Atheist bravery award
As a committed Christian I decided it was time to honour an opponent of Christianity simply in order to be a good sport.
There are plenty of atheists out there who are equally good candidates so the issue arose as to how to judge between them. It was decided that the award should go to the bravest atheist, for ease of judging purposes. I decided against other criteria, such as most supportive of communist regimes, biggest champion of political correctness or scientific achievements which are only to be disproved in the next scientific revolution.
Ibn Warraq doesn’t win the prize, as he writes under a pen name. Sure, using a nom de plume is warranted when writing polemic material against Islam, but it disallows us from giving Mr Warraq the award.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the clear winner. She qualifies for the award because she is an atheist by belief. She is eloquent, likable, knowledgable, softly spoken and has the background to actually know what she is talking about. Her need for bodyguards to protect her from fatwas doesn’t disqualify her in the least. See the English language version of her site.
Some may be reminded of Irshad Manji when they think of Hirsi Ali, someone who also comes from an Islamic background and speaks out against its excesses. Manji, however, immediately disqualifies herself from the prize because she still refers to herself as a Muslim. She completely ignores the teachings of her prophet Mohammed and doesn’t seem to suffer from any kind of cognitive dissonance at all! Dhimmiwatch has a good critique of her views, which she refused to respond to, which is another reason why she doesn’t win the atheist bravery award.
The losers are Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, and Christopher Hitchen, author of God is not Good, as they have written populist books, appealing to the chatterati, masquerading as controversial and underdoggish.
I’ll nominate another — Anthony Flew.
Now there’s a guy who’s been confronted with a decision!
See the Wikipedia article on him.