Seems like that’s a trend lately, doesn’t it?
TPM using lurid headlines which don’t reflect the true content of the story.
Don’t dare call it click-bait, though! That makes Josh vewwy sad.
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I haven’t looked at the surveys that he is citing, so I can’t speak to their accuracy or methods. I would be very careful to look at their methodology to determine the differences between the political power issues that are identified with Islam, and the issues that are more accurately part of the religion itself. Religion is often used as a means of control and to rally support for political power, but it would be a mistake to consider religion and politics as the same issue.
As you note, the US would not fare very well if we were judged by the rest of the world largely on the words and actions of our most radical and fundamentalist members of the Christian faith. We are not faith healing, snake handling, book burning idiots, by and large.
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The point Bill Maher was trying to make, before Mr.Afleck got all offended and whatnot, was that liberal views are in deep contrast with the Islam religion, moderate or not, on many levels. Not sure what Berkeley students who signed this silly petition are standing for.
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Doesn’t every troll who loves “The Bell Curve” write the same thing you just wrote, about how we should be able to have “thoughtful and informed discussions” about race?
There is a reason that the Civil Rights Act includes religion in its list of unacceptable discriminations. Religious identity is not merely a set of positions to debate over.
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This has nothing to do with free speech.
This is a university contracting with a speaker for money and imposing him on a captive audience.
You have no right to be the commencement speaker at Berkeley. To try to make this into a free speech question is to take the Sarah Palin definition of free speech.
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Full disclosure, I am a fan of Real Time, but I need to disagree on one point.
Maher does not want a ‘thoughtful and informed discussion’ anymore and he said so publicly. He’s through talking about his dispute with Ben Affleck. He’s through having to explain how he arrived at his views on Islam.
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Let’s not forget Maher’s despicable dismissals of the genocide being committed against the Palestinians. His career-long excuses for Israeli occupation and crimes against civilians belies his so-called progressive politics.
Yep, he’s a bigot. And a not very intelligent one, at that.
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The problem that you and Mr. Maher make is treating the categories “Muslims” and “people who support executions for blasphemy and adultery and FGM” as equivalent.
Imagine if someone described David Duke as “taking a stand against car-jackings and welfare fraud.”
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Tell us, do you need to “work out” the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Westboro Baptist Church?
Or is this “collective guilt for thee but not for me?”
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I think this is fine, and much better than disrupting the commencement address.
Bill Maher isn’t really the sort of speaker I’d want at my kids’ commencement anyway, for a whole variety of reasons.
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I’ve listened to Maher, including his whole anti-religious movie (I watched it because I am an anti-religion freethinker and I thought I would like it).
He is a racist and a bigot. His devaluation of the worth of Palestinian people based on ethnicity and religion is simply disgusting.
His knowledge of actual middle east history is shallow and slanted.
He has a lot of company in that regard, but he also already has a big soapbox, and has not used it responsibly.
I think the students of Berkeley acted appropriately.
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Bill Maher dresses up Likudnik Islamophobia in leftist-sounding language, the same way Russia Today dresses up Russian imperialism in western-leftist language, and there is a reliable constituency of putative liberals who eat it up as long as their very favorite shibboleths get a shout out.
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Thinking of the language etymology of a still common cliche is useful in debunking blowhard denials of hard to prove existing prejudices. No one comes out and says “you gotta call a person with the same color skin as lots of other criminals a criminal,” but the cliche “you gotta call a spade a spade” was coined in very close to that context and is still uttered and taken as wise counsel today.
Now in very similar contexts often not involving race or even humans- “one shared neutral trait proves future negative similarity,” uh…no. You ever hear anyone say “you gotta call an ace a deuce?” That’s because you’d be an idiot to do that- and that’s exactly what calling a spade a spade can make you.
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Mr. Maher stands only for himself. A self-agrandizing self-possessed camera/microphone hog.
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But they gave a standing ovation to Rand Paul. Berkeley just ain’t what it used to be.
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Yeah but Berkleley is more than willing, he’s booked promised payment and hospitality. Its a couple/few thousand of their individual students who are collectively saying they have already heard enough from this individual, right? These petition drives to remove scheduled speakers do not all succeed I am guessing. The fact that Bill Maher has already self declared radio silence on a topic that he has often spoken very clearly as agreeing with anti-faith zealots effectively means he’s not open to “hear” contrasting ideas. That’s what these college kids are pointing out. The fact that Berkeley has likely a Muslim student population much higher than probably 90% of US colleges, likely even the SoCal state land grant University closer to Bill Mahers house, it kind of makes me wonder why Cal Berkeley wanted him more than any other colleges that day. With so many more of those backward thinking foreigners and religious minorities honing their genital mutilation apology skills at Cal- how’d the commitee that booked Bill Maher get away with it in the first place?
It has been ‘worked out’. Those groups are fringe, they’re the exceptions to to rule and are strongly condemned.
Obfuscate all you like, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, hell, even Wiccans do not have the same internal and very public problems Islam has today.
Universities can do better than comedians who are paid to get a chuckle.
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@Khaann: Notice what the student Marium Navid was doing. Like the supposed Islamic scholar Reza Aslan, all she did was claim bigotry. Name calling is not difficult – a kindergartener can do that and you don’t need a Berkeley degree for that. Looks like Marium Navid is angry, blinded by her faith and unable to make contact with facts. She did not refute any of the arguments and evidence that were presented.
The world does not have to automatically accept terrorism, bigotry and beheadings just because some members of virulent an barbaric religion think that it will get them to paradise.
Although a comedian, Bill Maher is doing a lot of good and providing a forum exchange of ideas.
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So you are putting the blame for a girl being shot for trying to learn on her mom who probably is a practicing Muslim more than you do the guy who pulled the trigger? Why couldn’t she have “worked that out” of her own faith community before that guy decided to put a bullet in her head?