Post by ck4829 on Feb 16, 2022 17:15:12 GMT
I never thought ‘New Atheism’ would become a tool of the Christian Right
As an ex-Muslim woman, I once sought refuge in a vocal online atheist movement that began developing in the early 2000’s, but after a few years in what became known as the “New Atheist” scene, I realized that many of the people I had thought were dedicated to values like enlightenment and tolerance had a lot more in common with the religious bigots they claimed to oppose.
Online vocal atheist communities seemed like a great fit for me, at first. As someone who grew up in a theocracy, it was cathartic to find a place to vent my frustrations on the topic of religion. Finding community is certainly not easy as an ex-Muslim; and when you’re an immigrant and a minority like I am in Canada, where I live now, that adds a few more obstacles.
Religion was never something I was fond of, even as a child. I questioned everything and the stories in scripture didn’t make sense to me. You can imagine the challenges that posed while living in a theocracy. As a result, I never really fit in and always felt like an outsider—especially growing up as a Third Culture Kid, a Pakistani expat in Saudi Arabia.
Over time, I’ve come to realize that there were several reasons I felt that way, not just my lack of belief. Identity and being an immigrant in a place where you can’t even call yourself an immigrant even if you are born there (Saudi Arabia) had a lot to do with it, too.
Both countries were still very affected by problems stemming from religion, however. Especially religion interfering in government. There were so many things that ran counter to my own progressive values. Dissent was not tolerated, women were treated like second-class citizens, minorities were treated unfairly, and anti-LGBTQ bigotry was commonplace. Encountering New Atheism seemed like a release of so much pent up anger about these things. It was wonderful to be involved with a community that seemed to be actively concerned with the same issues that I was.
I jumped right in with my newfound friends, most of whom seemed to be huge fans of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins; Christopher Hitchens, the late Vanity Fair columnist; and Sam Harris, author of the book The End of Faith. Their in-your-face godlessness seemed to be just what I was looking for. It was unapologetic, caustic, and most important of all, concerned with spreading the good word. It was a welcome contrast to holding your tongue, as one must in theocracy for self-preservation.
These “New Atheists” wanted to spread the gospel of secularism, unlike their predecessors whose atheism was more incidental to their identities. It wasn’t an overnight change, but once I became involved in the online atheist scene, I, too, began posting frequently about religion and my dislike for it.
My online content generating days began in 2010 after I had returned to Canada after living in Pakistan for a few years. I decided to start a blog called Nice Mangos based on my observations and some interviews I did while I was there. I primarily wrote about sexuality in Pakistan back then—the site was the first and only blog of its kind at the time. Of course, it was hard to completely disentangle religion from sexuality and societal restrictions around it in Pakistan, so I did touch upon it occasionally.
A few years later, I wrote and illustrated a children’s picture book called My Chacha is Gay which used simple illustrations to address the subject of homophobia in a specifically Pakistani context.
Most of the money I raised via crowd-funding for the book came from fellow Pakistanis, which was such a pleasant surprise and in stark contrast to the attitudes I had generally experienced in Pakistan. The homophobia in Pakistan always struck me as very odd & hypocritical considering that same-sex experimentation was not uncommon among men who lacked access to women because of gender segregation. Pakistan is a place where two men walking down the street holding hands would be perfectly acceptable and commonplace, but any mention of gay rights elicits howls of anger. My children’s book was the target of such anger, and I continue to receive death threats about it to this day.
I wrote my blog and children’s book under my current pseudonym…and I’m glad I did! Being a woman who discusses sexuality, religion and apostasy from Islam specifically put me in real danger and made me a target of intolerant religious extremists. I received all kinds of hate mail, rape, and death threats too.
I still get plenty of threatening messages nowadays, but the hate mail I currently receive comes mostly from Western far-right types who say Islam is barbaric, and call me a dirty immigrant. Having been the target of abuse from extremist Christians, Muslims, and atheists, it’s easy to see that they have a lot in common.
Sadly, the abuse I’ve faced is part of a larger dilemma that Muslim and ex-Muslim women face. At home, we deal with constant oppression from Islamic authoritarians; in the West, we’re beset by bigotry and tokenism from people who want to exploit our struggles in the service of their own narratives.
After several years as a blogger, I decided to expand my online voice in February of 2016 by starting a podcast called “Polite Conversations.” The show started off with a bang by getting banned from YouTube twice for posting our first episode, an interview with Iranian-British atheist Maryam Namazie. Since then, I’ve done scores of shows and met many wonderful people.
But as I got further into New Atheism, I began seeing troubling indications that many of the people in the movement seemed to be motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry rather than a desire to oppose intolerance and superstition. This wasn’t a realization I came to easily or quickly since I too had personally had been falsely accused of Islamophobia because of my criticism of religion, so that obscured things for me for a while.
At the time, it was harder to see who was criticizing in good faith (no pun intended) and who was motivated by anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant views. But after Donald Trump emerged as a political figure in the United States, the truth became much easier to spot, as bigots were emboldened and dog whistles turned into blaring sirens.
My concerns about movement atheism really escalated in 2015, when the reactions to the European migrant crisis I saw around me were more in line with the far-right than the compassionate, secular humanism I had been expecting. I was appalled as I saw prominent New Atheist figures sharing anti-migrant propaganda. One popular atheist publication even began publishing articles from notorious bigots like Katie Hopkins and supposedly “satirical” covers that depicted migrants in dehumanizing ways as insects or through racist caricatures. I was disturbed when I saw people like Sam Harris sharing and endorsing anti-migrant interviews with far-right figures like Anne Marie Waters—who was too extreme for UKIP (a far-right party in the United Kingdom).
Instead of welcoming refugees fleeing Islamic fundamentalism, many within New Atheism were joining the reactionary effort to close Europe’s doors. This moment was what really began to open my eyes to the hollowness and hypocrisy of this movement.
flux.community/eiynah-mohammed-smith/2022/02/i-never-thought-new-atheism-would-become-tool-christian-right
As an ex-Muslim woman, I once sought refuge in a vocal online atheist movement that began developing in the early 2000’s, but after a few years in what became known as the “New Atheist” scene, I realized that many of the people I had thought were dedicated to values like enlightenment and tolerance had a lot more in common with the religious bigots they claimed to oppose.
Online vocal atheist communities seemed like a great fit for me, at first. As someone who grew up in a theocracy, it was cathartic to find a place to vent my frustrations on the topic of religion. Finding community is certainly not easy as an ex-Muslim; and when you’re an immigrant and a minority like I am in Canada, where I live now, that adds a few more obstacles.
Religion was never something I was fond of, even as a child. I questioned everything and the stories in scripture didn’t make sense to me. You can imagine the challenges that posed while living in a theocracy. As a result, I never really fit in and always felt like an outsider—especially growing up as a Third Culture Kid, a Pakistani expat in Saudi Arabia.
Over time, I’ve come to realize that there were several reasons I felt that way, not just my lack of belief. Identity and being an immigrant in a place where you can’t even call yourself an immigrant even if you are born there (Saudi Arabia) had a lot to do with it, too.
Both countries were still very affected by problems stemming from religion, however. Especially religion interfering in government. There were so many things that ran counter to my own progressive values. Dissent was not tolerated, women were treated like second-class citizens, minorities were treated unfairly, and anti-LGBTQ bigotry was commonplace. Encountering New Atheism seemed like a release of so much pent up anger about these things. It was wonderful to be involved with a community that seemed to be actively concerned with the same issues that I was.
I jumped right in with my newfound friends, most of whom seemed to be huge fans of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins; Christopher Hitchens, the late Vanity Fair columnist; and Sam Harris, author of the book The End of Faith. Their in-your-face godlessness seemed to be just what I was looking for. It was unapologetic, caustic, and most important of all, concerned with spreading the good word. It was a welcome contrast to holding your tongue, as one must in theocracy for self-preservation.
These “New Atheists” wanted to spread the gospel of secularism, unlike their predecessors whose atheism was more incidental to their identities. It wasn’t an overnight change, but once I became involved in the online atheist scene, I, too, began posting frequently about religion and my dislike for it.
My online content generating days began in 2010 after I had returned to Canada after living in Pakistan for a few years. I decided to start a blog called Nice Mangos based on my observations and some interviews I did while I was there. I primarily wrote about sexuality in Pakistan back then—the site was the first and only blog of its kind at the time. Of course, it was hard to completely disentangle religion from sexuality and societal restrictions around it in Pakistan, so I did touch upon it occasionally.
A few years later, I wrote and illustrated a children’s picture book called My Chacha is Gay which used simple illustrations to address the subject of homophobia in a specifically Pakistani context.
Most of the money I raised via crowd-funding for the book came from fellow Pakistanis, which was such a pleasant surprise and in stark contrast to the attitudes I had generally experienced in Pakistan. The homophobia in Pakistan always struck me as very odd & hypocritical considering that same-sex experimentation was not uncommon among men who lacked access to women because of gender segregation. Pakistan is a place where two men walking down the street holding hands would be perfectly acceptable and commonplace, but any mention of gay rights elicits howls of anger. My children’s book was the target of such anger, and I continue to receive death threats about it to this day.
I wrote my blog and children’s book under my current pseudonym…and I’m glad I did! Being a woman who discusses sexuality, religion and apostasy from Islam specifically put me in real danger and made me a target of intolerant religious extremists. I received all kinds of hate mail, rape, and death threats too.
I still get plenty of threatening messages nowadays, but the hate mail I currently receive comes mostly from Western far-right types who say Islam is barbaric, and call me a dirty immigrant. Having been the target of abuse from extremist Christians, Muslims, and atheists, it’s easy to see that they have a lot in common.
Sadly, the abuse I’ve faced is part of a larger dilemma that Muslim and ex-Muslim women face. At home, we deal with constant oppression from Islamic authoritarians; in the West, we’re beset by bigotry and tokenism from people who want to exploit our struggles in the service of their own narratives.
After several years as a blogger, I decided to expand my online voice in February of 2016 by starting a podcast called “Polite Conversations.” The show started off with a bang by getting banned from YouTube twice for posting our first episode, an interview with Iranian-British atheist Maryam Namazie. Since then, I’ve done scores of shows and met many wonderful people.
But as I got further into New Atheism, I began seeing troubling indications that many of the people in the movement seemed to be motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry rather than a desire to oppose intolerance and superstition. This wasn’t a realization I came to easily or quickly since I too had personally had been falsely accused of Islamophobia because of my criticism of religion, so that obscured things for me for a while.
At the time, it was harder to see who was criticizing in good faith (no pun intended) and who was motivated by anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant views. But after Donald Trump emerged as a political figure in the United States, the truth became much easier to spot, as bigots were emboldened and dog whistles turned into blaring sirens.
My concerns about movement atheism really escalated in 2015, when the reactions to the European migrant crisis I saw around me were more in line with the far-right than the compassionate, secular humanism I had been expecting. I was appalled as I saw prominent New Atheist figures sharing anti-migrant propaganda. One popular atheist publication even began publishing articles from notorious bigots like Katie Hopkins and supposedly “satirical” covers that depicted migrants in dehumanizing ways as insects or through racist caricatures. I was disturbed when I saw people like Sam Harris sharing and endorsing anti-migrant interviews with far-right figures like Anne Marie Waters—who was too extreme for UKIP (a far-right party in the United Kingdom).
Instead of welcoming refugees fleeing Islamic fundamentalism, many within New Atheism were joining the reactionary effort to close Europe’s doors. This moment was what really began to open my eyes to the hollowness and hypocrisy of this movement.
flux.community/eiynah-mohammed-smith/2022/02/i-never-thought-new-atheism-would-become-tool-christian-right