I have expressed my disdain for the hypocritical and opportunistic Noam Chomsky, the man who never ceases to condemn capitalism while making millions in the process. From Chomsky’s perspective essentially blames the US for all the problems in the world, as tries to whitewash the crimes committed by Islamists on the US or claim that they have never been proven. Perhaps not surprisingly, I was trolled by a left leaning ideologue who came out to defend Chomsky, who ended up only embarrassing himself.
Now, two prominent Ex Muslims living in North America, Faisal Saeed Al-Mutar (from Iraq-see more on him below) and Ali Rizvi (from Pakistan), have teamed up to write about the plight of the few who dare challenge Islam’s harsh apostasy rules. In doing so, they also express the sense of betrayal by Muslim and Ex Muslim secularists by the extreme political Left in the Anglo-American world, who seem to be always ready to go out of their way to defend the Islamists. Two names in particular stand out: Noam Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald. (Greenwald, in case you don’t remember, was the journalist harshly attacking Dawkins for “Islamophobia“.) Let’s hear them out.
Rizvi tell Al-Mutar:
When I write as an atheist from a Muslim background, I get lots of messages from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and more recently Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of Islamists took to the streets last summer demanding the execution of atheist writers/bloggers like us. [See my post on this story here-NoCrossNoCrescent]
What I hear most is, “Please keep speaking for those of us who can’t speak over here.”
You started the Global Secular Humanist Movement while you were still in the Middle East, so I’m assuming you know what they’re talking about. You spoke out over there while there are many people who aren’t able to take that risk. How did that go down?
I often feel like many people here in North America take their freedom of speech for granted. Some of the liberal left like Glenn Greenwald and even Noam Chomsky often make these equivalencies between the Western world and the countries we grew up in like they’re somehow fundamentally the same. I sometimes wish people here could really go and live there, beyond just traveling there to give talks or “gain experience” under the shelter of a US or Canadian passport.
Mutar responds:
I think 21st century westerners generally don’t appreciate what they take for granted, because somebody else fought for these rights before they were born. I have given so many speeches around the country and I have heard many statements like, “The United States is the worst country on Earth,” and, “We are no better if not worse than the Middle East when it comes to women’s rights and gay rights.” These laughable statements generally come from people who have not been outside the United States, let alone even left their zip code. So I think most of the lack of appreciation of the freedoms in this nation or other Western nations have come from ignorance and lack of experience.
When it comes to people like Glenn Greenwald, Noam Chomsky and many others in academia, unfortunately, they live in an alternate universe. If you look further you will notice that they have big ideological differences with whatever political party wins the elections, especially Noam Chomsky…White guilt, and moral and cultural relativism also play a major role in shaping these men’s views.
I can give countless examples with names and dates about activists of all kinds, whether it’s for secularism, for women’s rights, or for any kind of what we call liberal values, who were threatened or their families threatened by Al Qaeda or other insurgency groups operating in Iraq, and they suffered the consequences. I am one of those lucky ones who survived the threats and left the country, but there are many right now who are having nightmares every night and are scared of getting killed every day for expressing their views.
These things are very difficult to explain to those who have spent most if not all of their lives without getting a threat of being beheaded for saying men and women are equal.
Rizvi knows exactly what Mutar is talking about.
I largely agree with you on the liberal left. I remember after the bin Laden raid in 2011, Chomsky wrote an article with a premise that can pretty much be summed up by this line from it:
“We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.”
This is the kind of false equivalency I hear about all the time.
Western countries like the US barely use a fraction of the force they have the capacity to because whatever their flaws, they are still bound by a code of ethics — and as democracies, accountability to their people. If the Taliban or Al Qaeda had even a tenth of the weaponry that the US does, you’d already have entire countries razed to the ground. I think many writers confuse neutrality with objectivity. [Emphasis added-NoCrossNoCrescent]
I could go on about the hypocrisy of Western liberals on Islam forever, so I’ll try to keep it short and sum it up here.
The thing that bothers me most is the racism of lowered expectations.
If a white man raised here took his wife and daughters out dressed in burkas and veils, all hell would break loose. But if I did it as a brown man, the emphasis would be on “respect” for my “culture”.
In this way, many liberals and moderates — as well-intentioned as they may be — end up providing cover for fundamentalists and terrorists without even realizing it. As you mentioned in one of your videos, foreigners — especially Muslims — know the trick to shielding their ideas from criticism by Westerners: simply call them racist, bigoted, or Islamophobic. Now, nobody’s saying anti-Muslim bigotry doesn’t exist — but just like in Pakistan where they use blasphemy laws to shut you up, here they accuse you of bigotry, racism, and Islamophobia to achieve the same purpose — never mind the fact that Islam isn’t a race, and attacking ideas is not bigotry.
And Mutar responds by describing the most delusional form of the fallacy of false equivalency.
What you said about Chomsky reminds me of a man I met after my speech in Berkeley, California. I was talking about Al Qaeda’s beheadings of Shia Muslims and non-believers, as well as suicide bombers and so on, and he told me, “We have the same thing here.” I didn’t know how to respond to him apart from asking him what types of drugs he is taking, because he seemed to be having out-of-reality experiences.
I am…saddened about what you mentioned about Western liberals’ hypocrisy. Many of them have betrayed us liberals in the Middle East and other Muslim countries, and sided with the Islamists against us.
It is simply amazing to see the likes of Chomsky and Greenwald using their western-world liberties to defend people who would wipe out all those liberties in a heartbeat if they could.
