I live in the north part of Idaho, in the portion that looks like a rock chimney. I bring this up merely to lend credence to my next claim, which is that the lakes up here are pretty cold year round. When you are swimming, or water skiing, even in August, you are always in for a bracing experience. And I bring that up because occasionally, while floating around in the water with your skis on, you will float into a nice warm spot. Ah, you think, and then it is over. But it is really nice while it lasts.
The next chapter by Hitchens is that nice warm spot. I agreed with virtually everything he said, and that is because Chapter Nine is on the Koran. Now, of course, I exclude the occasional asides about the Christian faith that he offers. And we also have to keep in mind the fact that if Islam really were the true religion of God, Hitchens would still be attacking it, although presumably for alternative reasons. Someone with a large vocabulary is never without a rock to throw, so long as he has a mind to throw it.
But with that said, I agreed with most of what he wrote here. And that leads to another point, which is one of respect for Hitchens. We live in a time where it takes courage to speak the truth about Islam. For much of this book, Hitchens has been the bad boy in the mandatory Bible class in a parochial junior high school, embarrassing the teacher with questions and shocking the cute girls.
But when he takes on Islam this way, he is doing something that takes genuine courage. The previous two chapters, where he said a number of outrageous things about the Christian faith, will not, under any conceivable set of circumstances cause the Baptists of Little Rock to riot and burn down the city. Neither will Jerry Falwell issue a fatwa, offering a sure ticket to heaven for anyone who bumps off Hitchens. True, it is possible that Pat Robertson might prophesy that a meteor will land on Hitchens’ car, with him in it, but this sort of thing from Robertson can scarcely be reckoned as a threat. If he were to make such a statement, I would be happy to ride around with Hitchens in his car for the day, and I have to confess that I would feel perfectly safe.
But militant Islam is very much present in the modern world, and it is a toxic and murderous faith. They have threatened and conducted murder for offenses in the same league as those commited in this chapter — Salman Rushdie, Danish cartoons, etc. Hitchens has to know this, and this means that for all his posturing and thin argumentation, he is not a poser. He is not pretending to bet — he actually has some chips on the table. This is not an instance of damning with faint praise. I am praising his courage, not the fact that he frequently talks nonsense in elegant prose.