OK, Dawkins is a big-mouth and a bit of an extremist.

Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens: New Atheists flirt with Islamophobia

And the New Atheist emphasis on science reflects both bad philosophy of religion and bad philosophy of science.

But Nathan Lean’s long and not exactly timely article is basically crap, all the same.

Probably the best thing about the gnus has been their flat rejection of the soft-headed mendacity of liberal dogmatism about Islam in particular and about religion in general.

No, religions are not all alike, not all equally tolerable, not all equally wonderful or stupid, etc.

Religions differ among themselves, and to this day often do so violently.

And the most important difference – given they are all nonsense, anyway – has to do with their varying penchants for violence, war, coercion, brutality, and oppression of believers, unbelievers, and other-believers.

Quakers and Buddhists are not much into that sort of thing, and mostly haven’t been throughout their histories.

Islam likely holds the world record for violence from its very beginning to the present day, directed at both Muslims and non-Muslims.

Public recognition of this important fact of important differences among religions has pretty clearly separated religious liberals from outright atheists since at least as far back as 9/11.

On the other hand, the New Atheists as a group have been consistently wrong in their policy recommendations regarding the threat of Muslim violence since they came out in support not only of the invasion of Afghanistan but of that of Iraq.

And they have likewise been altogether on the wrong side vis-à-vis Zionism and the question of American support for it.

And though they have generally been right on the question of profiling for Muslim terrorism at airports (they favored it) they have been wrong, again, on the questions of Muslim immigration into America or temporary sojourning here, opposing every effort toward any degree of limitation of these things.

I have read the Koran, by the way, unlike Dawkins, though not in many years.

And Mein Kampf, too.

The Koran is much more boring than the Bible, though mercifully much shorter.

And it is much more monotonous, and much, much more riddled with nightmarish violence, both Allah’s own and the oceans of blood that he, Mohammed’s fevered creation, called for.

Indeed, as I recall, there is very little else to it but blood-curdling divine violence and calls for human violence on Allah’s behalf, mixed rather absurdly with announcements of Allah’s mercy, compassion, and graciousness.

If I heard numbers of Buddhists or Hindus were immigrating into my city I would find that interesting and perhaps puzzling, but not scary.

If I heard the same about Muslims my feelings would be quite different.

Why did Salon think it worthwhile to publish this tripe?

PS.

Dawkins, by the way, is the only one of the gnus I know of who has come out in favor of legal suppression of religiously affiliated private schools.

Not just Islamic schools.

All religiously affiliated private schools including, for example, the Catholic parochial schools or Protestant Christian Academies that very heavily dot the American landscape.

That might not still be his view, though.