New atheism and Islamophobia

This page is a summary of the relation between New Atheism and Islamophobia.
Overview
A significant proportion of the relationship between New Atheism and Islam has been one of Islamophobia according to some publishers. Some commentators have criticized specific well known New atheists, including Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens for making Islamophobic statements. Commenting on Greenwald’s response to Harris, Jerome Taylor, writing in The Independent, has stated that, “Like Chomsky, who has also been a vocal critic of New Atheism, he blames writers like Harris for using their particularly anti-Islamic brand of rational non-belief to justify American foreign policies over the last decade. Wade Jacoby and Hakan Yavuz assert that "a group of 'new atheists' such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens" have "invoked Samuel Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' theory to explain the current political contestation" and that this forms part of a trend toward "Islamophobia in the study of Muslim societies". Writer Jonna Bornemark has criticized Richard Dawkins for mixing legitimate criticism of certain doctrines with racism when he applauded far-right politician Geert Wilders and his work. He describes this as "an astonishing connection between liberal secularism and right-wing extremism".

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