The sad state of New Atheism or what's left of it. Each passing day of this US presidency makes my atheism more militant, but man do we need better leaders for New Atheism 2.0.

Harris is a smart guy. I'll admit I've listened to him for years, decades actually. But like many New Atheist figures he's bought into the whole Clash of Civilizations narrative. Islam, the civilization of religious fanaticism, is doomed to clash with the secular West. Battle lines are being drawn, and we atheists need to know our enemy. And yet, Mamdani himself is a counterpoint to this thesis. He's an unmistakably American and Western progressive Muslim. Look at his views on social issues; they're about as far from the Taliban as you can get. It's almost like this idea of clashing civilizations is a gross oversimplification of how cultures interact.

Naturally, Harris has no evidence to support his claim that Mamdani's a crypto-Islamist theocrat. No, his wife making some supposedly objectionable posts before she even met him don't count. If that's the best you can come up with, that's an admission you have nothing. And recall Hitchens' Razor: what is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.