[This review of the German edition of Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great appeared in Die Welt. Translated by Russell Berman.]
There is always something edifying about attending an execution, especially if it’s not a human but an idea that is being dispatched from life to death. In God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens—for weeks on the bestseller list in the US and the UK—religion is devastated. One has to give it to Hitchens who, as executioner, does a thorough job. First he slips the noose of natural-scientific reason around the neck of piety. Then he lets it quarter itself on its own contradictions, before boiling the pieces in the oil of his righteous anger. Finally he shoots it through with the bullets of logic and, just in case, he lets the guillotine of irony fly down on its neck. Do recall that this is not about religious fundamentalism or fanaticism but rather religion as such. All, truly all, are meant and are buried alive: Catholics, Protestants, Muslims—whether Shiite or Sunni—Hindus, Buddhists, Osho-faithful and, last but not least, Jews as well, to whom Hitchens, with his Jewish mother, belongs at least in the sense of descent.
He is probably the smartest thinker of his generation of baby-boomers in the English-speaking world. He grew up in England, but left early for America where he has enjoyed a brilliant career as a journalist. For many years a Trotskyist, he was a star of the radical Left, fighting against Evil in the incarnations of Henry Kissinger and Mother Teresa, until September 11, 2001, when he was forced to recognize that “forces of reaction” had attacked the US. Suddenly he found himself close to George W. Bush, at least as far as the “War on Terror” went. His erstwhile comrades have never forgiven him this betrayal, but he doesn’t seem to care.
