This week, we are joined by our friend Kelvin Hatle to talk about Islamophobia. As atheists, it can be difficult to be critical of Islam while still recognizing that Muslims face incredible levels of persecution in this country. It’s messy and we have to admit how much we don’t know about Islam before we engage in criticism of it. We work through that messy issue as much as we can in a podcast that is only supposed to be 30 minutes long. Kelvin also gets to answer our five questions!
Check out Kelvin’s podcast about Doctor Who – Get off my World!
If you want to make it clear the difference between Islam as it has been/can be practiced and how tyrannical governments use fundamentalist Islam as a control, do a google image search for pretty much any Middle Eastern country for any year before 1970. Searches like “Afghanistan 1968” or “Iran 1968” or “1950’s Egypt” are very, very eye opening.
And then the US decided that they needed to fight Communism everywhere, and the very best way to do that was to, you know, prop up anti-communist dictators who were also more fundamentalist. And then Saudi Arabia’s royal family decided to fund the Wahhabi sect.
p.s. A VERY good podcast to listen to is “See something, say something” which delves into the lives and experiences of modern Muslims in the US.