It's quite sad that some view Sam Harris as a "racist" (which makes no sense) because of his views on Islam, views of which I tend to agree with.
He's an interesting speaker and I definitely wouldn't call his views on Islam racist, but I would call his worldview rather badly laid out. He pretty much is psychologically incapable of acknowledging the US' role in creating terrorism by funding Saudi Arabia, or the role that imperialism has played over all in helping aid terrorism. Instead he tows the establishment party line and says, "Right, but we have good intentions, so it's all okay!"
He's not wrong that Islamic doctrine is bad (There's a reason I'm an atheist --I reject absolutely all of it), but you can't then pretend like the US had nothing to do with making Salafism
the accepted interpretation of Islam, all while denouncing Islam and saying that all terrorism is caused by Islam. When you stop including enough information, it starts to become misinformation. That's like paying children with candy to kick old people in the knees, and then turning around an complaining about how all young people are violent. And you can't pretend like international Islamic terrorism was a problem prior to US imperialism and our involvement and promotion of it during the Cold War --because while there was a lot of discrimination and violence. You can't pretend like Moghul India wasn't religiously tolerant, or several other majority Muslim states weren't also religiously tolerant.
He also seems incapable of accepting that the things that he says inflames religious tensions, and that in a world where 40% of Americans think that banning Muslims from entering the country is a good thing, that's pretty ****ing socially irresponsible.
Anyways, I am not a huge fan of Harris anymore. I've never found him to be as insightful or as enlightened as Christopher Hitchens (who I still have a number of problems with, namely his absurd neoconservative foreign policy), or Dawkins, or Dennett. Truth be told, I think that Dennett is the most reasonable and insightful of the whole lot. I also like Massimo Pigliucci, even though I always role my eyes when he starts talking about physics.
