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Stanford Daily – May 10, 2006
Radical Islam criticized:
Controversial writer Hitchens talks terror
James Hohmann
The West needs to take the threat of fundamentalist, militant Islam more seriously, controversial British commentator Christopher Hitchens told a predominately older audience at the Geology Corner auditorium last night. In an hour-and-a-half program, the liberal-socialist contrarian with a wry British wit and a sharp English tongue offered up barbs against Osama bin Laden, Muslims, liberals and Jacques Chirac. In an at-times rambling, back-and-forth exchange with audience members, Hitchens also denounced organized religion.
"You don't have to be paranoid, racist or a bigot to take alarm," he said. "There is a civil war within Islam. We are not in a war on terror. We cannot be at war with an expression."
Hitchens, an editor for Vanity Fair, described himself as an atheist and issued a sharp rebuke of the Muslim prophet Muhammad.
"Of course, he's not a prophet," he said. "He's an epileptic plagiarist."
He said the Quran - Islam's holiest book - was full of "evil fairly tales" that were "unimaginably recycled."
"It's a boring plagiarism of the worst parts of Christianity and Judaism," he added….
http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=content&id=20434&repository=0001_article
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