Sunday Sermon: What About Islam?

It is not at all uncommon - especially on websites that criticize Christianity - to see some commenter or other make a snide little remark to the effect of "You atheists never have any problem attacking Christianity because you know that we won't kill you for it, but are any of you brave enough to attack the homophobic and womon-abusing Islamic religion?"

Apart from being incredibly self-righteous (the comment essentially says "you only feel comfortable attacking us because we're so unbelievably meek and mild"), these sort of remarks show an incredibly short memory, and lack of biblical literacy. First of all, the Bible also has a hideous record of "homophobia" in both the old testament and the new testament. Secondly, as I've previously shown, the god of the Bible shows no concern for the lives or wellbeing of womyn. Lastly, Christianity as a "religion of peace" is a pretty new development that only arose because the first world (in which Christianity is the major religion) would no longer tolerate their barbarism. The simple fact is that Christianity - which for centuries has been guilty of the sort of crimes against humanity that might make the most dedicated ISIS operative raise an eyebrow - has since been civilized by secular values and an increasingly secular society. The simple fact that Christianity is now too weak to wantonly murder any who oppose it does not excuse, or oblige us to overlook, the crimes that Christianity committed when it was strong enough to act with impunity.

Although Christians clearly have no leg to stand on when critiquing Islam (except for maybe the extremely weak arguments of "now we know better", or "they weren't real Christians"), there could still be some legitimate questions about why it is that atheists typically target Christians while only occasionally taking on other religions.

The most obvious reason is that Christianity is the largest religion in the world. Obviously if someone is going to argue against the existence of a deity, that person is going to want to argue against a deity that people actually believe in. This is why atheists don't argue against Zeus, or Odin, or the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. Why would you waste your time disproving something that nobody believes in? So Christianity, with it's 2.2 billion adherents, therefore has the most logical deity to argue against. If we were to wake up tomorrow in a world where 2.2 billion people were devoted followers of the Greek war god Ares, you would probably never hear another word from atheists about Christianity since it would be a dead religion and arguing against its deity would be a waste of time.

While this is a partial answer, it is still not totally acceptable. After all, Christianity has 2.2 billion followers, but Islam has 1.6 billion, so it can't just be a numbers racket. So what makes up the rest? I would argue most of the rest is made up by a consideration of the geographic distribution of religions. Consider for a moment which countries are home to at least one million of the world's Muslims. Look at these countries, Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Iran, Nigeria, Morocco... Probably the most developed country to be home to a large number of Muslims is Saudi Arabia, and - while I don't want to paint "less developed countries" as being nations of savages - I think it's safe to say that Saudi Arabia isn't usually held up as the epitome of freedom, free thought, or scientific knowledge.

By contrast, the U.S. and all of Europe have a combined total of only about 2.7% of the world's Muslims (meanwhile, the U.S. and Europe have about 37% of the world's Christians). The conclusion  to be reached seems pretty obvious: Atheists don't typically bother with Islam because - outside of some of the least developed nations in the world - Islam is pretty much a fringe cult on the level of Mormonism. Atheists typically don't bother refuting Islam because the rest of the developed world already knows that it is a barbaric and disgusting superstition.

Everyone knows that a book that commands that womyn should be beaten for not obeying their husbands is the work of a savage people, and not the work of any deity. The problem is that many of these same people simply won't admit that a book that says that you can beat your slaves to the brink of death, just as long as they survive for a day or so after the beating, is also the work of a savage and barbarous people, and not the work of any deity.

That said, dear Christian reader, if you are so desperate for someone to prove that they're willing to say something against Islam, consider this my gift to you:

This has been your Sunday Sermon, go without god.