Book Review 

Book Title: The End of Faith

Author:  Sam Harris

Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.,    2005 

Disguised as a book against organized religion, quickly sheds its pretentious cover and then clearly comes out as a Zionistic propaganda and hate literature against Islam and Muslims. The author makes a few suggestive remarks in support of atheism against religions but quickly goes on to show his satisfaction about Christians that most of them have now forgotten or have learned to ignore their faith. Harris then starts his irrational assault on Islam and its believers to fulfill the real purpose of the book. 

This book is a typical present day Zionist propaganda trash, in line with the writings of many other writers who have come out of woodwork after 9/11 to write against Islam and Muslims. Occasionally, Harris borrows quotes from Bernard Lewis (another ‘critic’ of Islam and Muslims) to support his hallucinations against Islam. The book attempts to raise baseless fears in the mind of the reader by placing special emphasis on the following: 

1. The suicidal bombing attacks,

2. The concept of ‘Jihad’, and

3. A delusional claim: “the Muslims want to either convert the whole world to Islam or would like to kill them if they refuse to convert”.

The book attempts to vindicate Jews and Judaism presenting the Jews as the victims of both Christianity since its introduction, 2000 years ago and then Islam during the last 1400 years. Harris presents the Jewish holocaust under Nazis as the traditional Christian hatred against Jews completely ignoring Europe’s prevailing political conditions of 1920s and 30s and the economical and social issues due to German humiliation in WWI. The author has not considered the fact that the Muslims have ruled various parts of Europe for over 500 years and yet Muslim population was a minority in those territories and Christianity and Judaism and its followers flourished at their own pace without any restrictions imposed by the Muslim rulers.  

Islam prohibits the act of suicide, also it does not encourage attacking women, children and others who are not combatants in a battle. The author’s assumptions and assertions about Islam in this regard is baseless. The suicidal bombings are basically acts of desperation and the world has seen those kinds of desperate acts by others; for example, Japanese pilots and also some suicidal missions by Germans against Russia towards the end of WWII. The Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a Sikh suicidal bomber. These are all examples of desperate actions of the weak as they see themselves running out of all other possible options or alternatives to deal with the situation. 

Harris repeatedly describes the suicidal bombings by the Palestinians, but did not care to provide the background and the circumstances which compel the Palestinians for these acts. He did not tell his readers that Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian territory since 1967 and over 200 illegal settlements have been built on forcibly confiscated land. There is no mention that there are over 60 UN resolutions against Israel that it has ignored, thanks to Uncle Sam for its support. While discrediting Palestinians and their suicidal bombing attacks, the author did not feel the necessity of writing a few words about how, Israeli authorities raze the Palestinians houses to ground and occupy there land on a moments notice in order to expand against international law.

Had the US been invaded by another powerful force, and in the event of the fall of its forces, would the ordinary Americans not try to fight as an underground resistance. Would they be then dubbed as insurgents and terrorists or would they be considered the freedom fighters? The bravery or the desperation of the suicidal bombers appear to be too difficult for Harris to accept as he fails to identify the real cause of the problem, which is, Israeli illegal expansion into Palestinian land. Similar situation has now been created in Iraq.  

The Palestinians have resorted to suicidal bombing attacks because they have nothing else to fight with. There is no international court or agency that can help them. They do not have F-16s, the gun ships and Abram tanks; all they have is their unarmed bodies to fight with. There are dozens of UN resolutions passed against  Israeli illegal occupation over the last four decades. As the UN itself has been reduced to a merely debating society by the US, The UN is as helpless and ineffective as the Palestinians themselves.  

Harris gives his readers an impression that according to Quran every martyr is supposed to have a right to take 70 of his friends to Paradise after death. There is no such statement in Quran and Harris has twisted and misquoted Islam and its tenets to serve his purpose. 

He cites several hot spots around the world blaming the religious differences for the trouble. He conveniently forgets the two World Wars that killed tens of millions of people that had nothing to do with religion. During 1930s, Japan and China had serious conflict, millions of people died, it had nothing to do with religious beliefs. Most, if not all international problems have roots in politics rather than the religions.  

Harris has highlighted the 1947 partition of India, blaming the religious differences. He has totally ignored the fact that the Muslims and Hindus have lived in India peacefully for several centuries until the British government during early 1900s purposely created problems between the two main groups of the population as a diversion against the demands for independence. During second and third decade of the last century, British political and administrative tactics of ‘divide and rule’ created an environment to cause riots making them look like religious and ethnic clashes. The whole country was soon engulfed with the fire of religious intolerance, that was willfully and treacherously designed.The people who had lived side by side for centuries were soon at each others throat leading to wholesale death and destruction at the time of partition. The bloodshed of those times has created everlasting rift between Hindus and Muslims of that region.  

The province of Quebec and the rest of Canada have been at odds with each other for decades. Language and cultural differences are the driving force for this conflict. Again there is no religious issues here. The cold war between the Soviets and the West went on for decades; it was not exactly due to religious differences. Decades of unrest in Northern Ireland is often attributed to sectarian clashes between the Protestants and the Catholics. But one cannot ignore the fact that the followers of both of these sects live in all parts of Britain, and there is no violence due to religion in England, Wales or Scotland. The Northern Ireland problem had its basis in politics rather than religion.  

The Kashmir problem between Pakistan and India is another example of a trouble with geo-political roots. There are well over 140 million Muslims already living in India, another few millions Kashmiris can also be part of it. But Kashmir is strategically important for Pakistan while India already controls most of it, hence a tug of war that neither of the two countries would like to loose.  

North and south Korea is another example, they are basically same race, separated by political disagreements.  

Generally speaking, people are tolerant and respectful towards each other and their personal religious beliefs as long as political and economic stability exists without obvious inequities between different social, religious and ethnic groups. Due to poor social-economic conditions the behavior of people can easily cross the limits of civilization; and religion, race, color, creed or languages can become excuses for the conflicts. 

Harris also has bones to pick with bin Ladin. I wonder where was Harris during 1980s when bin Laden and his gang was fighting against the Soviets and the US was funding them. Ossama bin Laden was considered to be a hero and a freedom fighter, now he is considered to be a terrorist. Obviously, according to Harris’ point of view, one is not a hero or a terrorist according to their deeds but according to who are they fighting for or against. 

A book of this kind of course will make full use of 9/11 and the alleged story of 19 Muslim Arabs whose photographs were splashed on front pages of the papers throughout the world.  [It is, however, an entirely different matter that the US administration has not provided any acceptable proofs to support its story of the 19 Arab hijackers,– the story that has holes big enough for a Boeing 767 to fly through - but that is a separate subject by itself]. 

According to Harris, it’s the middle class educated Muslims who are the source of the problem. Perhaps in his own crummy way, Harris is suggesting that conditions should be created to keep the Muslims uneducated and poor so that they should not have any voice. That will of course make it easier to grab their oil and land without too much of opposition. That is what they did to the American slaves, who were prohibited from learning to read and write.

The illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq has created conditions in that country such that it will take them at least a century to recover to bring them back to where they were a few years ago. The Iraqi invasion, we all know has served no one but Israel. Iraq as a country and as a nation has been totally destroyed in the interest of Israeli security and in the hope that the US may be able to control oil and hence the world, especially the economy of the emerging powers like China.  

This is one of the most useless and meaningless book that I have ever read. I stopped reading it after the first 125 pages. In fact after reading the first 10 pages, one is forced to think that it has more of the same using different words. This book is written for an audience who get their information mainly from sources like Fox News Network. In Canada the book may be popular among the readers of The National Post.  

Surprisingly (or should it be a surprise at all) this champion of ethics has not said any thing against the illegal, immoral and unlawful American invasion of Iraq or Israeli occupation of Palestine. Obviously the book is not about logic, truth and realities of life  but it is a political service to a few at the cost of many others.       

Just to give you a flavor of the book: 

Here are a few drops of the venom straight from the fangs: 

• Most Muslims who commit atrocities are explicit about their desire to get to paradise.

• It is clear, however, that Muslims hate the West in the very terms of their faith and that the Koran mandates such hatred.

• Anyone who says that the doctrines of Islam have “nothing to do with terrorism”- and our airways have been filled with apologies for Islam making this claim – is just playing a game with words.

• The twin terrors of Koranic literalism spring into view: on the level of the state, a Muslim aspiration for world domination is explicitly enjoined by God; on the level of the individual, the metaphysics of martyrdom provides a rationale for the ultimate self-sacrifice toward this end.

• The belief that certain books were written by God (who, for reasons difficult to fathom, made Shakspeare a far better writer than himself) leaves us powerless to address the most potent source of human conflict, past and present.

• Anti-Semitism is intrinsic to both Christianity and Islam; both traditions consider the Jews to be bunglers of God’s initial revelation.

• We are at war with Islam. It may not serve our immediate foreign policy objectives for our political leaders to openly acknowledge this fact, but it is unambiguously so.

• A future in which islam and the West do not stand on the brink of mutual annihilation is a future in which most Muslims have learned to ignore most of their canon, just as most of Christians have learned to do.

• Given the long history of conflict between Islam and the West, almost any act of violence against infidels can now be plausibly construed as an action in the defense of the faith. Our recent adventures in Iraq provide all the rationale an aspiring martyr needs to wage jihad against “the friends of Satan” for decades to come.

• The Koran points to another contemptible characteristic of Jews: their craven desire to live, no matter at what price and regardless of quality, honor, and dignity.

I wonder if this book would legally qualify for being a hate literature in view of Criminal Code of Canada. The Criminal Code of Canada defines the public incitement of hatred as follows: 

"Everyone who, by communicating statements in any public place, incites hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace is guilty of willful promotion of hatred." (Sec. 319). 

Javed I. Chaudry

Nov 1, 05