Renowned scientist Richard Dawkins has shut down during a TV interview with Piers Morgan, refusing to speak when asked about author Salman Rushdie and a UK ISIS bride stuck in Syria.
The uncomfortable scenes played out during an appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored, with a clip of the exchange — dubbed “heartbreaking” by one commentator — viewed more than 1.2 million times on Twitter.
Dawkins declined to comment when repeatedly pressed on whether Shamima Begum – a British woman whose UK citizenship was revoked after she travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State group, and last month lost an appeal in her fight to restore her citizenship – should return to Europe.
Begum, now 23, was 15 years old when she and two other girls from London joined the extremist group.
Dawkins stared straight ahead and politely declined the question saying he “hadn’t studied it enough”.
When asked whether he was worried about threats, particularly after what happened to Rushdie, Dawkins would not comment saying he didn’t want to talk about it.
“I should have said that before I started,” he said.
Morgan said he was disappointed but Dawkins’ response pointed to a broader problem.
“I think it is sad that you can’t, I don’t think anything should be off limits in interview with people like you,” Morgan said.
“We ought to have freedom of debate and I don’t think we do because people use murderous retribution.”
Social media users appeared shell-shocked by how the interview unfolded.
“This is not the Dawkins I know,” one wrote. “He’s always been strident, even about this topic. Perhaps he is trying to manage his controversies …”
Yasmine Mohammed, a Canada-based human rights activist and author shared the original clip, writing, “A heartbreaking scene. @piersmorgan is interviewing @RichardDawkins, one of the most influential minds alive today, and he shuts down. He won’t even comment on Salman Rushdie. This is where terrorism leads, as Piers points out. This is how it works.”
Mohammed added that the UK government should be more committed to defending free speech by “protecting public intellectuals, grammar school teachers, or autistic teenage boys from violence … maybe this wouldn’t be our fate”.
Fox News host Will Cain described the exchange as “stunning”.
“You can literally see a man become … nothing. Fear is so powerful,” he said.
Rushdie, 75, was stabbed brutally on stage at a New York literary event in August last year.
he lauded author lost vision in one eye and was left “incapacitated” in a hand after he was stabbed.
Rushdie has been under a “fatwa” or death sentence since 1989 when his novel The Satanic Verses was decreed blasphemous by Muslims worldwide.
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was also sent a chilling death threat from a Twitter user warning “you’re next” after she posted support for Rushdie.
Rowling has repeatedly been vilified for her position on transgenderism, starting with a 2019 tweet in support of Maya Forstater, who lost her job after tweeting that transgender women could not change their biological sex.
Dawkins has also waded into the transgender debate, comparing trans people to Rachel Dolezal, the civil rights activist who posed as a black woman for years.
He is a former Oxford University professor and evolutionary biologist, regarded as a brilliant and passionate science communicator and known for his book The God Delusion.
