretty broad brush; fundamentalist actors just like McVeigh was.
M: Reza, you must be in agreement?
RA: Well yes, I mean look: it's not bigotry to say that there are such things as radicals and terrorists in the Islamic world. It is bigotry to compare this building of a thirteen story multicultural, multi-faith center to al-Qaeda. And that's exactly what Sam is doing here. He says quite clearly in his article, “yes, I believe in religious freedom, but Islam is fundamentally different”—the diversity of beliefs and practices and ideals that motivates other faiths just doesn't count when it comes to Islam. That somehow Islam, as Sam very famously says, is a cult of death. You can't say that “I believe in religious liberties, and I believe that people of faiths should be able to build houses of worship wherever they want to, except when it comes to Islam, because Islam is different”—that's the definition of bigotry.
SH: Let me just clarify my position, because, as I said in my article, you should able to build structures there that are quite a bit more offensive than a mosque. I think the KKK should be able to build their next clubhouse wherever it's appropriately zoned.
M: And some people take offense that there's a strip club not far away.
RA: There are two strip clubs.
SA: There's a distance between what is legal and what we should be overjoyed about. But the thing to point out about Islam—and again this is a fact which Reza, you often want to pair [ ]—is that it does have doctrines, specifically about martyrdom and jihad, that are massively well-subscribed; and that therefore—and also doctrines about blasphemy and apostasy and the treatment of women—that we're all in the 21st century right to find objectionable; and it presents a unique liability. And we are right to be uncomfortable with that. And specifically, what this mosque provokes, is the fear that it will be viewed by some considerable portion of the Muslim world—who knows how many—as a kind of acquiescence on the part of the West to jihad. And I don't think that's enough to get us to stop building mosques in Lower Manhattan.
RA: Then why are you bringing it up?
SH: What has happened is that anyone in our intellectual community, generally—but especially on the left—who singles out Islam for special analysis at this moment, with respect to terrorism and jihad and treatment of women, is immediately accused of bigotry; and that, in the limit, that is going to be a suicidal tendency...
[Moderator comments]
RA: Well I'm not going to respond to the issue of scripture, because Sam and I have had this argument on numerous occasions. And the idea that you could sort of go through a scripture and pick out bits of savagery that's in there, and then make some sort of generalization about everybody who believes in this, I think most people—rational people—reject that notion. If anyone has read Deuteronomy, for instance, which advocates the genocide of non-Jews, or the Mahabharata, which is the most bloody tract written—people of reason understand that there is historical and cultural context; that there is a literary tradition that influences scriptures; that there are profoundly diverse ways in which, over the last thousands of years, people have interpreted scripture; and they can interpret it however they want to.
What I do want to respond to, however, is this notion of bigotry. Because a bigot, by definition, is someone who stereotypes an entire people based on the actions or the beliefs of a few; in this case, someone who paints an entire religion, in this case of one and half billion people—the second largest religion in the world—based on the actions of people who live in tribal areas of Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, or Arabs who have declared war on the United States and Israel. And that's precisely what Sam is doing. Let's not make any mistake—the argument...
[overtalking]
The argument against the building of a multi-faith center, two blocks away from Ground Zero, that is going to be run by a Sufi imam—an American Sufi imam—that that is somehow a victory, or will be seen as a victory by our enemies, or that Americans should necessarily be wary of that because by definition if it has something to with Islam then it must have something to do with these violent issues and these issues of misogyny or terrorism—that is, by definition, bigotry.
SH: What I think we should be wary of—and I think you should be wary of it as well, Reza—is this tendency that you just displayed of putting up a firewall of false comparisons and non sequiturs, against any honest discussion of the doctrine of Islam. I'm not saying all 1.2 billion Muslims are jihadists; and I'm not saying...
RA: Actually, Sam, you said those exact same words.
SH: Rather than be accountable to your misremembering what I said, let me just tell you what I think. The problem that we have to face—and you, as someone who explains Islam to the world, has to face—is that vast numbers of Muslims actually believe that martyrs go to paradise; and that it's a central teaching within Islam is that the best thing that can possibly happen to you is to die in defense of the faith. Now you can quibble about what constitutes an appropriate moment of defending a faith, and who you should be fighting against, and when—and all of that is a legitimate to quibble about theologically—and hopefully Muslims will do that. The problem is that this leaves you in a position, when you look at groups like al-Qaeda and the Taliban, it is not absolutely clear, from the point of view of the Qur'an and the hadiths, where they are going wrong. They're living out a very plausible version of the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. Now if they were Jains or Quakers, it would be obvious where they were going wrong; they would have their religion entirely wrong. And that is a difference that we must confront in the same way that we must confront the peculiarities of the Catholic church at this moment, which are leading to a pedophile scandal unlike none other.
M: Gentleman, I'd like to get to some of listener's comments...
[CALLER:] I'm going to take a totally different philosophy here. I heard from another news channel that there was a Methodist church that requested a building permit to rebuild their church that has been denied within a two block away within Ground Zero. I don't believe that any religious group should be able to put their building within that sacred area. I think it should be a secular area. I also believe that the laws should be metered out equally. So that if one faith cannot rebuild, then no faith should be able to rebuild within the same area—it just seems fair. And building permits can be denied for many, many reason; it doesn't have to be because they believe that the city is being biased or partisan. I think that everybody should be treated equally, and if the Muslim temple can be built—mosques can be built—then so should the Methodist. And if Methodists can't, then neither can the mosques.
RA: I just want to emphasize that the Methodist church is being built on an area that has been zoned for reconstruction by the Ground Zero Association—that's why. Whereas the Burlington Coat Factory two blocks away, is not. So this is not about promoting one religion against another; it's that there are zones that have been blocked out—that cannot be rebuilt—that they are being built by the NYC municipal council...
[ANOTHER CALLER] I do think that it is in bad taste; but I think things that are in bad taste—that if we truly think that they are in such bad taste that they should be not allowed, then we have process for that: it's called obscenity. It's community standards, where they can go through the courts if people feel it's an obscenity...
M: Well I think obscenity would cover the fact that there are two strip clubs in virtually same area, too.
[quote from Mayor Bloomberg]
[question about why a site was chosen so close to Ground Zero]
RA: The Cordoba Initiative, and Imam Feisal, has been in Lower Manhattan, about 10 blocks away from what we call Ground Zero, for thirty years. There's already, as you said Pat, another mosque—a small mosque—four blocks from Ground Zero. So I guess my question to that person is, how many blocks is enough? And what point are we going to say, “okay, well that's enough to deal with the sensitivities”? Five blocks? Or ten blocks? It's again hard for me to sort of imagine that this is just about these issues of sensitivities when, again, the same people who are protesting the building of this community center are protesting the building of mosques all around the country.
M: Let me ask Sam Harris, about how this might be perceived by some radical extremists in the Muslim world. Why would they see this as a gesture of spinelessness rather than a gesture of openness? Do they not make a distinction between themselves and moderate Islam?
SH: Oh well they do; I'm not saying for a moment that Osama bin Laden or any acknowledged jihadist would view these supporters of this as good Muslims; because they are, I think, almost entirely Sufis, and Sufism is, while we may want to celebrate it as a very moderate tendency within Islam, is actually considered a heresy, more or less, throughout the Muslim world; and Sufis suffer mightily because of it. And they've had their mosques recently blown up in Pakistan, as have other moderates, like the Ahmadis in Pakistan. So I think that it's not that it's a straightforward victory for the forces of jihad. But you have to see from the point of view of people who really think they are fighting for a worldwide caliphate, and are willing to die for the privilege of trying, that all of our concessions to Muslim sensitivities and grievances and preferences are looked at in a certain way. And so are the cartoon controversy, and all the self-censorship that we practice in that regard; the fact that not a single publication apart from Free Inquiry showed those cartoons in the United States—and Free Inquiry was taken off the newsstands of major bookstores. I mean, the recent Comedy Central censorship with South Park—all of this is viewed as spinelessness from the point of view of our enemies; and we have genuine enemies in the Muslim world. And it's not a good thing. And we need to—especially moderate Muslims—have to be the first people to defend the rights of cartoonists and novelists and dissidents to criticize the faith, and to lampoon the Prophet Muhammad publicly; so if supporters of this mosque were the kinds of people who say “we can have a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest,” then they might be precisely the kinds of people who should build a mosque near Ground Zero. I doubt they are, but they might be.
M: The unique sensitivities that SH is referring to—cartoons mocking Christ, for example, or Abraham—would not be removed from public pop cultural consumption. But there seems to be a different kind of sensitivity when it comes to Islam in those examples he cited.
RA: Not here in the United States.
M: That's just what he was talking about.
[argument]
M: Mr. Harris, a few seconds to clarify your point please.
SH: Yale University Press tried to publish a book—or did in fact publish a book—about the cartoon controversy, and wouldn't publish the cartoons. These are utterly benign cartoons.
RA: Yes, and I am the person who edited the book that Sam is talking about. And I withdrew my endorsement of it because of Yale's decision to remove those cartoons from the books. But what's happening in Somalia or Sudan or Gaza or in Arab world, or in these places in which there is this feeling of, I don't know, Western cultural hegemony, or oppression, and so they result to violence, and they result to lack of tolerance—what does that have to do with the Cordoba Initiative? That's what I want to know. What does anything that Sam has mentioned about al-Qaeda, or about martyrdom, or about violence and misogyny in Islam—what does any of this has to do with the Cordoba Initiative?
SH: We have people who try to blow up cars in Times Squares, we have...
[argument]
RA: What does have to do with the center?
M: Can you connect the dots, Mr. Harris?
SH: We have a single system of ideas that goes by the name of Islam, that has been articulated for 1500 years in a literature that is quite static, that can't be readily edited. You can't go into the Qur'an and cut out verses that you don't like that are not compatible with modernity. And this is a real problem, because this is quite a unified... despite all of the variation that Reza says exists, it is quite unified on some rather indelicate points.
RA: Hold on, I have to respond to that—as the Islamic scholar, as the person with the Ph.D in Islam in this conversation. The idea that Islam represents a unified system of thought for 1500 years indicates the profound ignorance that Sam has about this religion.
SH: Reza, what is the penalty for apostasy in Islam? Just tell us what it is.
RA: It depends on where you are. The Qur'an actually has no apostasy...
SH: But you know the hadith does, and it has it in spades.
RA: And there are 700,000 hadiths, that people decide which they agree on and which they don't. You're talking about the most diverse, the most eclectic religion in the history of the world. A religion of a billion and a half people that's understood in thousands of different ways. The fact that you think it's one thing—that is represents one train of thought and one ideology, shows how little you know about Islam.
M: Mr. Harris?
SH: This literature is static; you can't edit these books. These books are acknowledged by all Muslims to be absolutely sacred. This is a problem in religion generally—religion does not respond to revision very well, especially when it's based on sacred texts
M: We have very little time left. I'd like to ask each of you, starting with Mr. Aslan, to tell me what you think the outcome of this controversy will be about the building of this center.
RA: The outcome is set in stone. This is what is so wonderful about America, that despite the very clear religious bigotry that is involved in this conversation, that there has never been a single moment of doubt that this building was going to be built. It has gotten unanimous approval from people who actually matter—whose approval actually matters—and it's going to be constructed. And fifty years from now, we'll look back on this with some shame, and I think we'll laugh at the statements of those who thought that this represents a victory for al-Qaeda.
M: And Mr. Harris, what do you think is going to be the consequence, the upshot here?
SH: I think it's probably irrelevant what happens with the building. I think what should happen, what must happen, is that at some point we get to a future where we look back in shame on these kinds of aspersions about bigotry, when we're talking about the consequences of ideas. And the belief in martyrdom and jihad is a uniquely bad piece of software to be running on your brain at this point in human history. And that's something we all have to acknowledge. Muslims have to acknowledge it first, and we're all going to suffer until they do.
