This article originally appeared on Religion Dispatches.
ÂAll the worldÂs Muslims, Richard Dawkins recently tweeted, Âhave fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. For good measure he sprinkled salt in the wound: ÂThey did great things in the Middle Ages, though. It happened so long ago, in internet time, that you might wonder the utility of a lengthy response. But in the great green country of Islamophobistan, where no argument goes unrecycled, whatÂs late one day might be on time another.
Unfortunately, too, many who responded to Dawkins tweet did no more than prove his point. By arguing for all that Islam had historically accomplished for science and technology, they were however unwittingly drawing attention to the great knowledge gap between the modern West and modern Muslims, or at least the modern Muslim-majority world, which is another reason to return to his tweet.
ÂWhat have you done recently for us? Dawkins seemed to be asking. If the answer is nothing, does that mean Muslims donÂt matter? (To justify the alienation, oppression, or killing of a person, you must first dehumanize him.) And you can do all kinds of things to folks who donÂt matter. But Dawkins was not quite as clever as he supposed. Writing for The Guardian, Nesrine Malik proposed that if we:
insert pretty much any other group of people instead of ÂMuslims and the statement would be true.
Malik addressed Dawkins directly:
You are comparing a specialised academic institution to an arbitrarily chosen group of people. Go on. Try it. All the worldÂs Chinese, all the worldÂs Indians, all the worldÂs lefthanded people, all the worldÂs cyclists.
[. . .]
Proving one-more-Time, that: NOTHING is ever 'simple' eh, Bunky?
[This article courtesy of, Fans of the M.P. Argument Club at £5-a-pop Carrion.]
aka.. Was there ever such a thing as ... Normalcy? ... on this homo-sap-infested little planet.