Christopher Hitchens’ God is NOT Great, How religion Poisons everything.

This is my first sincere personal book review, well not that im putting claim to true sincerity though. My point is that in the past (secondary school life), book reviews were forced upon us during the nice, super comfortable holidays and guess what? The teachers don’t even bother to collect them when school reopens. Those were the days yeah…

Anyway, thanks to the ever-enlightening, never-boring and always looked-up-to GP lessons in JC I get to appreciate the true value of a solid argument. In it, in one solid argument, you got to have your thesis, and then a possible anti-thesis plus the rebuttal of that anti-thesis. Those 3 components constitute a whole complete solid argument. I thought that was perfectly wonderful, and even islam encourages us to adopt such an approach when debating or having intellectual arguments. Leave no stones unturned, address every issue pertaining to the subject of discussion adequately.

So, back to the book I read. The title was indeed provocative, blasphemous and perhaps close to apostasy for us muslims. When I first saw the book, I thought if islam is al haqq (the truth) then the arguments raised in the book surely must be flawed or baseless or weak. Because Allah says “jaa al haqq, wa zahaqal bathil, Innal baathila KAANA zahuqaa”
Truth has prevailed and falsehood vanquished, VERILY falsehood is, by its very nature, bound to be vanquished.

True enough, the arguments raised by Mr. Hitchens were not at all convincing to me or anywhere near being able to shake the foundations of iman. Most of his arguments are based on the question of Divine Will, which, I have to point out, is not a matter of science or reason. For example, why would a Divine Creator spend so much creating this majestic Universe only to destroy it on Armageddon? My reply is simple, ask this secularist, naturalist, materialist, atheist the same question about gravity. Gravity is responsible for the formation of the most beautiful stars and also the supernova, the death of that same beautiful star. The author also asked why lower animals such as bats have much more powerful senses, eg. hearing etc.
Wa maa tasyaauna illa ai yasyaa Allah, rabbul ‘alamin.
And you do not Will save that Allah, the Lord of the Worlds, Wills. ;)

Another classic he likes to point our attention to are the actions of adherents of the faiths. An oft-recurring theme in his book, the blameful actions of extremists are mentioned a whole lot, to the finest details. Again the reply is simple, why judge a religion based on the actions of individuals who are not from the mainstream, classical and traditional Islam? These extremists/ terrorist/jihadist shy away when true, mainstream ulama speak out against them. I shall not mention the clichéd details of such contention. By the way, there are a lot of books by authentic Shaykhs which refute such extremist ideologies.

Plus our author so tactfully left out the Golden age of Islam where the Muslim world was at the forefront of civilization, both intellectually and morally. We were the torchbearers of the world when it comes to the sciences, maths, arts and what have you.

Our author also claimed that ethics or morality does not have to be guided by religion, in other words, they can come from “atheistic humanity”. I was literally shocked when I read this. When we mention an atheistic society, the mental picture that we build in our minds is one of brutality, barbarism, violence and the likes of it. We think about the evils of Nazism, fascism etc, all atheistic ideologies hostile to true religion. You can say that this is a bias but history proves the fact and reality. I was shocked and really could not fathom how atheism can produce such refined qualities of morals. The great humanity that Mother Theresa had exhibited surely must come from a devout person who has the awareness of God throughout her life.

And then not to mention the shameful lack of knowledge of a religion when condemning it. I laughed when he spelt “Allahuh Akhbar”. Makhraj all gone, pronunciation don’t have to say. This tremendously diminishes his authority when speaking about Islam. Why would you respect or acknowledge the credibility and qualifications of a guy whose credentials on Islam is very questionable? In all likelihood he is more of a bigot biased against Islam with only one agenda in mind, to bring down Islam, hence the title ‘God is NOT great’, which is OBVIOUSLY a play on Islam’s slogan God is Great. Which other religion uses this slogan more commonly?

And his lack of knowledge about ahadith is truly laughable. Are we muslims not familiar with the Prophet’s injunction that his ummah strive and put on the best effort to look for a cure when ill? The Prophet said (au
kamaqaala rasul) something like “for every disease there is a cure save death.” The message could not be anymore clearer. In fact, this is what inspired the FIRST MODERN PHYSICIAN/SURGEON, a UNIVERSAL GENIUS, to pursue greatness in medicine, ie. Avicenna or Ibn Sina. So it was utterly surprising when Mr Hitchens asserted that muslims were against public healthcare/ vaccination. The only evidence he could gather to back such a statement was, unsurprisingly nothing from the Quran or Hadith, but rather something that the Taliban (or was it the Pakistanis, I can’t really remember) did during the Polio outbreak. Just because the Taliban did not allow vaccination against Polio, Mr Hitchens claim that this is evidence that ISLAM is against public healthcare and thus POISONS everything. What a laughable effort.

So don’t worry about such books, they are not going to shake our iman provided we have the basic knowledge and our iman is strong, from spiritual practices, to begin with. Insyallah I will read Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and most probably have a good laugh hehe. May Allah bless us and forgive us and bring us to the company of the Prophet saw! Amin! Madad Ya Rasulallah, Madad!

Lastly, we pray that Allah guide such atheists to the Ultimate Truth (Haqiqah); verily they are our brothers who need guidance. True religion and true science will always point to the same Ultimate Truth. Louis Pasteur said “On the gates of science it is written “Ye Must Have Faith.’” Atheists are half way to becoming Muslims. They are saying ever so fervently, “THERE IS NO GOD”…what we need to do is add in
Illa Allah (except Allah)…