Q: As a Sufi Muslim, I'm very ruffled by the title of your book. Did you have to settle for the literal negation of Allahu Akbar (i.e. God is NOT Great)?
Christopher Hitchens: Yes.
All religions are wrong in the same way, in that they privilege faith over reason, but they’re not all equally bad in the same way all the time. I mean, if I had been writing in the 1930s, I might certainly have said that the Catholic religion was the most dangerous religion in the world, because of its open alliance with fascism and anti-Semitism, the damage from that our culture has never recovered and never will. But at the moment, it's very clear to me, the most toxic form that religion takes is the Islamic form.
The horrible idea of wanting to end up with Sharia, with a religion-governed state (a state of religious law), and that the best means of getting there is jihad, holy war, and that Muslims have a special right to feel aggrieved enough to demand this I think is absolute obscene wickedness, and I think their religion is nonsense in its entirety.
God speaks to some illiterate merchant warlord in Arabia? And he’s able to write this down perfectly, and it contains the answers to all human-- don't waste my time! It's bullshit!
Also, that God speaks-- the Archangel Gabriel speaks only Arabic.
All religions claim to be revealed truth, but Islam rather dangerously says, ours is the last and final one. There can't be anymore after this. This is God's last word.
Now, that's straight away a temptation to violence and intolerance, and if you note, it's a temptation they seem quite willing to fall for.
Every Allahu Akbar reminds people that we are in a very serious struggle with a very depraved religion.
Source: youtu.be