The resurrection of ‘new atheism’ - As white supremacy reigns supreme in the US, a new book seeks to bring back to the fore one of its ideological branches.

Their works – Dawkins’s, The God Delusion, Harris’s, The End of Faith, Dennett’s, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, and Hitchens’s, God Is Not Great – were all essentially written as a blind reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and all zoomed in on Islam and the Muslim world, demonstrating a remarkable ignorance of both.

Needless to say, none of the four was able to offer any serious historical understanding of this terror act, why it happened, what it meant, or how to prevent similar acts of wanton violence in the future. Nor did they make any intellectually challenging or noteworthy contribution to the millennia-old debate on belief and disbelief in God.

That publishers have chosen to resurrect, today, this 12-year-old Islamophobic backslapping session advertised as a “landmark discussion about modern atheism” is indeed quite telling. With white supremacy currently flourishing in the US and elsewhere, a book on “new atheism” – a pseudo-intellectual movement that has heavily contributed to its rise – would surely sell.

Before proceeding any further, let us be clear: Atheism as such is a perfectly healthy proposition and the world, including the Muslim part of it, has never been devoid of atheists – all the power to them.

Across religions and cultures, there are decent and reasonable atheists, as there are equally decent and reasonable believers, who can and should openly engage in debate about religion and the belief in God without succumbing to hatred and convictions in one’s supremacy. Such open and honest conversations are indeed healthy for any community or nation and should be encouraged.

So who are these four “new atheist” crusaders (yes, they may deny it, but they are indeed very much the product of the white Western Christian crusader tradition)? They are all white older men, who have never embarked on studying Islam, do not speak Arabic – the language of the Qur’an – and certainly have no special insight into any Muslim community on earth. They are, literally, illiterate.