Discussion for article #235875
Bill Maher has a lot of admirable qualities, but his extreme anti-religious bigotry isn’t one of them. His anti-Muslim bigotry is founded on an ignorance and fear he shares with members of the Fox News demographic. He needs to study a little history. Mostly he needs to STFU, listen and learn.
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Bill Maher has figured out that Muslim-bashing is the way to be a popular atheist. After all, the most fundamentalist Christians have precisely the same attitude toward every other religion that Maher has towards all religion. That makes for a lot of common ground,
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If Bill Maher is so opposed to ISIS why hasn’t he gone to fight them. Maher is the most judgmental, intolerant self adoring prick in our media. He doesn’t seem to get that folks don’t have to live like he want’s them to and it’s OK if they don’t. It’s laughable to see this intolerant bitch about religious intolerance. Why do folks watch him?
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I agree with Maher. Islam in general needs to get its shit together and come into the 21st century. Yes, Christianity has its issues too, but you don’t have 10,000 baptists running around Utah chopping off Mormon heads.
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I’m still waiting for Maher to criticize the Israeli war crimes in Gaza and the West bank. Instead, he has mocked Palestinian deaths at the hands of the IDF.
Bill Maher is an ass.
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but you don’t have 10,000 baptists running around Utah chopping off Mormon heads
No, but there were thousands of extremist Protestants who threw white hoods over their pointed heads and ran around the South and Midwest terrorizing, beating, lynching, and sometimes dismembering people of color, Jews, Chatholics, and anyone else who didn’t meet their citizenship model.
So how about we just call it a draw and say that in the age-old contentions between Christianity and Islam, neither religion is better or worse than the other? It’s about their respective followers being better or worse than one another.
Maher definitely makes me laugh at times and I don’t disagree with many of his political points, but I always find him off-putting with regard to religion. I’m not religious myself and I have the utmost respect for my agnostic and atheist friends, but it’s called having some f**king tact.
Religion in its ideal form - regardless of which kind - should provide a person with three basic things: comfort, guidance, and purpose. And so long as those perceived benefits do not prompt harm or discrimination towards anyone else. If only the world could find such a balance, alongside spirituality, agnosticism, and atheism.
…meanwhile, Maher’s ignorance is not helping push things in that direction.
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Well said, Sadie!
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I have to disagree, I don’t accept the usual, go-to misdirection of “well, Christians do this and Israel does that …” every time someone criticizes Islam. Either that or the old, 'you’re just an Islamaphobe." I will never understand why the left has such a hard time confronting some of the realities of modern Islam? We go absolutely nuts when the SCOTUS rules for Hobby Lobby, but a religion where even the more moderate practitioners make women cover themselves when they leave their house gets a pass? Women’s rights are a regional issue? A cultural issue? I believe they’re a biological issue. Islam is a very machismo religion, that’s probably a big reason why it’s having trouble fitting into the more modern world.
I don’t hate my Muslim friends and family any more than I hate my Republican friends and family, but I do have serious issues with their priorities and practices and will continue to give my opinion on them and back up people like Maher when they make valid points.
Islam needs to fix itself from the inside, and us on the outside making excuses for it isn’t helping that process along in my opinion.
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He makes some good points but is definitely an ass hole in the way he goes about it most times.
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There are 1.6 billion Muslims on the planet. The membership of all terrorist groups that claim to be killing in the name of Islam is a tiny fraction of that — and despite the attention given to the beheadings of Western journalists and aid workers, Muslims are of course the overwhelming majority of the VICTIMS.
And by the way, though Christians aren’t going around beheading people in Utah, there are in fact some extremely violent Christian terrorist groups around the world. In Africa, for instance, the Lord’s Resistance Army has a record every bit as bloody as ISIS, yet no one concludes from this that Christianity in general needs to get its shit together. The common thread connecting Christian terror groups with their Muslim equivalents is that they tend to be active in impoverished parts of the world — and often that underdevelopment is rooted in generations of Western Imperialism and exploitation. ISIS was created as a direct result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq — prior to that, it didn’t exist.
And finally it should be noted that the nation with the largest population of Muslims is Indonesia and it’s been a thriving democracy ever since the U.S.-backed dictatorship collapsed. It needs no lectures from us about joining the 20th century.
I usually associate people who talk about things they know nothing about with the Right, but clearly they don’t have a monopoly on arrogant ignorance.
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Once again, a reply post full of misdirection to other religions and ending with an accusation of Islamaphobia. And this one with the added treat of a personal insult at the end of it … thanks for proving my points.
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Maybe this is already obvious to the author, but Bill Maher is not going to dial back his rhetoric, change his “opinion,” or in any other way engage with this kind of request except as an opportunity for more “debate.” The reason for this is because
IT IS HIS JOB TO ATTRACT AS MUCH ATTENTION AS POSSIBLE
and from a professional standpoint–he is a working comedian and talk show host–it does not matter whether any of the attention is positive. If he could get a single pair of eyeballs more with a different stance on Islam, he would.
He sounds like Rush Limbaugh on this (and virtually everything else, the valence of his “opinions” not withstanding) because he’s using the Limbaugh playbook: bombast, provocation, trolling, repeat. Every few years write a book to cash in a little more.
Just don’t bother. And that advice goes for TPM, too. I know he’s good for clicks, but it’s a shame that that’s become so transparently important, because there is zero other reason to breathlessly report on every “controversial” thing he says.
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Brava, Ms. El-Gamal! This is a beautiful piece of writing, and I would long to hear Maher’s response to it. However, judging by his past comments, he has made up his mind and will not be swayed. It’s not against the law to hold a wrong opinion, but I am growing tired of HBO allowing him to broadcast his prejudices and bigotry every Friday evening. I do like his show, but not when he has two Republicans on the panel, or endorses RFK Jr.'s idiotic positions on vaccines. Take the good with the bad, I suppose, but again, congratulations to the author for speaking truth to power.
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“ignorance”? “study a little history”? “Cast out the beam out of thine own eye”!
And the study:
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If we’re going to have a reasoned debate, I’d much welcome a response to this challenge, which I formulated elsewhere a few weeks ago in thinking over the “What’s wrong with Islam?” question that Maher repeatedly raises. For me, it comes down to the dangers - or not - of “imitatio” of the various central religious historical/mythical figures:
What it comes down to is the prophet of each religion. If you engage in the
imitation of Christ - a central Christian practice - you go around
preaching, loving your enemies, giving the shirt off your back - arguably
crazy but not dangerous to the world. If you engage in the imitation of
Buddha - a central Buddhist practice - you sit silently, beg for your meals,
and preach some - again arguably crazy but not dangerous to the world. If
you engage in the imitation of Mohammed - a central Islamic practice - you
spend some time preaching, but you also organize armies and take political
control of a large region - just as the Islamic State is doing, or as Saudi
Arabia has been constituted.
Okay, for long periods the pope also had armies, and controlled territory.
But he was never doing that in imitation of Christ. What’s unique about
Islam is the founding prophet was a warlord. That makes the religion
dangerous to the world in a way Christianity and Buddhism are not. As
warlords go, Mohammed was relatively enlightened, even liberal for his time.
Islamic civilization on the whole added much to the world in its time. But
it is far past its peak, and modern imitators of Mohammed, unlike imitators
of Christ and Buddha, to the degree they imitate Mohammed’s warlord side,
threaten the world, and deserve little if any respect.
To temper my critique here, I’ll mention that my brother’s wife is a Muslim, her grandfather an imam. I’ve nothing against Muslims as long as they are not followers of the warlord side of Mohammed. Yet the warlord side of Mohammed, to whatever degrees myth or history, makes the religion uniquely dangerous, does it not? Much of Islam was assembled from prior religious and cultural traditions, and deserves deep respect in proportion to the beauty and value of those traditions, including some very deep intellectual and spiritual streams. Is what Islam needs a frank discussion of what’s wrong with Mohammed as a role model, so that those aspects of him can be put aside, and the tree of life better nourished in Islamic lands?
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Very well put.
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Name one. He’s a bully, a bigot, and a lousy comedian to boot. And he pegs the smarm meter at Ted Cruz levels.
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Hear! Hear!
You actually proved impolitic’s ponts out of your own mouth.
Maher’s points have no validity, as any cursory examination of the “logic” of them shows. They are based in uninformed biases, not facts. A quick Google search proves they are unfounded.
It is no insult to point out that arrogant ignorance is arrogant ignorance. The fact that you tried that rhetorical tactic is telling.
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