May 18, 2023 was the 975th anniversary of the birth of one of our favorite atheists, the Persian poet, mathematician and scientist, Omar Kayyam (born May 18, 1048).

We are convinced that he was an atheist, though some scholars have found reason in his writings to doubt it.

Simon Maass has examined the arguments for and against Omar Kayyam’s atheism.

He writes at our Forum:

Some of the Islamically dominated world’s greatest cultural and intellectual achievements have been completely unconnected to religion.

Think of Omar Khayyam, the twelfth-century poet and polymath who did so much to advance algebra and conducted an “outstandingly accurate” measurement of the length of a year. Having lived in Khorasan, Bukhara, Samarkand and Isfahan, he was practically an Eastern Erasmus, a historical figure shared by Persia, Turkey and Central Asia.

He was also, as many have speculated based on his poetry, likely an atheist or agnostic. This would only have been appropriate, as Khayyam hailed from Iran, one of the clearest examples of a country that had been, to recycle Atatürk’s phrase, “a great nation even before [it] accepted the religion of Islam.” One analysis that leans relatively heavily towards deeming Khayyam to have been a believer is the entry on him in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The authors cite the great Persian scholar’s philosophical treatises, in which he defends certain religious ideas, and interpret those verses he wrote which suggest an attitude of scepticism or agnosticism as reflecting merely his emotional experiences of the world around him, rather than what he believed on an intellectual level. This interpretation seems highly dubious, as the same article quotes the following lines from Khayyam’s pen:

“The secrets which my book of love has bred,
Cannot be told for fear of loss of head;
Since none is fit to learn, or cares to know,
‘Tis better all my thoughts remain unsaid.”

Against this backdrop, given the conflict between what Khayyam explicitly wrote on religious matters in his treatises and what he subtly implied in his poems, it seems much likelier that the latter reflects his true convictions, whereas the former was written to protect himself, or simply as an intellectual exercise. Even if Khayyam truly believed all he wrote in the treatises, there is little, if anything, the authors attribute to him which implies a religious belief beyond deism. Meanwhile, the article acknowledges that “Khayyam challenged religious doctrines, alluded to the hypocrisy of the clergy, [and] cast doubt on almost every facet of religious belief.”

Moreover, even these commentators see fit to observe:

“It is noteworthy that Khayyam’s philosophical treatises were written in the Peripatetic tradition at a time when philosophy in general and rationalism in particular were under attack by orthodox Muslim jurists—so much that Khayyam had to defend himself against the charge of ‘being a philosopher.’”

More broadly, the main effect that Mohammad’s creed had on Khayyam was to trip him up and hold him back. The polymath’s powerful patron, Seljuk vizier Nizam al-Mulk, was assassinated by a member of a rival Islamic sect, whereupon the mathematical maestro fell out of favor with the royal court. J. J. O’Connor and E. F. Robertson write:

“Funding to run the Observatory [where he worked] ceased and Khayyam’s calendar reform was put on hold. Khayyam also came under attack from the orthodox Muslims who felt that Khayyam’s questioning mind did not conform to the faith. He wrote in […] the Rubaiyat [the collection of his quatrains] :

‘Indeed, the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my Credit in Men’s Eye much wrong:
Have drowned my Honour in a shallow cup,
And sold my reputation for a Song.’”

According to various online sources, though I have been unable to locate the source of this claim, Friedrich Nietzsche once remarked “that he would never forgive Christianity for taking [Blaise] Pascal.” The great iconoclast, it seems, was not a little distraught to see such a brilliant mathematician waste his exceptional brainpower on Christian apologetics. To speak similarly of what Islam appears to have done to Khayyam, forcing him to veil his true thoughts and squander time and energy fending off religious attacks, would be entirely justified.

Louis Sarkozy, the atheist son of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, writes at the Washington Examiner:

On Feb. 23, 2017, national security adviser H.R. McMaster reiterated his stance that Islamic ideology is essentially irreligious, and that Jihadi terrorists are not true to the religion they claim to be part of.

Well, he’s going now. Out of the White House where he should never have been. Because – or partly because –

He discouraged the use of the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” because “terrorist organizations like ISIS represent a perversion of Islam, and are thus un-Islamic”.  In December, McMaster warned us to “never buy in or reinforce the terrorist narrative that this is a war of religion”.

Although commonplace, this argument is simply wrong. While I rightly acknowledge it’s perfectly possible to follow Islam without committing or encouraging terrorism, we cannot ignore the link between doctrine and behavior. It is impossible to deny the role that Islam, as a set of ideals, plays in international terrorism and gross abuse of human rights in the countries where it is enacted by law.

When it comes to religion, doctrine matters. And how can anyone hope to have a productive discussion about the tenets that make up Islam when even the mildest criticism of the doctrine labels you bigoted, racist, or (gasp), Islamophobic?

As an atheist, I stand outside the reach of all religions equally, and recognize that religious history and doctrinal differences matter.

Generally, public criticism of any religion, ancient or contemporary, is completely acceptable, and should be encouraged. It is noteworthy, then, that criticism of any other religion nowadays will earn you at worst a dose of invective, whereas saying the wrong words or drawing the wrong cartoons about Islam will get you killed in any country where Islam is the official religion, and liable to earn you physical repercussions in countries where it is not.

Why is that it in Western countries, merely pointing out the similarities between the writings of the Quran and the Hadiths and the violent and intolerant preachings of groups such as the Islamic State is cause for censure?

We certainly have no problem holding Christianity responsible for its part in the horrific Spanish Inquisition, nor do we stutter at recognizing Christian scripture as having encouraged anti-Semitic attitudes along European history.

Ah, I can hear the rebuttal already: “Of course there are horrible passages in the Quran. It was written at a different time, and there are similarly horrible ones in the Bible!”

Without a doubt, the Bible is a bloody, violent book filled with unspeakable atrocities. But then, why is it that no Christian feels personally targeted when Deuteronomy 21:18-21, which encourages the public stoning of disobedient children, is criticized?

It is because Christianity has gone through, over the past few hundred years, a modernization process where it has been ejected out of civil law, and where its most vile and intolerant preachings are no longer ordained as official doctrine by the church’s institutions.

With some exceptions (such as enduring Medieval attitudes toward homosexuality and fundamentalists’ rejection of science in favor of creationism) the most vile, intolerant, and backward parts of Christian practice have been abandoned.

Islam, on the other hand, has become more intolerant than it was a millennium ago, when Muslims were creating algebra and algorithms and naming the celestial bodies. The result is that Christians can shake off most criticisms of their own scripture and their beliefs, but the Islamic world seems a lot more thin-skinned.

Affable but important  disagreement here. Actually, Islam was never  tolerant. (See our post, The Myth of Islamic Enlightenment, March 10, 2010 here.) The creation of algorithms has nothing to do with tolerance. And algebra is much older than Islam. 

One of the great algebraists in the Islamic world was the Persian mathematician, scientist, poet, Omar Kayyam. ( Yes, he of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, translated into English by Edward FitzGerald.) Omar Kayyam was an atheist.

I, however, reject the often-brought-up and dangerous notion of this conflict being a “war of civilization”, pitching the united secular West against the similarly united dogmatic Islamic world.

Right. (We call it a clash of civilization with barbarism.)

This is wrong simply because it is an inaccurate depiction of both sides. This particular struggle is far more complicated and it is certainly not contained by international borders or racial origin. This is a war of ideas, not of skin color.

Which is why the first victims of Islamic extremism are almost always Muslims: women, apostates, homosexuals, modern Muslims seeking the evolution of their faith, and yes, even just Muslims who belong to the wrong traditional Islamic sect.

Similarly, the people often most opposed to helping the victims of Islamo-fascism, those who refuse to hold Islamic ideas accountable for their role in these crimes, are not Muslims at all, but westerners brandishing multiculturalist arguments.

Meaningful change can only come from within the Islamic world, from the reformist voices that want to modernize Islam to fit today’s standards of human decency and compassion. These are the people whom we must try to empower today by giving them coverage, a platform to speak out of, and most importantly, by acknowledging their suffering and struggle.

It is for this reason that we must not delude ourselves with the idea that all cultures are equally good in every way. We should not shy away from sensitive conversations about the role of religious dogma, even at the risk of being called racist or Islamophobic. Such insults are minor and insignificant compared to the atrocities that the victims of this violent and intolerant doctrine suffer every day.

Good stuff for the most part. If only Nicolas Sarkozy had understood what his son does, and had kept the Muslim masses out of France when he could have done so!

It’s now too late to remedy the harm done or prevent the developing disaster, even if there were a French leader who wanted to do it. All Western Europe will fall under Islamic rule, including Britain.

This was written by the great Persian poet and atheist, Omar Khayyam (translated by Edward FitzGerald):

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

We recall those lines in connection with a controversy that has been raging – not too strong a word ! – on our pages.

A number of commenters have complained, some very aggressively, that the caption to the picture in our posts Acts of religion, and Acts of religion (repeat) is inaccurate; that the burnt bodies are those of people killed by a truck accident in the Congo, not – as the caption says – Christians burnt by Muslims. They want the picture and caption removed.

We did not know that it was a picture of a truck accident at the time we first posted it nearly a year ago on November 6, 2010, nor when we repeated it on August 7, 2011. The information we received was that the dead were the victims of an attack by Muslims. We did not intend to mislead.

A mistake can be a useful thing. This one has brought thousands of people, as nothing else seems to have done, to think about how Christians are treated in the Muslim world.

And it is true that Muslims burnt Christians in Nigeria. See our post Acts of religion in Nigeria revisited, October 16, 2011. We urge all those who have complained to take note of that fact.

The picture of the many burnt bodies was posted, the caption was written, the mistake was pointed out, we responded. All that has happened and cannot be erased or cancelled.

Those who are furiously exercised about it should put their passion and energy to work against the cruelties perpetrated daily in the name of Islam.