In the Guardian, Terry Eagleton takes a page from his recent book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution, to argue that the new atheists have become weapons in the war on terror:
Writers such as Martin Amis and [Christopher] Hitchens do not just want to lock terrorists away. They also tout a brand of western cultural supremacism. [Richard] Dawkins strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq, but preaches a self-satisfied, old-fashioned Whiggish rationalism that can be wielded against a benighted Islam. The philosopher AC Grayling has an equally starry-eyed view of the stately march of Western Progress. The novelist Ian McEwan is a freshly recruited champion of this militant rationalism. Both Hitchens and Salman Rushdie have defended Amis’s slurs on Muslims. Whether they like it or not, Dawkins and his ilk have become weapons in the war on terror. Western supremacism has gravitated from the Bible to atheism.
Continue reading at the Guardian.