Ophelia Benson of FtB has suddenly discovered that Richard Dawkins is a good guy. And an ‘asset to atheism and a supporter of brave infidels’. For standing up against Islamic jihad, no less.
Is it too much to ask for a little consistency here?
I wonder if Ms Benson has forgotten that she and her comrades founded ‘Atheism Plus’ with big fanfare, on the following tenets:
1. They didn’t need no old white men like Dawkins around
2. Being anti-Islam is basically, kinda racist
Digression: on the weekend I was attending an anti-ISIS protest (pics here and here) so I am feeling more prickly than usual.
To be fair, Benson, more than most of her set, has been willing to say something about Islam and the jihad. However, it has all been too little too late. Having abandoned neutrality, they are now easing towards the second position, of criticising, occasionally, but never advocating actually doing anything.
It’s too late for that. Things are already too far advanced, especially in Europe. We have attacks on synagogues, huge number of British jihadis supporting ISIS, the open reestablishment of Islamic slavery – things have moved on.
In my original series on this stuff, I wrote as follows:
religious fanaticism has returned in a terrifying form. All across Europe we’re seeing the rehabilitation of the sort of parties we thought we got rid of at Nuremberg. Further east, the Russian Orthodox Church is the clerical arm of the Putin autocracy (and there is a significant amount of the opposition to Putin that thinks him just too liberal and bleeding heart), and in India we’ve seen Hindu fascism that may yet give us a nuclear war. Overshadowing all of these is the terrible menace of jihad, tens of millions strong, a movement that has notched up three genocides in my lifetime alone, which may soon have nuclear weapons.
In this background, advocates of Reason will have a stiff fight to have any voice whatsoever. Yet the Myers tendency is determined to make this impossible. Put yourself in the shoes of a student who listens to Myers rousing call for solidarity, and in consequence decides to stand up to Islamic intimidation. And when she is arrested, accused of racism, and threatened with expulsion by her University, she looks to him for solidarity and finds him not merely failing to provide it, but actively piling on – what view will she likely have of organised atheism?
I am glad to see that even this crowd is beginning to get it about Islam. I’m not happy to see them forget how they acted towards those who got it right first, and best.
