I don’t usually
stand with comedian Bill Maher, but last week on his Real
Time program the provocateur once
again was a voice of reason addressing
the Islam Problem. His guests were atheist author Sam Harris, former RNC
Chairman Michael Steele, New York Times
columnist Nicholas Kristof, and actor/director Ben Affleck of the Oscar-winning
Iranian hostage crisis flick Argo. As
you might expect from such a lineup, the discussion swiftly degenerated into
the usual stalemate between facts and politically correct defensiveness.
“Liberals need to
stand up for liberal principles,” opened Maher, “freedom of speech, freedom to
practice any religion you want without fear of violence, freedom to leave a
religion, equality for women, equality for minorities, including homosexuals.”
When this earned applause, he continued, “these are liberal principles that
liberals applaud for, but then when you say in the Muslim world, this is what’s
lacking, then they get upset.”
Sam Harris, an
atheist who, like Maher, at least understands that not all religions are the
same, replied,
Liberals have really failed on the topic of theocracy. They’ll criticize
white theocracy, they’ll criticize Christians, they’ll still get upset over the
abortion clinic bombings that happened in 1984… The crucial point of confusion
is that we have been sold this meme of Islamophobia where every criticism of
Islam is conflated with bigotry toward Muslims as people, and that is intellectually
ridiculous.
This brought whoops
of approval from the audience, and a highly agitated Affleck took the
opportunity to jump in and challenge Harris on his credentials for discussing
Islam. Of course, Affleck, who had nothing knowledgeable to say about the
religion himself, immediately proved Harris’ point by calling his statement
“gross” and “racist” – buying into the standard progressive misconception that
Islam is somehow a race. Maintaining his composure, Harris responded, again to
applause, that we have to be able to criticize ideas. This was a point with
which Affleck hastened to agree – until Harris dropped some truth that “Islam
is the mother lode of bad ideas.”
“Jesus,” a
frustrated Affleck exclaimed. He practically came out of his chair a moment
later exclaiming, “How about the more than a billion people who aren’t
fanatical, who don’t punish women, who just want to go to school, have some
sandwiches, and don’t do any of the things you say all Muslims do?” This too
brought applause, even though once again he was proving Harris’ point that
criticizing Islam gets unfairly conflated with a broad-brush attack on all
Muslims.
“All these billion
people don’t hold these pernicious beliefs?” Maher asked. “That’s just not
true, Ben.” When Harris “unpacked” the concept for an impatient Affleck,
explaining about concentric circles of fundamentalism, Affleck shut down
listening and simply interjected, “Let him [Kristof] talk.” Nicholas Kristof defended
moderate Muslims who speak out, and Michael Steele raised the point that
opposition Muslim voices don’t get media coverage, to which Maher, trying to
bring the discussion back to the ideology of Islam, responded that a big reason
Muslims don’t speak out is fear. “It’s
the only religion that acts like the mafia,” Maher said. “They will f**king
kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong
book. That’s why Ayaan Hirsi Ali needs bodyguards 24/7.”
Affleck, unable to
restrain his righteous anger, suddenly gesticulated at Harris as he began to
rant irrationally. “What is your solution, to just condemn Islam? We’ve killed
more Muslims than they have us, by an awful lot, and yet somehow we’re exempted
from things because they’re not reeeally
a reflection of what we believe in…”
When he couldn’t be
reined in from this tangent, Harris condescended, “Let me just give you what
you want,” and proceeded to say that there are hundreds of millions of Muslims
who don’t agree with ISIS and that reformers of Islam should be supported. That
didn’t pacify Affleck or Kristof, who said that Harris’ point still smacked of
“the way white racists talked about African-Americans and defined blacks” –
proving yet again Harris’ point that
criticizing Islamic ideology always raises the specter of Islamophobia.
When Affleck began
another stupid rant, equating a factual discussion of Islam with racism against
blacks, Maher cut him off. “It’s based on facts. I can show you a Pew poll of
Egyptians – they are not outliers in the Muslim world – that say like 90% of
them believe death is the appropriate response to leaving the religion. If 90%
of Brazilians thought that death was the appropriate response to leaving
Catholicism, you would think it was a bigger deal.”
“I would think it
was a big deal no matter what,” Affleck lied, trying to sound fair and
balanced. People like Affleck will defend the rights of jihadists all the way
up until the blade severs their heads from their bodies, but think nothing of publicly
smearing all Christians as theocratic bigots.
“I’m simply telling
you,” Affleck told Harris, “I disagree with you.” Harris calmly countered
correctly with, “You don’t understand my argument.”
That’s because Ben
Affleck is typical of uninformed but holier-than-thou, media-empowered Hollywood
actors, who substitute passion for thought and utopian ideals for reality, who reject
facts for ad hominem slurs of racism,
and who wear the blinders of moral equivalence because their false god is
multiculturalism. Unfortunately, we can’t dismiss the influence of such smug,
ignorant loudmouths on the smug, militantly ignorant sheep who constitute their
audience.
“We’re obviously not
convincing anybody,” Bill Maher conceded. Maybe, maybe not, but unlike nearly
all of his cohorts in the media, at least Maher’s willing to try.
(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 10/5/14)
