You might wonder why a practicing Muslim, like me, would say such a thing.
After 9/11, my reaction was to target the most important conflict between 
Islam and the West and go to work on conflict resolution, peace, and reconciliation. At that time the Israeli Palestinian conflict seemed to be the major clash. After working hard on this struggle, you can see how far we got.
From another perspective came the four horsemen of the new atheism, four loud post 9/11 voices: Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett. Each took a somewhat different approach.
Sam Harris in “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (2004)” angrily attacked religious fundamentalism and religious faith, especially Islam.
Richard Dawkins, in “The God Delusion (2006)”, with high snarkyness, argued that evolution made the idea of a creator god ridiculous.
Daniel Dennett, in “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006)” proposed that religion should be subject to scientific inquiry.
Christopher Hitchens wrote “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007)” insisting that belief in God was a totalitarian belief.
In the USA, these four books were widely read. Atheism assumed a new militancy. People were no longer afraid to announce and argue this atheism made new by stridence.
American Muslims, however, were afraid. No so much of fellow Americans. We were scared of challenging the harsh Wahhabi Islam fostered and heavily funded by Saudi Arabia. Once I explored mainstream of American Islam, I found the idea that strict narrow beliefs signaled the real Islam. This seemed true for many who were not “strict” Muslims.
I converted to Islam in 1994 via the universalistic path of Sufism, the idea that all paths lead to the One. No one cared that I had become a Muslim. Some of my friends thought it was quaint.
Two years later when I moved away from the San Francisco Bay Area, I wanted to fit into a local Muslim community. I started attending mosques, but was surprised by the strength of what I called fundamentalism. Not at all like my Sufi community back in the Bay Area.
Once, although a woman, I was invited to a neighboring mosque to take part in a video shoot on Islam, at least that’s what I thought. It made sense because I was teaching comparative religion. Silly me. I was stashed in the basement and left alone for hours. I finally went home.
At another mosque, a guest speaker addressed the congregation. There were many children present. He proceeded to outline in tiresome detail many tiny rules that were necessary to be a “good” Muslim. I seem to remember that one rule entailed getting out of bed and putting your right foot into your right shoe before putting your left foot into your left shoe. No mention of beauty, truth, and justice. Just one rule after another. There could not have been a better way to turn off children who were being raised in America.
At about this time, I heard about an adventure of my Sufi teacher at his mosque in Hayward, California. As I later found out was happening throughout the USA and other countries, two berobed Saudi Wahhabis came to preach their strict doctrine. They preached that:
- Only our preaching is true.
- God is far away, transcendent, you must toil to please him according to our rules.
- Women are different from men and must be allowed less freedom.
- Only by following our detailed version of Islamic Law do you have a chance of pleasing Him, of attaining paradise, and of avoiding the fire.
- You are no real Muslim if you disagree.
- Other religions are bad. Mysticism is bad. Sufism is forbidden.
At this point, my short feisty teacher, in immaculate western dress, stood up to take them on. He cited one Quran passage after another, asking questions they could not answer.
“Is there spiritual wine in the Quran?”
“Of course not.”
“What about Sura 83, Verse 255?
These Wahhabis did not know their Quran. After all, they were marketing Wahhabism, not Islam. They never returned.
Unfortunately this was not the fate of other mosques during the 1990s in America as well as around the world. The Saudis poured millions and millions of oil dollars into spreading their intolerant version of Islam. They built mosques and schools. They funded research and publishing houses and selected the ideas to be published, all to advance their brand.
Wahhabism is a foundation for, although not synonymous with, today’s Islamic terrorism, but that is the story for another blog.
So why do I say “Thank God for atheism”?
The atheists loudly and publically took on the Islam of the terrorists. True they painted all Islam with the same brush, but they did call a dog a dog. Acts of terror are beyond excuse.
Mainstream Christians were usually tolerant and politically correct, which was comforting to Muslims who, like myself, did not recognize this new movement. It was the fundamentalist Christians who took on Islam as did the atheists.
Although fundamentalism should be allowable in all religion, there are limits: killing innocents and glorying in gore. Tolerance too is required since we all now live in the same world.
I see in this continuing crisis the opportunity to challenge intolerance in Islam, in Christianity, and wherever else it lies. It is the opportunity to put forth the universal ideas of all religions and encourage discussion of both the differences and the deep meanings.
I personally like religion. But we all need updating. The time has come for the great religions to acknowledge the historical context of sacred scripture and enter the modern world of change. Science, human rights, and democracy are the contexts of today. One can easily find their connection to the basic principles of knowledge, equality, and justice in ancient scriptures.
The argument between the limits of religion and the limits of reason can be profitable to both.