It seems the frequency of Islamic terrorist attacks is matched only by those that wish to play apologist for them. This last week or so has seen horrific attacks in Istanbul, Dhaka, Baghdad and the ‘holy’ city of Madina.
The usual suspects came out of the woodwork to cry ‘anything but Islam’.
I’ve documented a number of Dean’s failures to reason like a rational adult before. When he’s not lying about public figures, he likes to abuse atheists and tell them they are the same as triple murderer Craig Hicks simply for asking simple questions. Not to mention pretending to have information about the Chapel Hill murders that the general public or police do not possess.
Dean Obeidallah has spent some of his February making prejudiced and unsubstantiated claims about atheists and triple Murderer Craig Hicks on Twitter. Dean would have you believe murderer Craig Hicks is guilty of a hate crime motivated solely by anti-Muslim bigotry, inspired by his ‘new atheism’. This is somehow the fault of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris too.
This seems completely at odds with the information that has been made public. It is also at odds with the findings of the preliminary police investigation, or the charges currently faced by Craig Hicks.
To my simple suggestion that Dean should reveal what he knows about this case, which enables him to point the finger at atheists and public figures, I received abuse and further prejudice.
I recently caught Dean Obeidallah making a very serious and entirely false allegation in the direction of Sam Harris. When Dean’s error of judgement was pointed out to him, instead of assuming the role of ‘decent human’ and offering an apology or retraction, he decided to behave like a petulant toddler instead.
February 2016 signalled a year since self-professed atheist Craig Hicks murdered three innocent Muslims in Chapel Hill. Dean decided to mark this occasion by taking to Twitter to bait atheists about it; namely that they are either the same as Hicks, part of the same murderous ideology or that hicks was motivated to kill by some anti-Muslim, ‘new atheist’ animus. Which is odd.
This week on Taking The Myth, Stephen Knight discusses the big topics such as: Tommy Robinson on The Rubin Report, Richard Dawkins’s health and the latest bout of Evolution denial and smearing. And of course, The ASLAN Awards.
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If you ever need a guide stick by which to measure the integrity of someone’s arguments, you could do a lot worse than familiarise yourself with the most common logical fallacies. These enable you to separate the hack from the journalist and the scholar from the apologist.
Dean Obeidallah and Sam Harris have clashed before, and it’s clear that Dean is committed to the idea that Harris is motivated solely by bigotry. Unfortunately for Dean however, he’s having a terrible time trying to demonstrate as much. Finally, in what must have seemed like the dream ‘gotcha’ moment, Dean took to the internet to accuse Harris of ‘teaming up’ with an ‘anti-Muslim hate group’ in a series of Tweets. The excitement here is palpable:
