#144 Conquering Hate, with Deeyah Khan

This is precisely the kind of conversation that I admire Sam Harris most for undertaking. Not because he's so clever and so right. Actually the opposite. As with podcast #123, with Ezra Klein, Sam is confronted in this podcast with a person eloquently pointing out a shortcoming in his thinking. Unfortunately, as with the Ezra Klein podcast, Sam's blind spot stands out rather obviously, and he seems to be unable to get what she's saying, which I think is this: It's unfortunate that Sam spends so much of his time tearing down the "bad ideas" of Islam that lead to jihadism and being so obstinately and completely in denial that there were any geopolitical motives in someone like Bin Laden or any other privileged Islamist. She urges him not to flatten the narrative down to "Islam bad, secularism good" when she has found from personal meetings with these people that it's never that black and white, that it is always "all about complexity."

But this message can't go over so easily for a man who has made his name with books like "The End of Faith" or "Islam and the Future of Tolerance." Those books focused on the shortcomings of Islam. They not only ignore, but actually disparage, any arguments about Western imperialism. Khan is in square opposition to his simplistic view, but she can't seem to crack through Sam's multi-decades-long veneer of religious approbation.

Another fascinating idea that Khan brings up which Sam is lamentably unable to grok is her observation that these hate movements, be they Jihadist or White Supremist, seem to her to be carried out by foot soldiers culled from the ranks of the most vulnerable, the most impressionable, the most likely to fall under the sway of a charismatic leader willing to invest the time and effort into cultivating them. Showered with attention, magnified by the media and by their cause, these angry young men are brought from anonymity and inconsequentialism to notoriety and preeminence by their movement. Their leaders, their particular "Fight Club," may be motivated by a more pure idea of hatred or dogma, but these suicide bombers and KKK lackeys are lured into a movement on weaker pretexts, and Khan finds she is able to dismantle and penetrate them, not by correcting the false dogma, but by her own countering charisma. But Sam seems to only half-get this.

And frankly, Sam should take a more clear-headed view of his own stance here, as he clearly wants it both ways. He claims that it isn't fair to call him an "islamophobe" because of his Muslim friends, because by taking a stand against jihadists he is defending more vulnerable Muslims who are women, or gay, or even just more secular, than any leftist antifa warrior. And yet he is also on record as an avowed atheist who calls the Koran the worst book imaginable for getting the moral landscape wrong. Or consider this quote pulled off the web in less than thirty seconds by googling Sam Harris and Koran: "The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we will kill you." How can someone post that on his website, and then say he isn't an islamophobe!

In the interests of full disclosure, I would acknowledge that I am an islamophobe also. For that matter I'm a christiophobe and a hindophobe and any other brand of bigot you want to call me. Yes, even the word bigot I won't object to, in its original religious-only meaning (derived from the way the French mocked the imperiously pious British with their constant utterances of "by God").

Why admit this? Because I believe anyone--like Sam--who thinks that religions are delusional, misguided, and poisonously pedogogical vestiges of a less evolved mindset, ought to come clean and at least own his bigotry.