Secularism or atheism has a militant wing, much like Islamist militants sit out at the edges of Islamic nations. Both alike claim that they are the true, genuine article. Tolerant atheists and tolerant Islamic believers are accused respectively of being hypocritical compromisers.
Our view is that the Islamist case for being consistently Islamic is a very strong one, given the plethora of sura in the Koran, the hadiths, and the historical practice of sharia law--all of which are intrinsic to Islam and the only authoritative standards for that religion. In terms of orthodoxy and orthopraxy Islamism has the much stronger claim to being authentically Islamic.
But what about secular atheism's militant wing? Is intolerance and belligerence intrinsic to atheism? To be sure, there are plenty of urbane, open-minded, mild atheists. But do such speak consistently with the logical outworkings of atheism as claimed by its militant wing? What is clear is that whenever atheism has insinuated into a culture to the point where it starts shaping the law and social institutions it always oppresses, persecutes and enslaves its opponents to one degree or other.
By their fruits ye shall know them, we are told. Peter Hitchens documents the fruits of secular atheism in the United Kingdom, as one typical case study:
. . . (M)ilitant atheism adopts a mocking and high-handed tone of certainty, sneers at its Christian opponents, and states, or implies, that they must be stupid. This style of attack conforms to the irreverent spirit of the age and so is not very carefully examined. It is not widely recognized that secularism is a fundamentally political movement, which seeks to remove the remaining Christian restraints on power and the remaining traces of Christian moral law in the civil and criminal codes of the Western nations. . . .The same phenomena are occurring in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Too widespread to be co-incidental.
It employs the cause of "equality" among sexual orientations to accomplish this, allocating the privileges of heterosexual marriage to homosexual civil partnership (and by implication, unmarried heterosexual couples) and so making them cease to be privileges. It makes it impossible for Christian churches to operate adoption societies, despite their effectiveness in this task, because it is no longer lawful for them to "discriminate" against homosexual couples who wish to adopt. It harasses and persecutes government employees who do not wish, on religious grounds, to solemnize homosexual unions. It compels the keepers of guest houses to welcome homosexual couples beneath their roofs, regardless of any moral objections they may have. It even punishes hospital nurses for offering to pray for their patients. All of these things have taken place in Great Britain in recent years. [Peter Hitchens, The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), p. 161f.]
Militant Islam justifies its oppression by appealing to the commands and will of Allah. Militant atheism justifies its oppression by appealing to Autonomous Man (his ratiocinations, his dignities, his rights, his freedom) The end result of both is oppressive tyranny by one set of humanoids over other humans. Any disagreement or struggle between Islamism and atheism is merely internecine warfare, somewhat akin to the struggle between Sunni and Shi'ite, Lenninists and Trotskyites.
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