Desh Avila and Jay Shapiro’s Islam & the Future of Tolerance isn’t so much a debate between Atheism and Islam as it is a debate about the debate between Atheism and Islam, an important nuance in this age of ceaselessly escalating discourse on cultural and identity politics. Anyone can wrangle a group of talking heads in front of a camera or audience to bloviate on the merits of religious belief, but Avila and Shapiro’s purposes are more urgent and pressing, belonging to the immediate, pragmatic now of early twentieth-first century modernity than any generalized epistemological discourse on spirituality and belief. The central questions of the existence of God and the authenticity of Islam are never addressed. The matter, then, is how we should ask these questions.
The documentary focuses on the relationship between two prominent liberal writers, the first noted neuroscientist and “New Atheist” Sam Harris, the second ex-Islamist and religious reformer Maajid Naway. The first third of the film recounts their respective upbringings, giving particular attention to Maajid: his happy, middle-class childhood in Essex, England; his induction into violent extremism as a young man after being recruited by pan-Islamist organization Hizb Ut-Tahrir; his subsequent ideological deprogramming after being sponsored by Amnesty International while a prisoner of conscience in Egypt. (This emphasis is unsurprising since, through no fault of Harris, his story as a young Californian with a knack for debate and skepticism isn’t anywhere near as compelling.) The film transitions to their originally contentious relationship, beginning with their first meeting in 2010 when a slightly tipsy Harris rudely confronted Maajid at a dinner party after he’d suffering a humiliating defeat in a televised debate with activist/apostate Ayaan Hirsi Ali. An emotionally bruised Maajid lashed out at Harris and two remained adversaries until four years later when they attempted to bury the hatchet via a lengthy phone call.
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Published on TheYoungFolks.com
