Pakistan’s commended writer Fatima Bhutto after delivering the opening speech at the Sydney writer’s festival in 2011, returned to the platform earlier this week to deliver her closing address that challenged the ‘lie’ told by the West about Islam and its ‘dangerous’ image.
During the closing address, the granddaughter of Pakistan People’s Party founder Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto amongst the topics of Brexit, Christchurch and feminism spoke of the Western world’s continual efforts in portraying Islam as the most dangerous religion.
a reference made towards ethologist Richard Dawkins, American neuroscientist Sam Harris, philosopher Daniel Dennett and writer Christopher Hitchens, Bhutto stated:
“At the forefront of this are a set of men who take a perverse delight from pontificating about religion, notably Islam, and they call themselves the Four Horsemen.
Embarrassing nickname for a bunch of middle-aged white men, don’t you think?” Countering a claim made by Dawkins about Islam being ‘the most evil religion in the world’, Bhutto was reported to have cited the death toll that surged by wars sparked by atheists and Christians, with 15-19 million lives lost in the first world war while the second claiming the lives of nearly 60 million. She goes on figuring up the one to two million in the Korean war, followed by three million killed in Vietnam, the Laos bombing and the first Gulf war.
Counting the half a million killed recently in the Iraq and Afghanistan warfare as well as the civilians killed by srone strikes, she states: “All religions are misused to justify war and death, but the one used to kill the most over the 20th and 21st century so far wasn’t Islam.
The Four Horsemen – and I’d like to see any one of them actually ride a horse – have a lot to account for their maths.
