Affleck vs Maher on Islam

[SkinsHokieFan]

http://www.alternet.org/belief/when-ben-affleck-and-bill-maher-debate-islam-everyone-loses

 

But Harris and Maher went off track themselves: At no point did either distinguish between criticizing beliefs common among Muslims and criticizing Islam itself. Harris started things off, recall, by attributing these pernicious beliefs to “the doctrine of Islam.” Later on, he defended himself by saying, “We have to be able to criticize bad ideas, and Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas.” Maher, absurdly, chimed in: “That’s just a fact.”

I don’t find it offensive when people criticize Islam (or, for that matter, Christianity) as a font of bad ideas. But I think it’s more likely to be counterproductive than useful in countering illiberalism and radicalism among Muslims. And it’s not a stretch to treat an attack on the Islamic religion as a criticism of all or most Muslims.

Liberals, and others, need to be able to keep in their minds two things simultaneously: Much of the Muslim world is in need of reformation, and any reforms are most likely to come from people who are Muslims themselves — not from people who dismiss their religion as the “mother lode of bad ideas.”

 

 

 

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119898/bill-maher-ben-affleck-islam-debate-there-no-muslim-world

 

Phrases like “Islamic world” or “Muslim world” impose a religious border that sustains narratives of Islam’s separation and foreignness. This nurtures absurd memes like “creeping Sharia,” “Eurabia,” and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s favorite—that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the U.S. government—which suggest that Muslims have traversed their boundaries “over there” in pursuit of spreading their religious traditions “here.” It is precisely what allows someone like Maher to fret that Muslims in America “bring that desert stuff to our world.” 

 

 

Muslims may act upon the organized collection of beliefs that comprise their faith, which neuroscientist and author Sam Harris calls the “mother lode of bad ideas.” But it’s not because those ideas sprang to life, jumped up out of the pages of the Quran and into the minds of Muslims who were captive to their actions. If we blame the Quran for bad acts committed by Muslims in the name of Islam, logic would follow that we must also give it credit for good acts. But neither is appropriate. Muslims make conscious choices to act and when they do, for good or bad, that capacity must not be diminished by fixating on lifeless doctrines.

 

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

I would question how successful liberals have been in steering civil rights movements in the US. The Civil Rights movement of the 60s achieved its greatest success thanks to LBJ, who is no one's definition of a modern liberal. Gay rights are achieving its greatest breakthroughs with the help of people like Ted Stephens.

 

What liberals can do and will do well is move the culture. Protesting in San Franciso about the treatment of women in Syria is not going to create change. Creating a space for people like Malala Yousafzai to project their voice will.

 

Maher tends to see everything as a shouting match - not surprising considering his career. Where the Left has largely failed is recruitment and projecting voices in the Islamic World.

[SkinsHokieFan]

Protesting in San Franciso about the treatment of women in Syria is not going to create change. Creating a space for people like Malala Yousafzai to project their voice will.

 

 

 

Lies

 

If a bunch of American Muslims went and protested on the Mall it would change everything over there

[zoony]

Lies

 

If a bunch of American Muslims went and protested on the Mall it would change everything over there

Can we send code pink to Karachi?

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Lies

 

If a bunch of American Muslims went and protested on the Mall it would change everything over there

 

I honestly don't know if this is a legit FoxNews view or a parody of a FoxNews view.

 

As our token Brown guy, you have to be a little more direct, my friend.

[SkinsHokieFan]

Can we send code pink to Karachi?

 

No crap, Codepink has an entire page on Pakistan

 

http://www.codepinkalert.org/article.php?list=type&type=335

[No Excuses]

What liberals can do and will do well is move the culture. Protesting in San Franciso about the treatment of women in Syria is not going to create change. Creating a space for people like Malala Yousafzai to project their voice will.

 

Maher tends to see everything as a shouting match - not surprising considering his career. Where the Left has largely failed is recruitment and projecting voices in the Islamic World.

 

Forget protests, this conversation is non-existent in the liberal base. I'm not sure if its because liberals want to distance themselves from the Fox News crowd or that they are generally sensitive to the characterization of minorities.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Forget protests, this conversation is non-existent in the liberal base. I'm not sure if its because liberals want to distance themselves from the Fox News crowd or that they are generally sensitive to the characterization of minorities.

 

That's simply not true.

 

The conversation simply doesn't fit the standard American conversation of "Bomb them" or "Convert them."

[ABQCOWBOY]

Can we send code pink to Karachi?

 

 

LOL.......

 

 

I'd send money in to support that effort.

[Destino]

 

3. If we are going to have this conversation, we need to discuss everything the west has done to create this problem.

 

Why?  I ask because when I worked in the charity world trying to get resources, people, and attention to people in need, I never ran into one person in need of help that gave and damn about any of that.  That conversation is interesting, and I'm sure that at some levels it's important, but I am perfectly comfortable saying that a bad thing today is bad.  That the people actively engaged in this bad behavior should stop.  History is full of horrors and many of those lead to the horrors of today, but the past is beyond our reach.  We can only act in the present. 

 

I think liberals do have a hard time holding everyone to the same standards and they often look at problems from too far away.  

 

(do not confuse this with an endorsement of conservative "ideals", liberals and their guilty burdens are still correct far more often IMO) 

 

[nonniey]

"Here's the thing, none of those countries are shining examples of liberal Islam".

 

Anecdotal bit of info.

One of my fellow (US) officers was a Muslim when we were advisors in Iraq. Great guy, friendly from New Jersey and had converted to Islam. Well, one of our Iraqi Interpreters let it drop that he was no longer Muslim (Most of his family had secretly converted to Christianity but he was agnostic). When he dropped that bit of information he made it clear that we could not let our Muslim fellow officer know. As we were leaving and (and after that interpreter had moved on) another colleague let the cat out of the bag in front of our colleague, Let's just say his reaction was a little out of character (as we had understood it to be until then). He was livid and furious that our former Interpreter had become an apostate. I didn't get the impression from him that he'd be opposed to the execution of Apostates.

 

[Corcaigh]

Based on the personal experience of the liberal circles I move in, I don't buy the argument that Muslims are viewed by liberals with a less critical eye than Evangelical Christians.

[Predicto]

It but the people in the cities I end up interacting with ...   are blasting Cold Play

 

 

 

My god they really are savages.

[Special K]

Wow, Affleck makes himself look like a complete fool in this clip; he can't even grasp what the hell Maher and Harris are saying.  While I'm not a fan of Maher, I do agree with a lot of what he is saying with regard to this issue.  It's true that when you attempt to discuss some of the messed up messages of Islam the knee-jerk reaction is that you're immediately labeled a bigot.  I don't talk about my experience with Islam much because 1) I know that more often than not I'll get blasted and accused of being an anti-Islamic bigot and 2) it's a pretty personal and emotional story.  However, my experience with very conservative Islam has been horrifying.  This isn't to say I think all Muslims are bad people or every Muslim is extreme, but my recent experience has soured me against the religion and left me struggling to maintain neutrality and objectivity in my beliefs about Islam as a whole.  

 

About 4 years ago my younger sister began dating a Lebanese guy in her med school class.  He came to the US with his family when he was a child and basically grew up here.  Due to some citizenship issues or red tape thing, the only school his parents could immediately put him in was a private, Christian school.  Over the course of several years he turned away from Islam toward Christianity and eventually ended up converting to Christianity.  His parents immediately disowned him as his conversion greatly shamed his father and his entire family (later on in their relationship he revealed to my sister that his family is part of the bloodline of Muhammad thereby making his conversion especially shameful for his family).

 

On break during his 1st year of med school he returned to Lebanon with his family to visit all his relatives.  During that trip his relatives tried twice to assassinate him:  his uncle tried to shoot him and one of his aunts poisoned him.  He immediately left his family and returned to the US where he was hospitalized due to the poisoning.  He kept a lot of this hidden from my sister because he didn't want her to be freaked out.  However, I remember this incident when he was hospitalized and never getting a clear answer as to why --- the full story came out later on when he grew more comfortable with my family and really opened up.  Anyway, after that experience he vowed never to return to Lebanon, duh, and essentially denounced Islam, saying he was ashamed of his background and the family he came from.

 

Then, during the summer between his junior and senior year of medical school, after becoming engaged to my sister, he was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer.  At that point the cancer had metastasized to his brain & stomach and doctors told him it was very likely he wouldn't make it to Christmas.   When he told his family his parents said that's what he "deserved" for turning his back on Islam and this was Allah's punishment.  By this point, he had come to be regarded as another member of my family and we tried to step in to be his support system as he battled for his life, especially since his family was obviously not going to be there for him.  My sister was with him through all his chemo, radiation and surgeries and his classmates and professors and even my relatives who lived in the area all rallied around him.  His family didn't say boo.  His family didn't even care when he underwent emergency neurosurgery at UCLA and almost died.  As a courtesy, my sister called his parents to notify them he had a brain hemorrhage and had been rushed into surgery...and they hung up on her.  My whole family was shocked and deeply upset that his parents would treat a human that way, much less their own son.  As he battled the cancer he made a bucket list that my family tried to help him sequentially check off.  My sister and I took him to NY as one of his "bucket" trips (he wanted to see Ground Zero and the Statue of Liberty) and it was on that trip that he got a call from a cousin in Lebanon who told him all the relatives were happy he was going to die because upon his death his body would be returned to family in Lebanon where it would be desecrated.

 

After that trip he began finalizing his will and ensuring all legal i's were dotted and t's crossed so that my family would be given authority over his body upon his death where we would ensure his body remained in the US and that he was given a Christian burial.  About that time he was accepted into a clinical trial of a new chemo agent being tested and amazingly his cancer went into remission.  He was able to celebrate Christmas with us and graduated med school  the following May.  His parents didn't even bother to show up on time to the ceremony, much less attend any other events that graduation weekend.  He's now in residency and sadly his cancer has returned with a vengeance.  He hasn't even told his parents (even though he underwent neurosurgery again just last weekend to remove another met) because he knows what their response will be.

 

Sorry, kind of a long-winded story.  However, after witnessing over the last few years how he was so mistreated by his deeply religious family, I'll be honest, it's hard for me to not look at Islam as being a religion chock full of a lot of very bassackwards tenets...  And I don't even want to open the can of worms that is my view of how women are looked at and treated in that religion.

[Predicto]

That was a very interesting and sad read.

 

I still don't understand why Maher or anyone thinks that liberals support any of that in any way.  

[visionary]

http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-ra-bill-maher-berkeley-commencement-20141028-column.html

UC Berkeley Muslim students are wrong to silence Bill Maher

 

There’s a special kind of irony emanating right now from the UC Berkeley campus. A group of offended students is trying to get the political satirist Bill Maher banned as the school’s winter graduation speaker, even as the campus is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement.

 

Now, I am actually the last person to defend the content of Bill Maher's speech. I find him grating, unfunny and smug. Not to mention sexist. But I would never argue that HBO should cancel “Real Time With Bill Maher” because I don't like his show. I simply choose not to watch.

 

No one can blame Muslim students for objecting to Maher's virulent and frequently expressed anti-Muslim sentiments. Earlier this month, one episode in particular generated a lot of controversy because of a heated exchange about Muslims that he had with Ben Affleck, who was on the show to promote his new film, “Gone Girl.”

 

http://www.thenation.com/article/185105/cowardice-bill-mahers-anti-muslim-bigotry?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

The Cowardice of Bill Maher’s Anti-Muslim Bigotry

 

Since 9/11, Muslim-Americans have struggled to overcome the suspicions of their non-Muslim neighbors. These doubts have often manifested themselves in outright discrimination, and Muslims have been targeted by bigots in hate crimes across the country. In my own hometown in southern West Virginia, the mosque has been repeatedly vandalized, and local students report being subjected to routine racist bullying from their peers, as I reported for Al Jazeera America earlier this year.

 

This is not atypical. According to a survey conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, half of Muslim-American students in California schools report being bullied for their religious beliefs. The FBI has also catalogued a sustained increase in hate crimes targeting Muslims since 9/11. These crimes are occasionally violent, and they often target non-Muslims whose only crime is fitting the description of what a bigot thinks a Muslim looks like.

 

The anti-Islamic sentiment that fuels these ugly incidents is exacerbated when negative stories pertaining to Islam dominate the media cycle. Whether it’s a terrorist attack or a contentious debate involving Muslims, such as the proposal for the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,” there is typically an uptick in anti-Muslim bigotry following these events. It is for this reason that every time news of a mass violent crime breaks, we in the Muslim-American community collectively hold its breath in the hope that the perpetrator is not a Muslim.

 

With the rise of ISIS and its beheading of many Westerners, we are currently experiencing another one of these events that accentuate Islamophobia in America. This time around, comedian and political provocateur Bill Maher has been at the center of this discussion. For weeks, Maher has advanced the argument that Western liberals are soft on Islam, which he says poses a distinct threat to “liberal principles.” This is not necessarily a new position for Maher, who has long criticized Islam. What inspired his latest series of denunciations of the religion was President Obama’s repeated assertions that “ISIL is not Islamic.” For Maher, Islam “is not like other religions.” It is “like the mafia that will ****ing kill you” if you cross it, and there is “connecting tissue” that binds the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims to ISIS (also known as ISIL, or IS) and its savage practices. In the hours following a shooting that left a Canadian soldier dead, Maher had this to say: “Turns out the attacker was Islamic—what are the odds, huh? Its almost like there’s an elephant in the room.”

 

Maher is not alone among Americans in his distrust of Islam and its adherents (they’re called Muslims, not “Islamics,” Bill), as illustrated by a recent Zogby poll. This survey found that a plurality of Americans—45 percent—hold an “unfavorable view” of Muslims, while only 27 percent espouse a “favorable view.” This data undermines the preposterous notion that Maher is somehow taking a courageous stand by expressing his negative opinions of Islam. Richard Dawkins, another prominent critic of Islam, tweeted that Maher’s latest stand exemplifies his “typical bravery.” What is brave about expressing an opinion that is already held by a plurality of Americans?

 

With powerful media personalities like Maher perpetuating the notion that Americans should associate the horrible atrocities committed by ISIS with their Muslim-American neighbors, it shouldn’t be surprising if anti-Islamic sentiment continues to grow. That possibility alone is enough reason to condemn Maher’s fear-mongering. When one delves deeper and uncovers the simplistic, reductionist nature of Maher’s argument, it is clear he is also guilty of intellectual laziness, if not dishonesty.

 

http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/ayman-mohyeldin-takes-on-mahers-islam-argument-339120707927

Ayman Mohyeldin takes on Maher’s Islam argument

 

Ayman Mohyeldin makes the case for why Bill Maher and Sam Harris’s arguments against Islam were “offensive and intolerant.”

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzusSqcotDw&sns=em

[No Excuses]

That was a very interesting and sad read.

I still don't understand why Maher or anyone thinks that liberals support any of that in any way.

That is not Mahers argument, or what he was getting at.

[Predicto]

That is not Mahers argument, or what he was getting at.

 

 

What is his argument?   As I understand it, Maher is claiming that liberals are apologists for fundamentalist Islam, or at least refuse to acknowledge the harm that it does, and that is why zoony and you say liberals are hypocrites.   Right?

[autoidiodyssey]

 

I still don't understand why Maher or anyone thinks that liberals support any of that in any way.  

 

I don't think Maher is claiming liberals support that type of behavior. I think he is saying that their sensitivity, for lack of a better term, destroys any chance of having a rational conversation about the issue. Affleck here is a perfect example of that.

 

Here is the other side of the story from Sam Harris' blog. It is an interesting read.

 

 

After the show, Kristof, Affleck, Maher, and I continued our discussion. At one point, Kristof reiterated the claim that Maher and I had failed to acknowledge the existence of all the good Muslims who condemn ISIS, citing the popular hashtag #NotInOurName. In response, I said: “Yes, I agree that all condemnation of ISIS is good. But what do you think would happen if we had burned a copy of the Koran on tonight’s show? There would be riots in scores of countries. Embassies would fall. In response to our mistreating a book, millions of Muslims would take to the streets, and we would spend the rest of our lives fending off credible threats of murder. But when ISIS crucifies people, buries children alive, and rapes and tortures women by the thousands—all in the name of Islam—the response is a few small demonstrations in Europe and a hashtag.” I don’t think I’m being uncharitable when I say that neither Affleck nor Kristof had an intelligent response to this. Nor did they pretend to doubt the truth of what I said.

[Special K]

I still don't understand why Maher or anyone thinks that liberals support any of that in any way.  

Yeah, I don't think liberals in any way support the horrific stuff we hear about with radical/fundamentalist Islam.  So, I don't agree with Maher on that at all.

 

However, I do feel that people voicing concerns about various Islamic tenets get much more pushback from "liberals" than if those same people voiced concerns over different Christian tenets.  That said, I will admit the most vocal critics of Islam (Sean Hannity et al.) come across as bigotted and extremely ignorant and I suspect that is what the liberals are rallying against:  it's not that they support fundamentalist Islamic principles and laws, but moreso that their automatic reflex  when the subject is broached is to see any sort of discussion with certain aspects of Islam as an affront to the entire religion.

[visionary]

Here is the other side of the story from Sam Harris' blog. It is an interesting read.

 

 

But what do you think would happen if we had burned a copy of the Koran on tonight’s show? There would be riots in scores of countries. Embassies would fall. In response to our mistreating a book, millions of Muslims would take to the streets, and we would spend the rest of our lives fending off credible threats of murder. But when ISIS crucifies people, buries children alive, and rapes and tortures women by the thousands—all in the name of Islam—the response is a few small demonstrations in Europe and a hashtag.”

Not sure about millions of Muslims, that sounds like an exaggeration.

Generally you have extremists doing this in response to rallying cries from their religious leader of choice and using the incident as a recruiting tool.

Sort of the way Christian fundamentalists use 'attacks on Christianity' or the 'war on Christmas', but with more violence.

But this sort of attitude of overreacting to such incidents and not paying attention to atrocities committed by and against Muslims has been talked about non-stop among Muslim activists for years.

[Elessar78]

I don't doubt there are peace loving Muslims globally. My big problem is that the moderates and the peace lovers don't go out of their way to vehemently denounce the terrorism done in the name of their religion. 

 

Maybe the same charge can be levied against Christians. Maybe they do and it just doesn't make it into the mainstream media.

 

I was in Germany recently and a colleague mentioned how a Mosque was just built in his city. He wasn't against it, necessarily, but he wondered aloud if a Christian church would be as welcome in Middle Eastern Country X. 

[Predicto]

And so the point is what?   We don't burn enough Korans on national tv?   What good would that do?  How would that help us or the world?  

 

I'm an American.  My first instinct is to respond when Americans do stuff that I feel reflects on me and my country.  I feel responsible and I feel like I can do something about it.  My speaking out might make a difference.  When I see a horrible atrocity overseas, I'm just saddened.   I don't feel like I can do anything about it.   It has nothing to do with Islam vs. Christianity or anything like that.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Here is where I will make what I think is a valid criticism of my fellow liberal pansies (like Predicto).

 

I do not like the reflexive response that some liberals have when Fundamental Islam comes up where they automatically compare it to Fundamental Christianity in the US. It's not the same in theory and certainly not the same in the current political environment.

 

However, fundamentalist Christians impact me on a day to day basis far more than Fundamenalist Muslims do or probably ever could, short of ISIS obtaining nuclear weapons and the capability of projecting force in the US.

 

I do not like the reflexive verbal tic that I mentioned above. But I also don't understand the FoxNews viewers who legitimately fear that Sharia law is somehow coming to Pasadena, Texas.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Where I agree with pansies like Predicto is that I honestly don't know what I as a liberal pansy am supposed to do about Fundamentalist Islam. Are you really suggesting that I encourage people in Syria to hold a peaceful protest denouncing ISIS? That seems like I'm encouraging people to slit their own throats.

 

What needs to be encouraged is secularism in general, but we in the West have historically done a terrible job of that because our view of secularism tends to look very much like the Shah or the Baathists. That's why I think we need to know the role that we and Great Britain had in creating this mess. Because in the John Bolton circles of the world, the idea seems to be that we just need to replace the old corrupt dictators with new corrupt dictators. And that's how we got here in the first place.