Jay!,

Just heard your wrap up on the issue of religious extremism at the end of this episode. I completely agree with your conclusion that bad ideas have to be criticized but we may have to be careful about the kind of rhetoric that we use when doing so. Having said that I believe you are being bit too charitable when you say that Harris is not like other Islamophobic hate mongers. He is prone to making stuff up when it comes to Islam and Muslims. An example is his scaremongering claim that France could become a Muslim majority nation by 2030 as he did in a 2006 article (http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/the-reality-of-islam ).

//Islam is the fastest growing religion in Europe. The demographic trends are ominous: Given current birthrates, France could be a majority Muslim country in 25 years, and that is if immigration were to stop tomorrow.//

There is so much wrong here. First, what is wrong if France ends up with a Muslim majority population. But let us set that aside for a moment and focus on an important question. Is it even possible for France to become a Muslim majority nation by 2030? Not even close says data from Pew research (http://www.pewforum.org/2011/01/27/the-future-of-the-global-muslim-population/ ). But that does not stop Sam Harris from making shit up to rile up the Islamophobic bigots around the world. When you combine this with his sympathetic views on racial profiling (http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/in-defense-of-profiling ) of Muslims at public places one can only conclude that he is just a garden variety racist. We would have no problem in calling him a racist if he were making similar attacks on say Judaism/Jews. Why do we have a problem when it comes to Islam/Muslims?