Sam Harris And The End Of Faith: A Muslim's Critical Response [Paperback]

Bill Whitehouse (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 26, 2009

This work is a critical exploration of a book by Sam Harris entitled 'The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason'. While the book by Mr. Harris puts forth arguments that attempt to paint all spirituality and religion with broad strokes of derision, castigation, and rejection, Mr. Harris also reserves a great deal of space within his book for casting aspersions on Islam and Muslims. The present critical review of Mr. Harris' work examines the many errors, misunderstandings, and problems contained in 'The End of Faith'.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bill Whitehouse obtained an Honors BA from Harvard University and a doctorate from the University of Toronto. He is the author of 'Sufi Reflections', 'The Chaco Canyon Tapes', 'Shari'ah: A Muslim's Declaration of Independence', 'Reality Without a Name', 'The Sufi Lighthouse: Illuminating Spiritual Abuse', and 'Evolution and the Origin of Life'.

Product Details

• Paperback: 178 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace (January 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1441453466
• ISBN-13: 978-1441453464
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,239,999 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #84 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Religion & Spirituality > Islam > General

More About the Author

Dr. Bill Whitehouse was born in Denver, Colorado and grew up in Maine. He received an honors B.A. in Social Relations from Harvard university and a doctorate in Educational Theory from the University of Toronto. He has taught at a number of institutions of higher learning in both the United States and Canada.

He has been exploring the Sufi path for over 35 years. He had the great good fortune to work closely (17 years) with a Sufi saint of the 20th Century. His shaykh passed away in 1988.

At the request of his shaykh, Dr. Whitehouse conducted The Sufi Study Circle at the University of Toronto for nearly 15 years.

Dr. Whitehouse has written a number of books, including: Streams to the Ocean; The Sufi Lighthouse: Illuminating Spiritual Abuse; Sufi Reflections; The Chaco Canyon Tapes; Sam Harris and the End of Faith: A Muslim's Critical Response; Reality without a Name; Unveiling Terrorism, Fundamentalism, and Spiritual Abuse; Evolution and the Origin of Life; Democracy Lost and Regained; Reflections on Education and Learning; Shari'ah: A Muslim's Declaration of Independence; Reflections on Education and Learning; My Year Inside Radical Islam: A Critique; Spiritual Stories for the Heart; and The Essence of September 11th.

In addition, Dr. Whitehouse has been writing and producing a podcast called Sufi Reflections for the past four years. These podcasts contain poems, stories, essays, commentaries, and music.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

108 of 120 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Harris, Islam and Whitehouse, March 24, 2010

By 

Christopher Morrissey - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sam Harris And The End Of Faith: A Muslim's Critical Response (Paperback)

I was very disappointed to find Whitehouse continually and emptily asserting that Harris' rationalistic approach to factual claims is itself a form of faith. This does not apply to our experience with reality, as when for example a friend tells you that you probably have diabetes mellitus type 2--you don't just accept that this is true at face value; in fact, if you take it seriously at all, you go to the doctor and ask for verification and medical tests to show whether or not you've got it. This is not a form of faith, Bill. It is a solid approach to evaluating truth statements. Faith, to the contrary, is belief that does not rely on logical proof--a basic dicitionary definition, and also I believe the kind of faith that Harris and the "new atheists" refer to (how are they so different from the old atheists, by the way?). Harris' point is that the alternative form of thinking--believing in things without logical proof--leads to chaos and vacuousness and not infrequently promotes tribalism and violence. This is because where there is no logical standard of proof, all truth claims are equal. It is incumbent upon claimants who make statements of fact to show with evidence and argumentation that something is necessarily the case. I do not agree with many of Harris's statements but I believe the approach he takes is much more conducive to human happiness than saying sacred book X or Y is truly inspired by God, leaving all sorts of lunatics to misinterpret the holy books, as Whitehouse repeatedly points out that others (but not himself of course) are misinterpreting the Quran ("hermeneutical" is his favorite word). Isn't it terrible that such infallible sacred texts, presumably intended by the Creator for all humanity to follow, would be open to such easy, frequent and maniacal misinterpretations?

As a footnote, the reader should be advised that Mr. Whitehouse also questions the official story of 9-11 and feels that a rationalistic approach should consider the possibility that others, perhaps inside the US government, were involved in those mass murders. Many of the examples that he gives of evidence for this contention have already been disproven elsewhere but again, in Whitehouse's world, insisting on good evidence for truth claims is not a high priority and just another form of faith.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars ugh, November 22, 2011

By 

bryanc - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sam Harris And The End Of Faith: A Muslim's Critical Response (Paperback)

This rebuttal was wordy and mostly incoherent. The writer spent more time stating that Sam Harris was wrong than what should have been right.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A response hardly critical, December 13, 2011

By 

V. Pirila - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sam Harris And The End Of Faith: A Muslim's Critical Response (Paperback)

I was tempted to call this book worthless, but it may not be that. While it does not provide practically anything to prove any of the original claims in The End of Faith false, its complementary theories to the reasons of the current instability of the Middle East sound plausible and may offer some new insight.

From the title I expected an attack on Mr. Harris' principles, but although Mr. Whitehouse forms his text in a manner that suggest that he disagrees with Mr. Harris, reading the text actually shows that they agree on nearly all significant issues. The rest is mere bickering about relatively insignificant details.

To provide some examples, both are of the opinion that religious texts should not be interpreted literally. Mr. Whitehouse's solution is to live according to the general guidelines of religious articles, while Mr. Harris seems more apt to follow a wider range of philosophers and common sense. Both men acknowledge that the ancient scriptures have been edited by humans after their initial writing, and thus should not be taken as the word of a god. Both of them agree that we don't have to accept harmful behavior from anyone, no matter if they claim the reasons to be rooted in religion or not. They also seem to agree that people should be open to scientific evidence, even if it might contradict what is written in their scriptures.

One of the only things the writers seem to disagree on is the probability of the existence of a supernatural being. Mr. Whitehouse claims to believe in the existence, while Mr. Harris will only believe when conclusive, irrefutable evidence has been found. I find Mr. Whitehouse's demands for evidence on things like god's non-existence highly unreasonable. The burden of proof should be on the party that has a claim, rather than on the party that does not believe the claim. If I asserted that there is intelligent life on a certain planet 28 light-years from the Earth, it would be me who would have to provide the evidence, rather than the astronomers to disprove the claim. If science worked in this perverse manner, nothing would ever get done.