I don't know whether I like Terry Eagleton, but he does have an unique point of view, which forces me to pause especially when I disagree with him, which is at this point almost all the time. In an op-ed in the Guardian (hat tip: Norman Geras), he makes the following point, which isn't illegitimate, but which in my view doesn't take the context into account because it is obsessed with a particular point of view, which is the idea that atheism is a problem for the West. Sugary excerpt:
If the test of liberalism is how it confronts its illiberal
adversaries, some of the liberal intelligentsia seem to have fallen at
the first hurdle. Writers such as Martin Amis and Hitchens do not just
want to lock terrorists away. They also tout a brand of western
cultural supremacism. Dawkins strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq,
but preaches a self-satisfied, old-fashioned Whiggish rationalism that
can be wielded against a benighted Islam. The philosopher AC Grayling
has an equally starry-eyed view of the stately march of Western
Progress. The novelist Ian McEwan is a freshly recruited champion of
this militant rationalism. Both Hitchens and Salman Rushdie have
defended Amis's slurs on Muslims. Whether they like it or not, Dawkins
and his ilk have become weapons in the war on terror. Western
supremacism has gravitated from the Bible to atheism.
The irony is clear. Some of our free literary spirits are defending liberal values in ways that threaten to undermine them. In this, they reflect the behaviour of western states. Liberals are supposed to value nuanced analysis and moral complexity, neither of which are apparent in the slanderous reduction of Islam to a barbarous blood cult. They are noted for their judicious discriminations, rather than the airy dismissal of all religion as so much garbage. There is also an honorable legacy of qualifying too-absolute judgments with an awareness of context: the genuine liberal is appalled by Islamist terrorism, but conscious of the national injury and humiliation that underlie it. None of the writers I have mentioned is remarkable for such balance. On the whole, they are more preoccupied with freedom of expression than freedom from imperial rule.
The irony is clear. Some of our free literary spirits are defending liberal values in ways that threaten to undermine them. In this, they reflect the behaviour of western states. Liberals are supposed to value nuanced analysis and moral complexity, neither of which are apparent in the slanderous reduction of Islam to a barbarous blood cult. They are noted for their judicious discriminations, rather than the airy dismissal of all religion as so much garbage. There is also an honorable legacy of qualifying too-absolute judgments with an awareness of context: the genuine liberal is appalled by Islamist terrorism, but conscious of the national injury and humiliation that underlie it. None of the writers I have mentioned is remarkable for such balance. On the whole, they are more preoccupied with freedom of expression than freedom from imperial rule.
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