[CH] Yes, I think that is, in fact, what I …
[DD] But in fact, instead of thinking about eradication, why not think about it the way an evolutionary epidemiologist would, and say what we want to do is we want to encourage the evolution of avirulence. We want to get rid of the harmful kinds, and … I mean, I don't care about astrology, I don't think it's harmful enough. I mean it was a little scary when Reagan was reportedly using astrology to make decisions, but that, I hope anomalous, case aside, I find the superstition that astrology is important to be relatively harmless. If we could only do the same thing, if we could only relegate the other enthusiasms to the status of astrology, I'd be happy.
[SH] Right.
[CH] Well, look, you don't accept my - or you don't like my - answer, but I think the question should be, is going to be, asked of us. It was asked of me today actually, again on the TV: "Do you wish no one was going to church this morning in the United States?"
[SH] Right.
[DD] What's your answer?
[CH] Well, I've given mine, Richard's disagreed. Well, the answer I gave this morning was "I think people would be much better off without false consolation, and I don't want them trying to inflict their beliefs on me. They'd be doing themselves and me a favour if they gave it up. So, perhaps in that sense, I contradict myself, I mean I wish they would stop it, but then I would be left with no one to argue with.
[RD] (laughs) Well, I just don't …!
[SH] But, you have many other subjects!
[CH] And I certainly didn't say that I thought if they'd only listen to me, they would stop going. Okay, so there are two questions here. So that was my very experimental answer, but I'd love to hear … would you like to say that you look forward to a world where no one had any faith in the supernatural?
[RD] I want to answer this. Whether it's astrology, or religion, or anything else, I want to live in a world where people think skeptically for themselves, look at evidence. Not because astrology's harmful, I guess it probably isn't harmful, but if you go through the world thinking that it's okay to just believe things because you believe them without evidence, then you're missing so much. And it's such a wonderful experience to live in the world, and understand why you're living in the world, and understand what makes it work, understand about the real stars, understand about astronomy, that it's an impoverishing thing to be reduced to the pettiness of astrology, and I think you can say the same of religion. The universe is a grand, beautiful, wonderful place, and it's petty and parochial and cheapening to believe in djinns, and supernatural creators, and supernatural interferers. I think you could make an aesthetic case that we want to get rid of …
[DD] Well, fine, I …
[CH] I could not possibly agree with you more.
[DD] But, let's talk about priorities.
[RD] Okay.
[DD] If we could just get rid of some of the most pernicious and nauseous excesses, what would be the triumphs we would go for first? What would really thrill you as an objective reached? Let's look at Islam, and let's look at Islam as realistically as we can. Is there any, remote chance of a reformed, reasonable Islam?
[RD] Well, isn't the present, savage Islam actually rather recent? Isn't it the Wahabi … I mean, doesn't …?
[DD] You have to go back quite a ways, I think, to get …
[SH] Only up to a point. I mean, I think there's … and again none of us are the … whether we're equipped to do it, we're not the most persuasive mouthpieces of this criticism. I mean, I think it takes someone like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or a Muslim scholar, somebody like Ibn Warraq to authentically criticise Islam, and have it be heard by people, especially the secular liberals of the sort who don't trust our take on this, but it seems to me that you have different historical moments in the history of Islam that are distinct, one where Islam really has … you have some Muslim or you have a Caliphate, or you have some Muslim country which has a reign of Islam and is unmolested, for whatever period of time, from the outside, and then Islam can be as totalitarian and happy with itself as possible, and you don't see the inherent conflict, and the inherent liability of its creed. I mean, Samuel Huntington said that Islam has bloody borders. It's at the borders that we're noticing this problem and the borders of Islam and modernity, at this moment, the conflict between Islam and modernity. But yes, you can find instances in the history of Islam where people weren't running around waging Jihad, because they had successfully waged Jihad.
[DD] But what about women in that world?
[RD] Exactly, the suffering of women within those borders.
[DD] Yeah, yeah. Even in the best of times.
[CH] But there's obviously some kind of synchronism, and we know quite a lot now. There have been some wonderful books; Maria Menocal's book on Andalusia, for example, on periods where Islamic civilisation was relatively at peace with its neighbours, and doing a lot of work of its own on matters that were not Jihadist. And I saw myself, during the wars in post-Yugoslavia, that the Bosnian Muslims behaved far better than the Christians, either Catholic or Orthodox, and were the victims of religious massacre, and not the perpetrators of them, and were the ones who believed the most in multiculturalism. So it can happen. You could even meet people who said they were Atheist Muslims, or were Muslim-Atheists, Muslim-Secularists in …
[DD] Wow!
[CH] In Sarajevo, you could, yeah. Which is a technical impossibility, but the problem is this; whether we think, as I certainly very firmly do believe, that totalitarianism is innate in all religion, because it has to want an absolute, unchallengeable, eternal authority.
[DD] In all religion.
[CH] It must be so. A creator whose will can't … our comments on his will are unimportant. You know, his will is absolute, it cannot be challenged, and applies after we're dead as well as before we're born. That is the origin of totalitarianism. I think Islam states that in the most alarming way, in that it comes as the third of the monotheisms, and says nothing further is required.
[SH] Right.
[CH] There have been previous words from God, we admit that, we don't claim to be exclusive, but we do claim to be final. There's no need for any further work on this point.
[SH] And we do claim that there's no distance between theology and …
[CH] The worst thing in our world, surely the worst thing anyone can say is 'no further enquiry is needed'.
[RD] Oh yeah.
[CH] You've already got all you need to know. All else is commentary. It's the most sinister and dangerous thing, and that is a claim that Islam makes that others don't quite make in the same way.
[DD] Well, let me play devil's advocate for a moment on that …
[CH] There's no refutation of Islam in Christianity or Judaism, but there is in Islam. We accept all the bad bits of Judaism, we love Abraham and his sacrifice of his son, or willingness to sacrifice, we love all that, we absolutely esteem the virgin birth, the most nonsensical bits of Christianity. All that's great, you're all welcome to join, but we have the final word. That's deadly. And I think our existence is incompatible with that preaching.
[DD] Let me just play devil's advocate for a moment, so at least we're clear what the position is.
[CH] I'd rather speak for the devil pro bono myself!
[DD] We can all speak for the devil, I'm sure a lot of people think we're doing just that. I, for one, think that the fact that something is true is not quite sufficient for spreading it about, or for trying to discover it. The idea that there's things we should just not try to find out is an idea that I take seriously. And, I think that we at least have to examine the proposition that there's such a thing as knowing more than is good for us. Now, if you accept that so far, then, a possibility we have to take seriously, even when we reject it, we should reject it having taken it seriously, is the Muslim idea that, indeed, the West has simply gone way too far, that there is knowledge that's not good for us, it's knowledge that we were better off without, and the fact that many Muslims would like to turn the clock back, they can't of course. But, I have a certain sympathy for a Muslim who says 'well yeah, the cat's out of the bag, it's too late, it's a tragedy, you in the West have exposed truths to yourselves, and now you're forcing them on us, that the species would be better off not knowing.'