Andrew Brown: If you hate the belief, you hate the believer

I suppose there’s a good case to be made for ignoring the Guardian’s Official Clickbait Troll, Andrew Brown. After all, his views are completely predictable, and his commenters usually give him the good hiding he deserves. But occasionally he goes so far beyond the pale that even Professor Ceiling Cat must give him a few scratches. And so it is with Brown’s latest piece at the Guardian. “Why I don’t believe people who say they loathe Islam but not Muslims.“

Headed by a photograph of Sam Harris, Brown’s thesis is simple: if you hate an ideology or a belief, you must perforce hate the person who holds it. This is, of course, his way of accusing the New Atheists of lying: we’re really all religion- and Muslim-haters. Or, as he says:

Some people who claim that Islam is profoundly evil will also say that they bear Muslims no ill will but I don’t think they are telling the truth. It is really difficult and indeed psychologically unnatural to claim that you hate an ideology without hating the people in whose lives it is expressed. Religions, nations, and even races are all shared imaginative constructs (although nations and races have other characteristics as well) and if you really want to extirpate them, you must extirpate the people who imagine them as well.

This is completely insane.  I have several friends who are religious (in fact, some of my closest friends), and they know I am an atheist. I find their religious beliefs insupportable, and I’m sure they know that. But they are lovely people, and I don’t consider a liberal form of belief to be something that should dissolve a friendship that has so many greater benefits. Likewise, not all Muslims embrace the extreme, misogynistic, and hateful forms of the faith and I know at least one Muslim whom I see as a friend, and many others whom I do not hate.