Sam Harris Interview

Brent Rasmussen's picture
Submitted by Brent Rasmussen on April 5, 2006 - 7:35am.

There is a very good interview with Sam Harris over at Truthdig. Check it out when you get a chance.

[link] Blair Golson: What prompted you to write “The End of Faith" ?

Sam Harris: It was my immediate reaction to Sept. 11—the moment it became clear that we were meandering into a global, theologically-inspired conflict with the Muslim world, and were going to tell ourselves otherwise, based on the respect we pay to faith.

The last thing we were going to admit was that people were flying planes into our buildings because of what they believed about God. We came up with euphemisms about this being a war on terror, and Islam being a religion of peace, and we were pushed even further into our own religiosity as a nation. At the moment that this dynamic became clear—and it became clear within about 24 hours—I started writing the book.

Within 24 hours?

In the first few days there were some people who were willing to call a spade a spade and speak critically about Islam, but very quickly we began to talk about Osama Bin Laden and the extremists of the Muslim world as being the exceptions - people who had hijacked a peaceful religion and utterly distorted it. Many people compared Osama Bin Laden to the Reverend Jim Jones, David Koresh, or some other marginal figure, and all of that is completely untrue. Osama Bin Laden’s version of Islam is a much more central, plausible version of Islam than people tend to acknowledge. My discussion of Islam in the book is a response to this sort of denial.

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