But, it seems there are people who have bigger blinkers than he does; the prize-winning twerp is a Muslim. Adnan Oktar, if you disagree with Dawkins, offer some rational arguments to refute his position; what you have managed to do is bolster his assertion that those who oppose his scientism are irrational nincompoops. From the Times
A Muslim creationist has succeeded in having Richard Dawkins’s website banned in
Turkey, after complaining that its atheist content was blasphemous.
The country’s internet users are now subject to a court order imposed on Turk Telecom that prohibits them from accessing richarddawkins.net.
The court in Istanbul issued its judgment after Adnan Oktar claimed that his book Atlas of Creation, which contests the arguments for evolution, had been defamed on Dawkins’s website.
In July Professor Dawkins wrote on his site: “I am at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the breath-taking inanity of the content.”
Related LinksEarlier this year Mr Oktar, who uses the pen name Harun Yahya, tried to have Dawkins’s book The God Delusion banned in Turkey but failed. He is also appealing against a three-year prison sentence for creating an illegal organisation for personal gain.
Hi! You are right in saying that one would better find and present arguments to an opponent instead of muting him/her. But you seem to be ignoring the fact that, on Richard Dawkins’ site, there are pages of “personal insults” against Harun Yahya. Of the worst kind. If you had such pages about your personality, I’m sure you wouldn’t want people to read them, because each time they would read, the insults would be pronounced by someone new. As a general principle, Muslims ignore insults and move on if the cause of insult is not targeted against Islam or the person’s Islamic motives. For example we ignore a person if he swears at us in traffic jam. But in this case it is the very Islamic (read: religious) motives of Harun Yahya that are being insulted. So we are to give a reaction. The Harun Yahya speaker has explained that they asked the insults to be removed, but they were rejected. I wish they
were removed and the discussion would stand on its own, citing evidence and rational arguments only. We are not replying insults with insults as Muslims, we are doing our best to advice our opponents. If they don’t listen, they will have to face the consequences of violating someone’s personal rights and defaming a Muslim just because he is fighting his side of culture wars. Thanks for reading this admittedly long comment, i sincerely hope I could present you a muslim’s perspective on this, which of course you are free not to agree with.
Arian,
Thanks for the comment.
i sincerely hope I could present you a muslim’s perspective on this, which of course you are free not to agree with.
Yes, you did and yes, we still disagree.
Insulting someone’s faith, while unpleasant, is not best addressed by banning the website that contains the insult from an entire country. In fact, it is counter-productive: it makes the object of the insult appear fanatical and the person who launched it justified. Incidentally, I have looked at Dawkins’ site and, while I have not scoured it exhaustively for insults, I didn’t see anything particularly rude.