Where do you stand on the Bill Maher/Ben Affleck argument?

Great Debates
1

If you haven’t seen it, last Friday on Bill Maher’s HBO show Affleck and Maher got into a very heated debate about whether Islam is a different sort of religion in practice and that liberals are failing in refusing to denounce it.

I stand with Maher on this. Despite the rare killing of abortion providers, Christianity is not a violent religion. Maybe 400 years ago it was, but not now and not for a long time. The same goes for freedom of speech, treatment of women, treatment of minorities, etc. Islam is the only major religion that openly practices this sort of repression. Not all Muslims, of course, but a significant minority does, and a majority refuse to denounce the practices.

I am a died in the wool liberal, but this just seems obvious to me. Islam is different from other religions, and it does a really bad stuff that liberals would loudly condemn if it were being done by white people. The multi-cuturalism seems to be trumping common sense.

2

More on the Affleck side. Radical Islam is more different than Dearborn, MI Islam than Dearborn Islam is to Judaism or Christianity. I’m not particularly persuaded by polling numbers like 80-something percent of Egyptian Muslims think the death penalty is appropriate for leaving Islam – most of those 80-something percent are not killers nor the killing type (and I’ll confidently say that about the people of any country), and saying “yes” to a poll question is very different from actually taking action to murder or to give aid to murderers.

Further, it’s just unnecessary. Singling out Islam as especially violent doesn’t help anyone in any way, and it probably hurts in many ways.

3

It’s not a matter of whether it hurts or helps. It’s about whether it is true or false. Maher and Harris weren’t condemning all Muslims, they were condemning the religion for condoning violence and repression.

4

I’ve said before that I feel the relative difference in violence between the two religions is an accident of history. Most Christians live in countries with secular governments. But a lot of Muslims live in countries with theocratic governments. I believe there would be plenty of Christians who would get behind killing people for religious crimes if they had grown up under a religious government.

5

There are examples of countries with explicitly Christian governments - Italy and Ireland come to mind. While there is a certain degree of oppression in those places, it isn’t remotely comparable to what we see in Muslim countries.

6

I’m unaware of the revised version of the Bible that was released in the intervening centuries…

7

Many liberals don’t generally criticize other non-Western cultures because they think it’s none of their business or anything they could do would be perceived as outside meddling. It reeks too much of the white man’s burden and uplifting the savages. It’s not like we give a shit when Muslims say we’ve disgraced our women.

Plus there’s often a cynical suspicion of motive. Why are you criticizing Muslims so much? Do you have stock in Raytheon or something? That sorta thing.

8

Thats fine if you are interested in history or happen to time travel.

I really don’t care who were saints or assholes back when or who would or wouldn’t be given different timelines.

IMO the Muslim religious crazies are the biggest problem now and the ones that need to be dealt with.

9

Little Nemo didn’t say “explicitly Christian,” he said “theocracy.” Are you suggesting that Ireland and Italy are theocracies? If not, they’re not really relevant to his argument, are they?

10

It helps any argument when you define away the parts that undercut your position. That abortion providers are killed infrequently and attacked or threatened far more frequently demonstrates exactly what sort of depravity christianity is capable of. The difference between christianity and islam is very much a difference of degree and not of kind.

11

I didn’t define away anything - I explicitly acknowledged it. It is, however, quite rare while suicide bombings and honor killings and stonings are pretty damn common and don’t even warrant news coverage anymore. Dr. Tiller and Eric Rudolf were huge stories.

12

I think it hurts, and it’s mostly false, at least the way Maher put it.

I think that misses the point. These people (the extremists) would be extreme with or without the religion, or any religion. The vile treatment of women predated the religion, probably by centuries. Neither the Koran nor most Muslims support the extremists any more than the Bible or most Christians support killing abortion doctors.

13

Speaking as a Catholic Republican…

Obviously, in this instance, BIll Maher and Sam Harris are obnoxious but 100% right, while Ben Affleck is nice but 100% wrong.

I shouldn’t have to preface my remarks with a statement like this, but I’ll make it anyway. Of COURSE most Muslims are nice people who aren’t involved in terrorism in any way. I know plenty of “Hakeems” (to use Affleck’s friend as shorthand). I work with quite a few, my son plays with quite a few. I don’t hold my Muslim co-workers or my son’s schoolmates responsible for ISIS or 9/11.

The fact remains that a huge percentage of the violent terrorism around the world is committed by Muslims, specifically by Muslims who embrace a radical, fundamentalist reading of the Koran.

Wel meaning liberals like Barack Obama may blithely assure us that the evildoers of ISIS are not really Muslims, but he has no right or authority to declare such a thing. Like it or not, ISIS is a Muslim group consisting people who believe they’re following Sharia to the letter. It is not “racist” or “Islamophobic” to point that out.

In any case, Muslims are not a “race”- there are white, brown, black and yellow Muslims all over the world. If they’re not a race, how can criticizing thjem be “racist”?

To make it more personal, if Bill Maher assailed me for being Irish, that would be mere bigotry. I was BORN Irish and can’t change it. I can’t stop being Irish. But if he insults the Catholic Church, well, I CAN stop being Catholic, can’t I? People drop out of the Catholic Church every day. If I left the Church, nobody would insult me for my beliefs any more! Knowing that, if I choose to remain a fairhful Catholic, I also choose to face whatever brickbats come my way.

I ALSO have a responsibility to recognize when memebrs or even leaders of my Church are committing evil acts, and to call them out for it. If I were to respond to newspaper headlines about sexcually predatory priests and scream, “That’s Catholiphobic, and besides, 99% of priests have never done such a thing”… well, even if I was right, I’d be missing the point and doing my church a disservice.

We CAN’T ignore the sins of people who are acting in our name, and we can’t wash our hands of those people. That’s true for Catholics like me AND for Muslims like Hakeem.

I have no problem saying Bernard Law was scum, and that he deserves to be in jail. When are Muslims going to speak out that way about THEIR evildoers?

14

On the one hand, I disagree with one think I think I heard Sam Harris say–I do think there is defintely such a thing as “Islamophobia”:

More generally, fears that Muslims are going to “take over”, not in Egypt or Syria/Iraq, but right here at home (and we therefore need to pass special laws declaring that laws should not be based on Sharia…in Oklahoma :smack:) is ridiculous and paranoid.

I also think this sort of “Islamophobic” thinking is one of the things that makes proper and much-needed criticism of Islam in the 21st century more difficult.

But it’s not that they’re “murderers”. To the contrary, there are clearly tens of millions (hundreds of millions?) of Muslims who are not murderers–they don’t believe in terrorism, or vigilantism, and they consider the “jihadists” who do those things to be barbarians and criminals–but this substantial number of Muslims do believe that “apostates” and “blasphemers” should be brought before a properly constituted court of law, with a learned Islamic scholar as judge, and with such due process rights as Sharia provides, and that if the accused is thereafter duly convicted they should be subjected to serious legal penalties–even the death penalty–carried out in accordance with the proper legal procedures of a country with a legitimate Islamic government.

And I think Western liberals need to point out that this is in stark contrast with the ideals we profess, and which we say are in fact “universal”. From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

It’s not just “they worship a different God from most Americans” and/or “they worship God in a different way from most Americans”–I’m an atheist, I think all religions are objectively not true, but I believe very strongly in protecting the rights of everyone to “the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion” and the freedom “either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance”–but millions of Muslims disagree about really important stuff in the here-and-now, stuff which not only secular humanists like me but hundreds of millions of theists and religious people (including of course millions of other Muslims) think is extraordinarily important, like full freedom of speech and full and unfettered freedom of religion, full and equal rights for women, full and equal rights for gays and lesbians, and so on.

We definitely need to point this out–not just the obvious opposition to murderous thugs like Al-Qaeda or ISIS–and we need to not allow fears of seeming intolerant or bigoted to muzzle our legitimate and important differences with way too many Muslims in the world today (and at the same time, we also still need to refute the more eye-rollingly Islamophobic claims which too many people make).

15

TBH, I would support Maher’s point because of the explanation he gave for describing Islam as the root of violence or something like that, he said: Islam is just like the Mafia, you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong thing and they kill you… Adding to that executions are mostly practiced in Muslim countries and the harshest punishments today are found again in Muslim countries. Summing all these, indeed we could say that Islam is the religion of Devil, but not really.

It is the people’s fault, who has not been capable of evolving along with their times’ values (liberality, freedom of speech, freedom of religion) and failing to grasp the meaning of their religions. Religions are supposed to bind people together, unite them and make them stronger. But in Middle East, where Islam is strongest, the governments, being repressive, religious and undemocratic turns Islam into a religion of chaos and makes it seem like everyone Muslim is a demon. Although this is wrong because Muslim people are being subjected to hardened living conditions because of the monarchs they look up to.

If Middle East somehow turned democratic, Islam wouldn’t be rendered the way it is today by Westerners. If monarch would stop being intimidated by the extremist Islamist lobbies, and somehow relax their countries rules, this would lead to the democratisation, which is ironically, considered un-Islamic (not by normal people).

Thus the only way to get Islam’s name out of being stigmatised is to somehow reform it, which is again highly opposed by people who like living like Bedouins. Altogether, it should be the ones representing Islam, rather than Islam per se being judges as they can bend Islam to whatever direction they benefit from the most.

16

This is probably true, but I don’t think it matters much. These Muslims who oppose extremist violence but support death for apostasy are not a threat to us.

17

To be clear, I’m certainly not suggesting that the United States government should get more than peripherally involved in opposing “Muslims who oppose extremist violence but support death for apostasy”. If Egypt enacts laws against apostasy, this doesn’t mean we should start carrying out airstrikes. (The U.S. government does issue regular reports on religious freedom around the world.)

But at the individual level and at the level of civil society–human rights organizations and so forth–we absolutely have a right and even a duty to speak out against repression of religious minorities, or women, or gays, whether it’s happening in Oklahoma or Iran.

18

It should be possible to affirm adherence to Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and state opposition to those who support death for apostasy, without being accused of being racist, Islamophobic, and/or insufficiently broad-minded.

Affleck seemed to be arguing that those accusations are appropriate for any who criticize phenomena such as supporting death for apostasy, genital mutilation of girls, honor killings, persecution of gays, etc. I can’t agree.

19

I renounce, condemn, and oppose anyone who is promoting, condoning, or enabling violence or terror. Why is it relevant what religion those persons claim? When I’m deciding whom to oppose, I’m going to ask whether people promote violence. I see no need to ask their religion.

20

I watched the show and considered starting a thread about this.

I’m not 100% with either of them, but much more on Maher’s side than Affleck’s. I don’t think Islam is inherently violent, as there are plenty of muslim countries that don’t condone the extremism we see so much of today. But the fact is that RIGHT NOW, some folks interpreting Islam or much, much more likely to interpret a violent form of the religion than Christians do.

It is my sincere hope that Islam simply hasn’t gone through its world-wide reformation yet, because 500 years ago Christians were every bit as bad, if not worse, than radical Muslims are today. We had religious wars, torture and killing for “heresy”, ethnic cleansing and Theocratic states in Christian Europe.

I also think it’s more complex than just Islam. The problems in the Middle East would probably be bad no matter what religion we were talking about because the way the European Powers split up the place after WWI. But the fact remains that Islam is, at best, the proxy being used for geopolitical violence and at worse, the engine.