There is one point where Dawkins goes wrong, however. When disproving the link between Darwinism and Nazism, Dawkins brings up the connection between Nazism and Christianity. Here he makes the same mistake that “Mr J” made: condemning a belief because radical people or ideas drew upon that belief.  He even makes this mistake using the same radicals as “Mr J,” the Nazis.  Dawkins should know better than to do this.

Specifically he says:

Hitler had a lot of support in Germany. His horrible bidding was done by millions of ordinary German footsoldiers, and the great majority of them were Christians. Many were Lutheran, and many (like Hitler himself) were Roman Catholic. Very few were atheists, and whatever else Hitler was he most certainly was not an atheist. It is sometimes said that Hitler only pretended to be Catholic, in order to win the Church’s support for his regime. In this he was very largely successful. So, whether or not Hitler was himself a true Catholic (as he often claimed) the Church bears a heavy responsibility for what happened. And Hitler himself used religion to justify his anti-Semitism.

Here Dawkins is playing with the facts, but not presenting the whole picture.  We can look at any religion or culture in this world—Christianity, Islam or Buddhism; American, Japanese, or German; religious or atheist—and find people who have done horrible things.  That does not mean the core of the system they self-identify with is the cause of their atrocities.

Second, the argument that very few were atheists means nothing for two reasons.  First, it says nothing about the percentage of atheists in the general population.  Second, and related, is the fact that Germany was a historically Christian country.  Therefore many people who self-identified as Christians may not have held firmly to the tradition.

Dawkins then states that “the Church bears a heavy responsibility for what happened.”  This is very true in one sense.  Both the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church often stood by and allowed anti-Semitism to continue unchecked.  In so doing they implicated themselves with the regime.  This does not mean, however, that their beliefs caused the regime’s actions.

Finally, Dawkins ignores the strong responses of many Christians during the Nazi era.  One very prominent example is, of course, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church.  When it comes to defining the core of Christianity, examples such as Bonhoeffer must hold as much weight as the fact that Hitler nominally identified himself as Catholic.

Dawkins then continues by expanding to Christianity as a whole:

Anti-Semitism has been rife in Europe for many many centuries, positively encouraged by most Christian churches, including especially the two that dominate Germany. The Roman Catholic Church has notoriously persecuted Jews as “Christ-killers”. While, as for the Lutherans, Martin Luther himself wrote a book called On the Jews and their Lies from which Hitler quoted. And Luther publicly said that “All Jews should be driven from Germany.”

Again Dawkins is providing several true facts outside of their proper context.  He ignores the entire socio-cultural context surrounding European anti-Judaism. Note the distinction between anti-Judaism, which was a cultural prejudice prevalent during the ninteenth century and anti-Semitism, a racial prejudice which arose around the time of the Nazis.  Dawkins makes no mention of any such distinction.

On the whole, Dawkins’ open letter is a great response to “Mr J.”  Dawkins should not, however, have taken this chance to put in a jibe at Christianity.  By doing so he both propogated false information and weakened his own argument by falling prey to the same error as “Mr J.”

First, Obsession begins and ends with short segments promoting the idea of Islam as a peaceful religion hijacked by radicals.  It then goes on to list radical violence around the world, from 9/11 to the London bombings to Muslim violence in Thailand, and connects the dots with one single strand: Islam.  Combined with statements made by those interviewed in the film, it becomes hard for me to give credence to Obsession’s claim that its arguments are not about Islam as a whole.  The film seems to be at loggerheads with itself about whether or not it wishes to indict Islam.

Stemming from this use of Islam as a common link between terrorist incidents around the world comes a second critique.  From a political science perspective, Obsession fails because it does not acknowledge any other sociological, economic, political, or geographic motivations behind extremist violence around the world.  Equating violence in Chechnya, which has distinct nationalistic roots, with the Shia extremism of Hezbollah or the Sunni insurgency in Iraq simply ignores reality.  Many of the Islamic groups the film links together via radical Islam would consider each other to lie beyond the pale of Islam.  Though many have adopted Islamic ideological stances or ideas from one another, citing Islam as the single motivating factor behind them all will not stand up to academic investigation.  Each group has a number of other motivating factors, all of which Obsession completely ignores.

Obsession spends almost half of its length attempting to draw a connection between the rise of radical Islam and the rise of Nazism in Germany.  While I must admit the similarities are intriguing, actually proving causality between the two would be very difficult.  Nazism rose within a well  structured political party in a state actor, as opposed to the disparate radical Islamic groups spread throughout the world.  That we should see traces of Nazi ideological fervor in radical Islam is not surprising, ideologies are constantly adopted by new groups.  This does not mean that radical Islam derives from Nazism, however.  Much academic work has traced the link between the rise of radical Islam in the past quarter century and the Communist ideology exported by the Soviet Union.  Yet Obsession doesn’t purport to connect radical Islam to Communism.  Ideologies are adopted, transformed, and manipulated for political advancement by any group seeking to advance its goals.

Radical Islam does undoubtedly pose a threat to the West.  This does not mean, however, that all radical Islamic groups are connected and jointly waging a carefully directed war against the West.  Nor does it mean that Islam alone lies at the heart of this problem, an incredibly simplistic assertion.  In the end, Obsession contributes little to any useful consideration of the problem of radical Islam.