Discussion for article #228607
I admit that I was a little thrown by Affleck’s animosity. I don’t know where it came from, because we hadn’t met before I joined the panel.
How many of the 1.5 billion muslims has Sam Harris met?
11 Likes
Affleck clearly didn’t even begin to understand what Maher was saying before bursting into his rant. Then it was all downhill trying to defend his idiotic position. Certain people should just stop, think, take a breath and then voice an opinion instead of just shooting from the hip.
5 Likes
Sounds like very good advice for Bill Maher. Always and forever. See how HE responds to that. He’s built an entire brand around just that sort of “hip shooting”.
4 Likes
I’ve seen Sam Harris numerous times and I was not thrown by his condescending attitude.
5 Likes
Famous first words: “I am not a bigot, but…”
5 Likes
This fellow “suspects” (but has nothing resembling proof) that one of Affleck’s “handlers” (but not anyone with a name) is “a fan of Glenn Greenwald” (but not Glenn Greenwald or anyone who actually spoke to Glenn Greenwald) who “prepared Affleck for his appearance” (but without saying who or when) by “telling him I am a racist and a warmonger,” (but how the hell would I know anyway?)
TPM, when are you going to stop giving attention to celebrity spats, politician “gaffes,” and nobodies who said something naughty? Far too much of your energies are devoted to crap stories like this.
12 Likes
I saw the show live and before the show I had no idea who Sam Harris is, but as a person with a degree in Ottoman History my reaction to him was the same as Ben Affleck. About the only thing I would have added to Affleck is the hypocracy of what Harris and Maher were saying in regard to Islam yet Mahar on his show treating some of the people who helped Bush lie America into Iraq and kill over one million people of the Islamic faith with kid gloves.
7 Likes
By any chance was this one of those degrees in Ottoman History that doesn’t require you to write coherently in the English language?
3 Likes
“We have been sold this meme of Islamophobia, where every criticism of the doctrine of Islam gets conflated with bigotry toward Muslims as people."
Not to mention the meme of Callingitlikeitisophobia, where bigots hide behind a false veneer of legitimacy to disguise what are clearly prejudices and broad-brush generalizations that cannot and in fact do not uniformly apply to 1.5 billion people, many of whom were friendly to us before we started fucking killing them, particularly in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 where a like-minded critic of the doctrine of Islam occupied the White House and fed us the line of bullshit that they hate us for who we are and how we live so we obviously have to kill them preemptively.
As we observed then with respect to Bush the Lesser, while some extremists might indeed feel that way (not unlike the Christian extremists obsessed with the hate of gay people) many hate us because of the way we treat them, and we’ve earned it. It’s been said there is likely no family in Iraq that hasn’t lost a loved one by our hand.
To characterize all Muslims as being the same is ignorant on its face, and Affleck is correct to question the legitimacy of this individual, or anyone for that matter, who presumes to speak of “all” of Islam.
8 Likes
Yes, they are pretty shitty.
But at least their proofing is awesome.
You may be shocked to know that there are people in this world with degrees, very very smart people indeed, that don’t speak a word of English. Not a syllable.
7 Likes
Coached?
Pundits, profs and writers can be condescending. Not “at times” but most of the time if they don’t watch it.
2 Likes
This is a pretty silly thing to say. First of all, Harris is attacking ideas, not all individual Muslims, and is certainly not saying that ALL 1.5 billion Muslims believe in death for apostasy, suicide bombing, jihad, etc. This was the whole point of his concentric circles argument.
The best way to actually gauge Muslim opinion is to take a look at the opinion polls:
For example: What the World Thinks in 2002. Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 2002.
Sample size: 38,000
“Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to
defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?”
Is it ever justifiable?:
Lebanon: 82%
Nigeria: 66%
Jordan: 65%
Bangladesh: 58%
etc., etc.
For people like Affleck to pretend that this is not an issue, and that at least some portion of these opinions are not driven by their operative religious beliefs, is simply crazy. Harris is right: beliefs have consequences, and criticizing beliefs is not bigotry.
3 Likes
Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!
2 Likes
Did you actually watch the program? (I did) Maher did not “characterize all Muslims as being the same” - what he did point out is that, while only a very small segment of Muslims engage in terrorism and violence against “non-believers”, a substantial segment of Muslims around the world either express outright sympathy or refuse to condemn such behavior.
1 Like
Affleck is basically right. Maher and this asshole are bigots.
3 Likes
To be fair, he has pretty good fluency. I completely got what he meant. His run-on sentences may be a result of years of text messaging. Who knows? Maybe he just doesn’t breathe a lot when he speaks…
1 Like
I know! Let’s not hold him to a higher standard than TPM’s “reporters”?
1 Like
Harris is a dick and Maher is completely over the top when it comes to Muslims. Both didn’t seem able to grasp what Affleck was saying which is that you can’t paint all Muslims as Extremists. Harris and the bullshit poll he sighted could not have possibly sampled all 1.2 billion Muslims. I totally agreed with Affleck. Then, Maher and Harris seemed to pivot and started attacking Liberals who they claimed don’t stand up to the harsh treatment of women in “Muslim” countries. A complete misnomer if you know anything about, say, Indonesia. I’ve never heard a single Liberal say that they agreed with the way some in the Muslim community in some countries treat the women there. It was a stupid ascertion by Maher and Harris and had nothing to do with what Ben was saying. I like Bill Maher but, his views on Muslims is to paint those who practice it as accepting all of the supposed traditions. Nicholas Kristoff wrote a piece in the NY Times that gets at some of this. He points out that while the Catholic church isn’t in favor of gay marriage and birth control, there are many sitting in the pews who are divorced and use birth control. To paint all of the people who practice any religion as being in favor of all of the teachings is just plain ignorant or as Ben described the over the top Maher and the smug Harris, racist or more to the point, prejudiced against the Muslim religion.
5 Likes