I bought The End of Faith a few weeks ago when I went out and bought a number of other atheist books. Unlike The God Delusion or God is Not Great I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Harris' work. He makes quite a few strong points about the harm that is done by religion, specifically Islam, and although I agree with much of his logic I don't particularly like agreeing with him.
This dislike of agreeing with Harris likely stems from my own general worldview that people and their belief systems should be treated more or less equally mixed with a conscious desire to avoid the appearance of racism. Harris, on the other hand, confidently asserts that of all the world religions, Islam is the worst in terms of the harm that it does both to its adherents and those outside of the faith. He argues that Islam is the only major religion that has a holy book where one is hard-pressed to find justifications to not be violent, and that while religions like Christianity and Judaism have certainly done terrible things, they at least have traditions that can be used to justify peace. He also states that while this idea that Islam is a particularly bad religion might make people uncomfortable when said out loud (it certainly did for me) it is not racism to impartially look at the facts and reach a conclusion. I think that my discomfort stems from the fact that Harris' conclusions sound very close to those espoused by so many right-wing fundamentalist Christians. The difference of course is that while those people argue that Islam is inherently violent and that Christianity is the only alternative as a peaceful, "true" religion, Harris (and I, I suppose) would argue that Islam is inherently violent and that other religions are not much better, and that no religions should have an influential political say in the world.
Harris also makes a compelling argument against religious moderates. For one, he believes that those who claim to be religiously moderate are doing so in response to cultural norms as opposed to justification from their holy books. This lines up nicely with what Dawkins says in The God Delusion, which is that most modern people do not truly get their morals from their scriptures, they pick and choose from them to find those that they agree with. Harris also makes the claim as Hitchens and Dawkins have that moderates in religion are partially responsible for the atrocities committed in the name of their religion because of their general unwillingness to stop the extremists. Once again, Harris looks specifically at Muslims, this time those who claim that it is only Muslims in non-Western countries that are fundamentalist extremists. Harris points out that not only is that claim false (there are sharia law courts in Britain as well as plenty of so-called homegrown terrorists) but that it is meaningless, since minorities tend to be "tolerant" of the majority since the majority are the ones with the power.
Although much of Harris' focus is on Islam, he does not spare other religions. Specifically, Harris looks at the Christian influence in the United States under Bush and says that the United States government comes dangerously close to being a theocracy. In addition to repeated references to god by all sorts of government leaders, Harris points out the dangerous amount of influence that Christian fundamentalists have in shaping public policy. He criticizes the prohibition of drugs and laws against same-sex marriage and sexual "immorality" as having very little practical purpose and stemming from a desire to regulate the morals of the people based on an interpretation of a holy book that not everyone subscribes to. Harris also strongly criticizes the interference of religion with science, starting with the insistence in many places in the US that creationism and evolution be given equal weight in the science classroom. Harris' strongest criticism comes when looking at the interference of Christian lobbies with scientific advances that could significantly help humanity such as stem cell research. Out of concern for harming five-day-old embryos consisting of a hundred or so cells, fundamentalists are inhibiting research that has the potential to end or reduce the suffering of countless sentient human beings.
In general, I agreed with Harris' main points. In the case of Christian fundamentalism in the United States I agreed readily, while in the case of his criticisms of Islam I agreed after being dragged along kicking and screaming. In retrospect this makes very little sense, since it is patently obvious that the harm being done by Islamist states to their own citizens as well as others is considerably more than the harm being done by other states, and is likely the effect of my conditioning that to criticize the belief systems of others (even when what they are doing is fundamentally wrong) is tantamount to racism and intolerance. This is not to say that Islam is guilty while other religions are not, since Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and other fundamentalism does a great deal of harm as well (and has done an enormous amount of harm historically). I would highly recommend The End of Faith, since it made me do a great deal of thinking about how I view the world.
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