Sam Harris Quotes
It is taboo for us to criticize religion… but we have no such prohibition regarding history or geography…. If some one tells us that Tennessee is on the West Coast of the United States we are under no obligation to respect his view.
Sam Harris, Philosopher and Commentator, Speech, University Synagogue, Irvine California, January 18, 2005
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Islamic modernists like Serageldin are many among the educated Muslims but their views are often drowned out by the violence and extremist statements of the fundamentalists.
In 2005 an Egyptian writer, Usama Anwar Ukasha, criticized one of the Prophet’s companion’s role for causing dissention and divisiveness in Islamic history. Some called for his legal punishment for slandering a holy figure (see {588714}) and a law case was brought to force him to divorce his wife—so that she would not be “contaminated by his heretical thoughts. Al-Bana argued for freedom of thought and speech on such subjects. His view was particularly important since he was the brother of Hassan Al-Bana, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, a powerful fundamentalist organization. Note that Al-Bana’s call for intellectual freedom does not go so far as to say that it should be legal to criticize The Prophet Muhammad and it illustrates how far even modern Islam has to go to meet reasonable standards of freedom of thought and speech.
Rushdie was commenting on the Danish Cartoons that had been published the year before depicting the Islamic Prophet Muhammad to the great distress of some fundamentalist Muslims some of whom orchestrated riots in many countries involving much property destruction and some loss of life. See {590918} as an example of the concern.
Just days before September 11. While in America, such a remark would just be considered an insensitive and inappropriate utterance, in France, he was brought before the courts and threatened with jail and a large monetary fine under a 1972 French law which bans hate speech. See {595311}
He was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church for figuring out that the earth revolved around the sun which was contrary to church teaching at the time.
He was officially hanged for his offence of blasphemy. See {619712}. His execution, which raised considerable concern, was the last execution for blasphemy in Britain.
Spinoza’s ideas were considered so radical and dangerous that he was the only man in history who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims.
Samuel Benjamin Harris is an American author, philosopher, neuroscientist, and podcast host. His work touches on a wide range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics, philosophy of mind, politics, terrorism, and artificial intelligence. Harris came to prominence for his criticism of religion, and Islam in particular, and is described as one of the "Four Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse", along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett.
