Radio Station Cancels Richard Dawkins Appearance over Islam Tweets
The evolutionary biologist was due to discuss Science in the Soul: Collected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist at a benefit event for KPFA, a listener-funded station in Berkeley, California.
Tickets were snapped up ahead of the anti-theist’s planned talk on 9 August – but KPFA cancelled the event on Thursday, saying it had recently discovered that his comments about Islam had upset people.
"We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science when we didn’t know he had offended and hurt – in his tweets and other comments on Islam –so many people,” KPFA told ticket buyers in an email.
"While KPFA emphatically supports serious free speech, we do not support abusive speech. We apologize for not having had broader knowledge of Dawkins’s views much earlier.”
Dawkins, an avowed atheist who has criticized religion publicly for decades, has previously appeared at KPFA benefit events as recently as October 2015.
The Kenyan-born ethologist published an open letter in response to the cancellation, which stated: "The idea that I have engaged in abusive speech against Islam is preposterous, which even the most rudimentary fact-checking by KPFA would have made clear.
He has been branded Islamophobic by those who have taken offence to his remarks about the world’s second largest religion, which he has called the "greatest force for evil today”.
But he insists that his opinions about religious texts are not driven by bigotry towards Muslim people.
Source: The Independent
