Christopher Hitchins

One of our afternoon panelists commented that sometimes people tend to posit a simplistic victim-oppressor analysis. We examine the past and determine who has been victimized and who is oppressed. Some educators perform this exercise in the case of Egypt, and the Middle East generally: i.e., Mubarak, bad, what he is replaced with, good. This analysis suggests that if the Muslim Brotherhood replaces Mubarak this could be a good thing. But as I consider covering the Caliphate in my World History classes I am reminded of what is stated in, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens.

Hitchens states that the Koran is a rehash of Jewish and Christian myths. Islam, with no Reformation, and no internal self-critical tradition, is the least adjusted world religion to the obvious contradictions of living in the modern world with a pre-modern mindset. Any historical example to critically examine the claims of Islam has resulted in repression (p. 125). The accounts of Muhammad (d. 632) "are hopelessly corrupted into incoherence by self-interest, rumor, and illiteracy" (p. 127). "The first full account of his life was set down a full hundred and twenty years later by Ibn Ishaq, whose original was lost and can only be consulted through its reworked form, authored by Ibn Hisham, who died in 834" (p. 129). In addition, there is no way of determining how the competing accounts and traditions were collated and edited to form the text of the Koran. We are left with conjecture and hearsay as to the actual message of Muhammad.

The chaotic manner in which the Koran was assembled gave rise to the more pressing issue of succession, a controversy characterizing Islam and one in which Muslims have never solved. Continuously Islam has strenuously opposed critical examination of the Koranic text. The apparent unity of Islam masks a great insecurity and anxiety about the text not shared by other religious traditions (p. 126). "But Islam when examined is not much more a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of of plagiarisms, helping itself from earlier books and traditions as occasion appeared to require" (p. 129). With its lack of originality Islam nonetheless demands obeisance from non-believers yet "there is nothing--absolutely nothing--in its teachings that can begin to justify such arrogance and presumption" (p. 129).

The primary issue of a critical and scholarly account of Islam based on the Koran requires a similar willingness, as Jews and Christians have allowed and benefited from, to examine the Scriptural claims to objective, scholarly examination. The consensus of religious obscurantism though has precluded "free inquiry and the emancipating consequences that it might bring" (p. 137).

Meanwhile, rogues, terrorists, mullahs, and misguided Islamists predominate and prey unmolested upon unwary victims.