Richard Dawkins: The Ideology of white supremacy

KhanHaripur

Chief Minister (5k+ posts)
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Richard Dawkins is an atheist philosopher and vocal critic of religions. He works to promote science, skepticism, rationality, and secular humanist thought. Unfortunately, recently Richard Dawkins’ criticism of Islam has increasingly been sliding into plain old bigotry – not based upon any sound scientific or any empirical evidence, which he claims to be a proud advocate of. On twitter, Richard Dawkins says


Richard Dawkins suggests the rise of Islamist terrorists is due to the Muslims’ ‘failure in science, engineering, medicine’. This is about as logical as George W. Bush, who once proclaimed terrorism was a result of them hating America for ‘our freedom’. There are many theories behind the rise of terrorism and terrorist experts attribute it to injustices in the foreign policy of America and other western nations. Robert Pape, a terrorism expert, cites that what is often considered ‘Islamic terrorism’ by Muslims, actually has secular motivations. He writes:
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The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign—over 95 percent of all the incidents—has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.’ [1]
In this quote, Richard Dawkins believes the superiority of a culture can be determined by a scientific, technological and materialistic paradigm such as advances in engineering and medicine.
Interestingly enough, the Islamic have a long and a proud history of contributions to science and medicine as noted by Adam Smith:
“…the empire of the Caliphs [Muslims] seems to have been the first state under which the world enjoyed that degree of tranquillity which the cultivation of the sciences requires. It was under the protection of those generous and magnificent princes that the ancient philosophy and astronomy of the Greeks were restored and established in the East; that tranquillity, which their mild, just and religious government diffused over their vast empire, revived the curiosity of mankind to inquire into the connecting principles of nature.” *
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But the ideal that a culture’s superiority is determined by their engineering or materialistic contributions is an ideal specific to white supremacist ideology. Indeed, since the beginning of European expansion, white people have always believed they were superior to the nations they conquered— Africans, Native Americans, and Australian Aborigines – due to their advanced technology and science and people of colors lack thereof. The Eurocentric paradigm has always defined ‘progress’ as more construction and more technology. Nations that weren’t technologically advanced were deemed as ‘primitive’ and worthy of being conquered. Yet, white people never realized that this constant construction of technology and progress being obtained by building more and more useless things was actually destroying the environment. White secular scientific society not Islam has allowed for the destruction of this plated via nuclear bombs and now global warming. This is not progress.
Moreover, while scientists in western societies have come up with cures for diseases, due to the capitalist nature of western governments they never practice preventable care. Instead, pharmaceutical companies profit off of sicknesses, diseases, and withhold cures all in the name of profit. In America, some African-American ghettos are left to die from preventable diseases all due to institutional racism that runs rampant in the health-care system. So what good is it to spend money, researching cures for diseases, when such medicine isn’t even available to the majority of the population? What good is your medicine when the social structure your society is organized around ensures non-white minority communities won’t have access to it?
Richard Dawkins also states:

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Richard Dawkins seems to believe that the only way for someone to be recognized as a legitimate contributor to science is when Nobel Prizes are handed to them by a primarily white led committee. Few women have received a Nobel prize when compared to men. Does this mean women are inferior to men? Of course not, the European colonial nations colonized Muslims in a violent manner—that is the reason they lag behind in science and the emphasis on the Nobel Prizes to ‘prove’ that one’s contributions is both Eurocentric and racist. Muslims were contributing to science long before there was such a thing as a Nobel Prizes.
One author in explaining a great irony in Richard Dawkins anti-Islamic views wrote:
“The very paper he writes his atheist diatribes on came to Europe via Islamic hands, the Greeks he builds his arguments on was preserved via Muslim philosophy. And the garbage he should throw his work into came via the Islamic impetus that gave birth to the European renaissance.”[2]
To have a valid comparison Richard Dawkins suggest we subtract awards handed for Peace Prizes.

If one were to use this same method on the Black community, they would discover only one Black person has won a Nobel Prize in an area other than peace and literature. Should white supremacists now use this methodology to prove how inferior black people are? It would be a flawed one considering Black Muslims have been contributing to science long before a group of white men decided to give out nobel prizes for it.
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Prior to slavery, West Africa was home to some of the richest and most prosperous civilizations in the world. The Kingdom of Mali was the intellectual center of the world at the time— a black Islamic Kingdom, home to Timbuktu University. Manuscripts were found indicating that these black scholars discovered the rotation of the planets long before their western counter-parts and made significant discoveries in astrology, geology, mathematics, physics, and many other areas. In addition to Mali, there was also Songhai, Ghana and Jenne – a civilization that performed eye cataracts surgery during medieval times.
Concerning some of these manuscripts, Michael Palin writes that the Kingdom of Mali
has a collection of scientific texts that clearly show the planets circling the sun. They date back hundreds of years . . . Its convincing evidence that the scholars of Timbuktu knew a lot more than their counterparts in Europe. In the fifteenth century in Timbuktu the mathematicians knew about the rotation of the planets, knew about the details of the eclipse, they knew things which we had to wait for 150 almost 200 years to know in Europe when Galileo and Copernicus came up with these same calculations and were given a very hard time for it.”[3
A Black Muslim scholar named Al-Jahiz theorized an earlier version of the theory of evolution long before Charles Darwin who seems to be Richard Dawkins Idol.
After a long study of animals, Al-Jahiz was the first to put forward his view of biological evolution in his Book ofAnimals, which contains the germs of many later evolutionary theories (animal embryology, evolution, adaptation, animal psychology and sociology) "11".First of all, al-Jahiz’s attempts were made in a truly scientific spirit to classifV animals in a linear series, beginning with the simplest and continuing to the most complex; and at the same time, he arranged them into groups having marked similarities; and these groups were divided into sub-groups to trace the ultimate unit in the species "4
Next Richard Dawkins suggest Steven Pinker should receive a Nobel prize for literature.

Steven Pinker, published a euroentric book entitled ,'The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined' suggesting that since the rise of western hegemony violence has been in decline. The book is nothing more than an apologetic for western imperialism. In reality, the world has been less violent to white people but people of color every day face gratuitous violence.
This is the man who Richard Dawkins believes should receive an award for his eurocentric publications. Richard Dawkins believes the only way one can make valid contributions to science is if it is approved by a white led committee who hands out awards. IF not, he will continue to portray an entire group of people as violent brutes who make no contributions to society. This is the ideology of white supremacy!


http://hakeemmuhammad.com/2013/08/08/richard-dawkins-and-the-ideology-of-white-supremacy/
 

zubair.maalick

MPA (400+ posts)
Arrogant and biased ... only two words for him ....... Stupidity in the name of Rationality

I wish he could have debate with Hamza Tzortes .. he escaped narrowly
 

M Ali Khan

Minister (2k+ posts)
I wish he could have debate with Hamza Tzortes .. he escaped narrowly

Hamza Tzortzis himself is an idiot and an attention seeker.

If you want someone SERIOUS to take Dawkins stupidity on, I suggest someone like Tariq Ramadan or Reza Aslan. they are genuine scholars and academics and not over-hyped preacher-cum-dramaybaz.

anyone with a basic understanding of politics and history can take on Dawkins and his tola.
 

zubair.maalick

MPA (400+ posts)
Hamza Tzortzis himself is an idiot and an attention seeker.

If you want someone SERIOUS to take Dawkins stupidity on, I suggest someone like Tariq Ramadan or Reza Aslan. they are genuine scholars and academics and not over-hyped preacher-cum-dramaybaz.

anyone with a basic understanding of politics and history can take on Dawkins and his tola.


lol ... I can not say anything about Reza, do not listen or read him much .. But yes, Tariq Ramadan is great.

About Hamza! anyway it is your opinion, do not need to argue :)
 

M Ali Khan

Minister (2k+ posts)
[h=1]Ignorance and progress[/h] Irfan Husain




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Dawkins, for all his abrasive ways, has popularised the Darwinian evolutionary theory through his TV programmes and his books.


For a Darwinian biologist, it is remarkable that Richard Dawkins has practically made a career out of atheism. Books like The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion have elevated him to the position of high priest of non-believers. Many who share his beliefs – or their lack – are put off by his strident advocacy of atheism, and his virulent attacks on religion.


Never far from controversy, Dawkins was at the heart of a Twitter-storm recently when he sent out this tweet to his 777,000 followers: “All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.”


Quoted by the Guardian, Owen Jones sent this tweet in response: “How dare you dress your bigotry up as atheism? You are now beyond an embarrassment.” Faisal Islam, Channel 4’s economics editor added: “I thought scientists were meant to upbraid journalists for use of spurious data points to ‘prove’ existing prejudgments.”


Just for the record, Trinity College at Cambridge has 32 Nobel Prizes, as against 10 for all Muslims. This number would go down to nine if, as many Pakistanis assert, our Dr Abdus Salam was not a Muslim because of his Ahmadiya belief. So, Dawkins was being quite factual in his tweet.


Defending himself against the charge of racism, Dawkins said: “Am I surprised (by the accusation)? Only at the number of people who seem to think Islam is a race, rather than a religion. I regard that view as racist. Anything you can convert to, or convert from, is NOT a race.”


In point of fact and belief, a Muslim cannot convert from Islam, although new converts to the faith are always welcome. But Dawkins does have a point: the Muslim ummah comprises around 1.5 billion people from virtually every nation and every continent. So comments questioning Muslim achievements should not, logically speaking, be ascribed to racism.


But then the first casualty in discussions about faith is usually logic. Muslims tend to be very touchy about even implied criticism of their economic and scientific backwardness. So when Dawkins pointed out, again quite accurately, that if we were to compare the number of Nobel prizes won by Jews with those awarded to Muslims, the contrast would be even more striking, the reaction was one of outrage.


Sadly, we are just not prepared to face reality. The reason Muslims have been left so far behind is their refusal to embrace modern education, and to cling to rote learning and dogma. By confusing Western thought and influence with rationality, we think we are better Muslims by rejecting modernity.

As a prime example of this, consider the Ottoman refusal to install printing presses when they were first invented. The reason given was that this would result in the mass production of holy texts by machines instead of being calligraphed.


While this can be defended on aesthetic grounds, it set back learning and ultimately, weakened the Ottoman Empire. In Nigeria, Boko Haram, the extremist terrorist group, has been attacking schools and killing students because it opposes ‘Western’ education. Our own jihadis have been doing the same thing. When they were in power, the Afghan Taliban decreed that only ‘Islamic’ subjects could be taught in schools, and then only to boys.


With these attitudes still widely prevalent in the Muslim world, it should hardly surprise us that Muslims have won only 10 (or nine, depending on your level of tolerance) Nobel Prizes. Unfortunately, many Muslims do not understand that scientific knowledge is neither ‘Western’ nor ‘Islamic’, but is part of our collective inheritance, no matter what faith we follow. It is a steady accumulation of observations and theorising, and has nothing to do with religion.


Another factor impeding our progress is the patriarchal and authoritarian structure of most Muslim societies. Both in the classrooms and at home, young people are discouraged from asking questions and challenging the established order. And yet this sceptical attitude is at the heart of scientific progress. If mankind as a whole had accepted received wisdom as the immutable truth, we would not have made the progress we have. Dawkins, for all his abrasive ways, has popularised the Darwinian evolutionary theory through his TV programmes and his books. Partly as a result, this is now the accepted explanation for how life evolved on our planet, at least among rational, well-educated people.


And while many Muslims in the UK and elsewhere were upset by his comments on their scientific backwardness, the fact is that he has been attacking all religions for years. Christians in the UK are bitter about the fact that while his criticism has often been given a public platform by the BBC, issues relating to Muslims have been soft-pedalled.


I find it slightly odd that while so many Muslims reject modern education as being ‘Western’, East Asian countries like South Korea, Japan and China have made remarkable progress by embracing the same ‘Western’ education. I suppose if you believe that we need to focus on the after-life, our physical existence on this world is of secondary importance. This makes it acceptable to have a second-rate educational system that is somehow ‘Islamic’.


Today, we take our phenomenal scientific progress for granted. From medicine to engineering to astrophysics, we are truly blessed by the enormous possibilities opening up before us. As we pursue the quest for discovering the nature of the universe at the gigantic particle collider at Cern, or invent an instrument that will predict the length of our lives (as has just been announced), we are in the midst of a scientific revolution.


In such exciting times, it is a source of constant amazement that we should squander so much time and effort in debating – and fighting over – religious differences. And yet, as we in Pakistan know only too well, our killing fields are populated by zealots who use faith to justify their murderous ways. As long as they have public support, there can be no progress.

http://dawn.com/news/1035350