From the ripples I’m seeing on the sane side of the Twittersphere, looks like the Wingnut Wurlitzer has found itself another “convert” — they’re sure that Bill Maher finally understands The Truth About Ragheads Muslims. Look how the weak-sister Hollywood lie-bral is shouted down by the Righteous! Of course, from Maher’s (and Sam Harris’s) perspective, it’s just one more proof that all religious people are dupes at best and monsters at worst, but their gleeful embrace of ISIS=TRUE HEART OF ISLAM is a gift to the xenophobes that will be all over Facebook no later than tomorrow afternoon.
Me, I stand with Ben Affleck… or even, less enthusiastically, with Michael Steele. (Not a phrase I’d ever expected to write.) It doesn’t take “religion” to make some people hunger after murder — strict rationalists like Dick Cheney and Henry Kissinger have certainly done all they could do to demonstrate that. If your robust defense of “secularism” puts you on the same cheer team as Bill Kristol’s worthless son-in-law, it’s time to reconsider your premises.
Baud
By which you mean people who don’t use Twitter, right?
James Hare
Perhaps Maher learned the lesson of getting canned after 9/11 too well?
MaximusNYC
There’s a lot of intelligent stuff on Twitter (and some very politically astute and smartly funny stuff also). The nature of the medium is such that it can be hard to find. But if you cultivate a good selection of people to follow (which takes time) it can be rewarding.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: That is correct.
Sly
I will take Bill Maher’s political activism with respect to the drug war seriously when he shuts up about America’s drug laws and acknowledges that pot smokers in Indonesia have it far worse than American pot smokers, owing to the fact that possession of marijuana in Indonesia is a capital offense. Additionally, I will treat his support of drug law reforms as nothing more than puerile affectation unless the aforementioned acknowledgement comes with a full and forthright denunciation of all Indonesians, the Indonesian culture, and – because why the Hell not? – Indonesia as a concept.
P.S., I am not a crackpot.
gnomedad
As Lindsay said to “Hippy” in The Abyss: “Do me a favor; stay off my side!”
Anya
One side of my family is Muslim and not a single one of them believes the lunacy that ISIS espouses. I asked my grandfather who’s a scholar in Islamic studies about where Islam stands on freedom of religion. He told me that there’s a number of instances where it clearly states that freedom of faith and conscience are guaranteed. “There is no compulsion in religion” – Verse 256 of Al-Baqara
It can’t get any clearer.
I just hate it that bigoted people like Maher and Harris blame everything any muslim does on all Muslims and on the religion but they never do that when a Christian person does something.
Karen in GA
Am I going to come away from this liking Ben Affleck? Can’t say I disliked him before, but I felt a strangely aggressive “meh” about him.
In other news, I bought a kennel today for Iggy to use as a bathroom while he recovers from his heartworm treatment. 6’x10′, 6′ high. Because he goes nuts when he sees kids and other animals, and there’s just no way to guarantee he’ll stay calm when I walk him. This afternoon I took him outside when I was certain it was safe, only for him to encounter a stray cat and a rabbit. He got excited, and I damn near wanted to cry right there thinking that no matter what I do, Iggy’s gonna die.
So the kennel goes up right outside our door tomorrow, and I got two 6′ tarps to hang on the sides so he can’t see anything when I walk him in there. Because fuck these heartworms already.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anya: Maher is anti-religion in general. He even did a film about it.
Steeplejack
@Anne Laurie:
Who is Bill Kristol’s worthless son-in-law? That last link goes to a useless page: the video/pic has been nuked with “Account has been disabled.”
Karen in GA
@Anya:
Here’s what I don’t get. There are over a billion Muslims in the world. If the religion is all about violence, wouldn’t there be, in the very least, millions of people dead as a result? I mean, non-Muslims are doing pretty well for having to share a planet with so many psychopaths.
Unless maybe, just maybe, Muslims are no more inherently murderous than any other group?
Splitting Image
@Steeplejack:
Matthew Continetti, editor of the Washington Free Beacon.
Howard Beale IV
Maher and bitch Sam Harris have no idea what it is to be a Muslim. Period. Harris has taken the literal interpretation of the Koran to a rather profitable platform.
Mike J
@Splitting Image: Free bacon? I want free bacon!
Steeplejack
@Splitting Image:
Thanks. Too lazy to look it up on the Google.
Mike J
@Howard Beale IV:
I read a buncha people on imgur earlier today pissed off because Neil deGrasse Tyson didn’t want to be listed as an atheist on wikipedia. He (like I) prefers agnostic (“not knowing”, as opposed to “no god”.)
Fanatics of every stripe are assholes.
WaterGirl
@Karen in GA: I saw a 9 pound baby version of Iggy at the vet today. What a cutie, but what a handful. This little guy had some serious energy!
A few years ago, I had to keep my cocker spaniel quiet and in a kennel for 8 weeks after surgery to his spine. That felt like a very LONG time, so I feel for you. Both of you. But you’ll get through it.
The best thing you can have is a willful dog if they are going through a health issue. Pardon me if I say that I think Iggy has that in spades? :-)
Bobby B.
“People: they’re the worst!”-J Seinfeld
Anne Laurie
@Steeplejack: Matthew Continetti, editor of the Free Beacon, because Wingnut Welfare. I assume the pulled video was the same one I posted here; just wanted an example of the “rah rah, we converted Mr Uber-Liberal!!!” trope that MC’s words indicate.
ETA: Splitting Image beat me to it!
Howard Beale IV
@Mike J: I would have loved to have Idries Shah t have been around when Sam Harris was going around and slamming Islam-he would have filleted him six ways from Sunday.
Countervail
Let’s put it this way, I’ve never heard a non-Muslim religious scholar promote the idea that Islam is either progressive or inherently peaceful. I’ve heard many Muslim religious scholars argue this, many non-Muslim, non-scholars argue this (like Affleck and the other panelists) but not the other way around. Islam is inherently different than other Abrahamic religions yet in a spirit of diversity we want to pretend it’s not. There are many progressive, peaceful practitioners of the religion, but ironically (or maybe not so) mostly in secular counties that reject the fundamentalist aspect of Islam. Maher and Harris are trying to have honest conversations about our assumption that Islam, simply as a religion, is inherently peaceful and about development of the individual.
Adam
Considering the shit that Maher has said about women, he doesn’t get the right to bitch about how others treat them.
Howard Beale IV
@Countervail: But yet we ignore Christianity’s most active recent internecine actions in Northern Ireland, and we suppress our own domestic fights between the Protestant and the Catholics that do not involve politics.
ShadeTail
@Omnes Omnibus: True, as far as it goes. But Maher has said many times, quite clearly and on the record, that he considers Islam the worst of the bunch. Also, he always relies on the worst possible stereotypes when he talks about it, while most other religions, particularly Christianity, usually get a far more measured and fair treatment from him.
Howard Beale IV
@Mike J: Ya got that right. The ones who belong to the ‘The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it’ are the worst of the lot, because they don’t know what they signed up for.
guachi
@Mike J:
What is Tyson’s complaint? Agnostic is about knowledge. Atheism is about belief. I’m fairly certain Tyson’s given it some thought as to whether he believes a god (any god) exists or not.
Saying you’re an agnostic but not an atheist is like saying you’re an American but not a woman. The two aren’t mutually exclusive states of being.
Anne Laurie
@Countervail:
Nah, it’s just younger than the other two (said the animist, serenely). As many scholars have pointed out, neither the Jews nor the Christians of their separate similar eras were famed for their tolerance or peaceful practices. Today’s Muslims, good and bad, have an infinitely more sophisticated global audience, but that’s the advantage/disadvantage of being the baby of the family!
TooManyJens
@Countervail: Reza Aslan had a good take on this question of whether Islam is inherently peaceful or inherently violent. (Spoiler alert: neither)
Which just goes to show that fundamentalism can be dangerous. That’s true, but it’s not the argument Harris and Maher are making.
Howard Beale IV
@Countervail: Maher and Harris would be wise to pay attention to the muftis who say that entities like the Islamic State are not Islamic, rather than believing their own self-fulfilling beliefs. For as much shit as Maher gives the religious Christian right, you would think the least he could do is cut Islam the same slack.
Here’s Maher’s world view in a nutshell: Christian whackjobs-mock ’em. Islamic whackjobs-kill ’em.
Mnemosyne
@Countervail:
How many Christian scholars promote the idea that Hinduism is progressive or inherently peaceful? Or Buddhism? Or, really, any religion other than Christianity?
Sorry, but getting your opinions on Islam from non-Muslim religious scholars is a pretty fucking stupid thing to do. It makes about as much sense as getting your opinions about Christianity from Muslim or Hindu scholars and assuming it’s the absolute truth about Christianity.
Anne Laurie
@guachi:
Yes, and he’s decided he doesn’t know enough to make a sound decision — to “believe” that there is/isn’t a religious property within the universe. Or at least that’s how I understand the difference between “agnostic” and “atheist”. The militantly Atheist want to claim Tyson for their sect; he doesn’t believe he belongs with them.
PopeRatzy
I must have watched a totally different show from the rest of you. At no point did either argue that it was Islam, they argued that within the religion there are 3 distinct groups that favor oppression of groups like women and LBGT. Those being the Jihadis, Islamists and Conservatives. The point Maher tried to make before Affleck lost his shit was that liberals worry too much about local religious assholes and not enough about the real religious assholes. That the religious assholes contained in those 3 subgroups of Islam are a whole lot worse than the religious assholes of the west.
Given the comments here, Maher was correct
Phaedrus
Sam & Bill’s argument, and one I agree with, is that ISIS is a legitimate interpretation of the Koran – and saying things like “It’s not Islam” (as our president said) is simply nonsensical. Saying Isis isn’t Islamic is like saying 90% of Catholics aren’t Catholic because they practice birth control – or pretending the Catholicism doesn’t really preach against contraception because most “Catholics” can see through that bullshit.
Everyone understands that nice people can be Muslim, and most Muslims are nice people (Both Sam and Bill have said this). But to be nice and be Muslim you have to reject a bunch of stuff in the Koran. Just like nice Christians don’t burn witches any more. There are still Christians that kill witches, and their lunacy is completely backed by scripture. The ones that don’t burn witches are actually less Christian, if we want to measure it by how closely they hold to the founding documents.
That’s the point that’s being made – the “nice” Muslims are just the ones that refuse to do all the nasty crap their god says they can/should (same with Christians).
ShadeTail
@Howard Beale IV:
Also, pretend all Muslims are nutjobs, and admit that many Christians aren’t.
Mnemosyne
@guachi:
I’m guessing that Tyson’s complaint is that there’s no scientific way to prove there’s no God, so he’s not an atheist. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and all that.
Mnemosyne
@PopeRatzy:
The women of Texas would like a word with you. But I guess Maher doesn’t think women’s healthcare is important since it doesn’t affect him personally. He’ll never have to get an abortion, so why should he give a shit if religious assholes in the United States are preventing women from getting them?
Yatsuno
@Countervail: Take out every time you mention Muslim or Islam. Replace with Christian or Christianity. Read again. Then feel free to palm face until the stupid leaks out.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Howard Beale IV: Maher’s also anti-vax curious. He’s not a rational thinker about a lot of things, including Islam.
We can’t stand to watch him for more than a few minues most times he’s on – he’s too often saying something stupid about religion or women or …
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack
@Countervail:
You seem to be saying, well, nothing. Muslims are often progressive and peaceful except when they are fundamentalist. Couldn’t the same be said of Christianity, or any religion? Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world (by population), with about 205 million Muslims (88% of the population), followed by Pakistan (178 million, 96%), India (177 million, 15%), Bangladesh (145 million, 90%) and Nigeria (76 million, 48%). Each of those countries has problems, but none of them is in the grip of a fundamentalist Islamic regime presenting a dire threat to the world. You have to go down to Iran at No. 6, still a relatively secular country, to find a “fundamentalist” regime, or Saudi Arabia at No. 16 to find the real crazy. Oh, and Saudia Arabia? One of our closest allies. Go figure.
You might as well rank the U.S. states along these lines: “There are many progressive, peaceful practioners of Christianity, but ironically (or maybe not so) mostly in secular states that reject the fundamentalist aspect of Christianity.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Yatsuno:
May take a while, I’ll go make a up of tea.
scav
@Mnemosyne: Yep, it’s the local extremists that will actually cause more American deaths, illness and suffering and have the greater capacity to pervert our educational, health and legal systems to their own ends than those other extremists on the other side of the planet. They just do it slower, and also invoke cost-cutting benefits. And, charmingly, agitate for their control of all the levers, all the buttons, all the time, under the banner of religious freedom.
Omnes Omnibus
Completely OT: Local PBS just replayed the first episode of “Sherlock” (A Study in Pink).
@guachi: Just a bit of a note, agnostics and atheists are different entities. It is why that there are words for each. If Tyson chooses one label and rejects the other, that choice should be rejected. I am agnostic. I don’t believe. But I am not an atheist because I don’t resume to know.
Villago Delenda Est
@Steeplejack:
These states do NOT include those who were members of the Confederacy.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m an apathetic agnostic who leans atheist; I don’t know, I don’t care, and I’m highly skeptical of the entire concept.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus:
Did you know and stopped? I has conffused
Villago Delenda Est
@BillinGlendaleCA: Think the p got swallowed by FYWP. Or keystroke missed, and spell check didn’t find.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Villago Delenda Est: Omnes knows i’m just SillyBilly.
scav
@Villago Delenda Est: I think there’s an errant j in the effort too. autocorrect can go so very very wrong.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think you mean “that choice should not be rejected”?
kc
@Anne Laurie:
Those crazy kids, with their stonings and beheadings and letting schoolgirls burn alive.
Just wait until they get old enough to drive.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: My mom is a strong believer and she is otherwise one of the most sensible people I have ever met. If it works for her, who knows? I sure as hell don’t. I also don’t care what religion or style of lack of religion to which one adheres; I just don’t want one to be an asshole about it..
James E Powell
I can’t defend religion or religious people. It’s all so transparently bullshit.
That said, before we reach conclusions about the relationship between Islam and the Koran and the behavior of certain people in certain regions of the earth, we might consider how American Christians would be behaving if the land where they lived had been successively invaded & occupied by hostile foreign powers for however many years. While their own putative governments mostly oppressed them and sucked up to the foreign occupiers.
That kind of history produces a lot of violence. Islam is the just the narrative that is most handy for organizing an alternative.
Omnes Omnibus
@BillinGlendaleCA: @Steeplejack: Fuck. My typing has been better on occasion. I usually reread before submitting. Hell, I found and fixed a typo in this very commmmmmment.
TooManyJens
@James E Powell: Well said.
Anya
@Phaedrus: Well, you’re wrong. Muslims lived side by side with Christins and Jews for centuries and no one was slaughtering them. ISIS is a collection of psychopaths who were hardened by all the blood shed. Some of them were part of the Ba’ath Party. They’re not true representation of Islam or Islamic teachings. The same way that David Koresh was not a true representative of Christianity.
Mnemosyne
@kc:
Yes, it’s much more morally superior to beat your kids to death. Oh, wait, that doesn’t count, because Christians did it for religious reasons.
Omnes Omnibus
@scav: Where is the errant “j?”
Steeplejack
I am listening to Pharoah Sanders. “Astral Traveling.”
Was actually listening to “Elevation,” but you can’t handle the truth.
Utah ahead of UCLA 27-21 with about six minutes to go. A day of upsets, potential and realized.
ETA: Pedantic detail removed.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not judging. Just hoping you meant what I thought you said rather than what you actually said.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: Bruin O-line didn’t show up at the Rose Bowl.
Tie game with extra point to kick.
TooManyJens
Oh, and since this is an open thread:
Activists for justice in Mike Brown’s shooting staged an absolutely beautiful demonstration tonight at the St. Louis Symphony.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_7ErkQFduQ
Yatsuno
@Phaedrus:
Please cite your scholarly work that leads you to such a conclusion. While you’re at it, feel free to show me the work of Maher & Harris that supports the same thing. I’ll wait.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Yeah, I meant to type what you said not what I actually typed. Tyson gets to choose the camp in which he belongs. If he calls himself an agnostic, an agnostic he is. End of discussion.
Amir Khalid
I’m not weighing in. I’m kind of glad, and kind of sorry, that I didn’t want to watch the video to the end. I’m not the most devout Muslim in the world. But there’s a good chance I might not have been able to stay calm after watching Maher and Harris denounce not just Muslims as a group, which is itself wrong, but Islam itself.
Steeplejack
And UCLA goes on top 28-27 with 4:50 to go.
Utah cheerleaders appear to be wearing bar-girl dresses (and I mean that in the best possible way).
scav
@Omnes Omnibus: Second reject.
Steeplejack
Dang. Utah on the move and looking strong.
trollhattan
Calendar: “October?” v. Thermometer: “August!”
Aaand, thermometer wins, gawdamnitttt. 96 today and California drought year 4 officially began on the 1st. Yay, us.
Anybody who hasn’t figured out yet that Maher is a Libertariocrat hasn’t been paying sufficient attention.
Omnes Omnibus
@scav: Only one “j” there; only one “j” needed. In any case, can we perhaps direct this away from typos in one of my comments and back towards the topic?
Omnes Omnibus
@trollhattan:
He has said it on many occasions.
Steeplejack
UCLA cheerleaders are Whitey-McWhitington. A mild surprise.
Steeplejack
Utah angling for an upset. At worst they run out the clock and kick a field goal.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: How many games are you watching at a time?
kc
@Mnemosyne:
I didn’t say that. You did.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: There’s usually one or two Asians.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s petered out to one now. But I’m still buzzed from earlier. And I just killed a bottle of Apothic Red.
Okay, Utah gets the field goal, up 30-28. Back to UCLA with 34 seconds to go. Fail, Bruins, fail!
Steeplejack
@BillinGlendaleCA:
That’s what I thought. Must have been at the other end of the line.
ETA: And I meant W-McW like all blondes. Not even any brunettes. Sheesh.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: The TV folk usually focus on the blonds. I like the Asians.
Ruckus
Just found another goodie.
This time from NC
Omnes Omnibus
@kc: You may just want to take a step back and read through everything before getting pissy. Just saying.
kc
@Omnes Omnibus:
Take your own advice. And spare me your sanctimony from here on out, please.
James E Powell
@Ruckus:
The Republican will still get re-elected (he currently has a double-digit lead) because he hates the right people.
kc
On a lighter note, TCM is now showing a movie called “Door to Door Maniac,” starring Johnny Cash.
Steeplejack
@kc:
Yeah, no. I’m too emotionally fragile to click on that. And Roy Orbison is coming up next in The Fastest Guitar Alive. :: Shudder ::
Maybe it’s time to catch up on Gotham or something else “on demand.”
Radio One
They’re sort of conflating religion with political conservatism, as if conservatism wouldn’t exist in these countries if Islam also didn’t exist. Which is a load of crap, because conservatives are opportunists who basically always adhere to whatever theology/philosophy is most traditional/hiearchical in any particular culture. Atheist, rather than Islamic, middle eastern countries could have in theory fostered large Ayn Rand cults because of political conservatives.
charluckles
God told me to invade Iraq.
scav
@Omnes Omnibus: So, a) you reject and don’t respect his rejection? ok. b) why’d you ask if you don’t care to discuss the topic? but again, everything is totally under your control.
moderateindy
I have in the past worked with a ton of Muslims both here, and abroad, and whether or not Islam is inherently violent or not, it is impossible to argue that at the current time, compared to the other major religions muslims produce much more violence in the name of their religion.
In the US, take out the African American element, which is extremely liberal by world standards, and the bulk of Muslims in this country (what you would consider mainstream) are very close in attitude to the far right wing Xtians. In the middle east, and Indonesia the mainstream muslim is way far more fundy than Muslims are here. It would be akin to how moderates in American politics are way to the right of what would be a conservative in most of Europe.
If you have alot of conversations with the average muslim in the US you would be appalled at their attitudes towards women and gays, not to mention where they stand on the justifications for violent jihad and things like the type of fatwas issued against someone that has insulted the Prophet. It is as radical as the most right wing nut job Christians. That of course doesn’t make them any more violent than the average person, it simply makes them more tolerant of violence done by others, in their religion.
We talk all the time about how often the right uses false equivalencies, be careful we don’t do the same in the name of tolerance.
Debbie(aussie)
Has anybody heard from, or been in contact with Violet today. There is concern, nay worry from a fellow suffer, Here down under also too. Deb
Getting thru each day is a challenge, the nights are worse. I send my love and point out
that you are so very much an important part of this community.
kc
@Debbie(aussie):
I went & found the thread from the other day. I hope Violet is hanging in there & will check in soon. Violet, we need you here!
Amir Khalid
@moderateindy:
You seem like the sort who would condescendingly tell me I was one of the Good Ones.
Chris
@Anya:
What would be nice would be if it worked both ways just when talking about Muslims. That is to say, if every crime committed by a Muslim ever is to be racked up as counting against all of them, it’d be nice to have a similar tally sheet for the good they do.
I’ve said this before, but there is something epically fucked up and blatantly bigoted about a worldview that maintains that ISIS somehow proves something about Islam, but that the Kurdish militias taking in Christians and Yazidis and that we expect to do all the fighting for us… don’t? WTF religion do they imagine these people are practicing? Or that the Taliban prove something about Islam, but that the Northern Alliance that was fighting them long before we gave a shit don’t. Or that Muslims dancing in the streets after 9/11 prove something about Islam, but those that held candlelight vigils for the same event don’t. Or that the European Muslims joining ISIS or attacking synagogues prove something about Islam, but those rallying in Paris to protest these things don’t. Or that the Muslim who planted the bomb in Time Square somehow proves something about Islam, but the Muslim who was the first to call in the threat doesn’t.
Chris
@Howard Beale IV:
It’s always fascinated me about Sam Harris that his routine depends on accepting that the most violent, bigoted, puritanical branch of a religion must be the True and only valid one – he, the 700 Club and Saudi religious police are completely on the same page there. What people call “moderates” come in for just as much of a drubbing in his tracts as the violent psychos – ostensibly because they “provide cover for the extremists” (how the fuck do they do that when they’re usually fighting it a LOT more directly than he ever did, especially in the case of anti-jihad Muslims?) but more honestly, simply because they don’t fit into his script.
I look at the increasing number of churches that ordain women or allow gay marriage and I’m happy, not because it’s my religion, but because the more people and institutions are okay with that, the better society is for women, homosexuals, etc. People like Sam Harris see the same thing and go bonkers, because how DARE Those People fail to display the proper degree of intolerance.
Skippy-san
I hear what you are saying, and with 1.5 Billion Muslims in the world-we have to find a way to live together. But there is a part of what Maher is saying that resonates with me. Mohammed was a worthless thug-and not worthy of veneration and the religions based on his life are truly apostate. Perhaps Affleck’s appeal would have more weight if so called “Islamic” governments would actually speak out strongly against ISIS and keep their own wackos in line. But they don’t.
Just because you don’t agree with Maher- does not mean he’s 100% wrong. He’s not and I’m glad he has the courage to speak out. They need to take of the goddamned hijabs and join the 21’st century.
Chris
@Countervail:
I, too, am genuinely curious how you think this makes Islam any different from Christianity or any other religion.
I know Christian fundamentalists love to claim that all the Western tolerance and secularism that had to be forced down their throats by secularists of all stripes is somehow a credit to them or to Christianity, but that doesn’t actually make it so.
Amir Khalid
@Skippy-san:
What you’re saying is that Maher’s and Harris’ bigotry resonates with yours.
Chris
@PopeRatzy:
We know. That’s the problem. The fact that you and they define the Middle Eastern, Muslim ones as the “real” assholes illustrates it nicely.
Based on what? Worse for who?
A few years ago, the Christian run government of Uganda tried to pass what was correctly called a “kill the gays bill” in the media (under intense international pressure, it was eventually demoted to an “imprison the gays for life bill”), the campaign for which was backed to the hilt – according to some, even stirred up in the first place – by American evangelists and their missionary pals. What, other than a lunatic sense of Islamic Exceptionalism, makes the Wahabbi financiers in Saudi Arabia and their ISIS clients “a whole lot worse” than those Western evangelists? What makes them “worse” than Pat Robertson, with his cozy financial and ideological ties to Charles Taylor, and before that, Mobutu Sese Seko, and before that, Rios Montt? Speaking of Montt, what makes them “worse” than the death squads that, within living memory, used to exist in virtually every country south of the border, almost all of them claiming allegiance to a conservative ideology of which Christianity (usually Catholicism) was a key part – and all of which were enthusiastically supported (and by “supported” I’m talking guns, money, training) by Westerners who identified them as “the moral equivalent of our founding fathers?” By what algorithm should Osama Bin Laden be considered “worse” than Oliver North, who helped arrange all that and not only isn’t sleeping with the fishes but was actually exonerated and able to run for office and get his own show on Fox News in our ever so civilized West? Did North not get enough people killed (estimated death toll from the contra war, around 40,000)? Was he and were his superiors not enough of a pack of religious nuts (his public persona and theirs strongly suggest otherwise) to qualify?
You want to denounce what all kinds of fuckwads in the Islamic world are doing, be my guest. You won’t find a lot of critics in liberal circles if that’s all you’re doing – as I recall, the only people in Washington agitating against the Taliban before 9/11/2001 were feminist groups. There’s plenty of history there. The whole notion of some kind of Islamic Exceptionalism according to which theirs are somehow “the real assholes” compared to ours? Sorry, but it’s bullshit. Theirs are not crazier than ours. Theirs are not particularly more common than ours. Theirs don’t have less blood on their hands than ours. Theirs may be a bigger enemy from a national security POV, if you’re a Westerner – that, I won’t argue with, the bulk of Christian intolerance’s victims is in places like Africa and Latin America – but they are not “worse” in any objective sense. (That is not, mind you, in any way a compliment).
Keith G
Human beings are flawed, and in large groups can be really awful, tribal, and harmful to others. The religions formed by humans tend to be quite problematic and rife with all kinds of foundational motivations for oppression and abuse. Is there a chance that there are religions that are in either formulation or in practice more negative than others?
Of course. That would make sense in the real world.
But what are the metrics? I see little above from a collection of whiners and complainers (on both sides) to suggest a rational approach to this topic. It seems possible that a rubric can be constructed that is able to consider empirical data that considers both the construction of a set of religious beliefs and how those beliefs/principles are used by those said to be adherents. Possible, but maybe not very easy.
It would be imperfect, but might be more illustrative than the gibber-jabber above.
My own sense, imperfect as it is, is that because religions are socially agreed upon tools which are used to preserve those things (social relationships, cultural concepts) that are highly valued, we might be able to judge whether the current manifestation of a religion is being a positive force right now. I tend not to care a great deal what some Pope or cleric did in AD 1300.
A question arises though: How to deal with sectarianism and splinter groups. How much can the whole be judged by the actions of a few? How should the whole be evaluated in it’s action/inaction to confront the abuses done by a few in the name of the whole?
Finally, how should the lack of an Islamic hierarchy play into an evaluation? In Catholicism, for one example, we can go right to the edicts coming out of the Vatican for data used in evaluation.
Just some thoughts as I waited the caffeine to kick in. Now it’s off to work.
satby
@Chris: Well done! I wish more people understood this.
Matt McIrvin
@moderateindy: And the Muslims I’ve known well were mostly liberals, with social attitudes not much different from any fairly secular Westerner.
Now, they weren’t terribly devout/observant Muslims.
And most of the Christians I know with liberal attitudes aren’t terribly devout/observant Christians. Is the fraction of American Christians with hardcore regressive sexual and cultural attitudes lower? Maybe, probably, but ask a hundred years ago and you’d get a different answer. These things change rapidly in response to political and social conditions.
The New Atheists probably wouldn’t disagree; their opposition is to any kind of religion, and they just regard Islam as an extreme case. But they’re obsessed with philosophical belief in God as the root of the problem, when really it’s a side issue being used to justify a cultural/political conservatism.
Patricia Kayden
Maher and Harris don’t seem to understand that there are millions of Muslims in America who are in no way, shape or form terrorists or terrorist-supporters. My brother-in-law’s family is Muslim and they are the most “normal” people I know. It’s the Christianists who think it’s okay to kill abortion doctors who scare me, not the Muslims going about their daily lives.
cokane
except Maher and Harris are the only ones who offered substantive facts in that debate.
there’s definitely a tendency towards illiberal views in Muslim countries. As Maher and Harris pointed out — jihadists might be small, but the percentage of Muslims that would punish apostates is high. The percentage that would put a second class status on women is high.
There’s no Christian, Jewish or Hindu states that are equivalent. But don’t dare point this out! Otherwise you’re a bigot.
Bjacques
It’s too late. A month ago my conservative and Christian friends on FB were cheering Maher on for a previous anti-Islam rant. I reminded them that he is not their griend, and will resume kicking them when he gets bored with bashing Islam. I also reminded them of the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Ku Klux Klan, who once had free rein for their savagery in the name of Jesus.
cokane
There’s so much misrepresentation and outright lies in your post Anne, I’d just like to add. Neither Maher nor Harris said that ISIS is the true heart of Islam. They have merely argued that no one can say that ISIS is not true Islam, because faith-based arguments have no grounding. Furthermore, Harris’s point is that there’s a whole lot of bad shit going on in Muslim states and Muslim thought that isn’t as bad as ISIS or terrorism, but is still really really fucking bad.
Dick Cheney is also a Methodist.
Figs
Harris DID argue that jihadis are the true heart of Islam. He said that Islam is arranged in concentric circles, with jihad at its center. The implication is so clear it barely counts as an implication.
Marc
@moderateindy:
According to CAIR, 85% of Muslims voted for Obama in 2012 – down slightly from 89% in 2008. (Some pre-election polls put Muslim support for Obama at around 70%. If that were true, that would still make Muslims one of the most liberal voting blocs in the country, along with Jewish and LGBT voters.) Only about a quarter of of American Muslims are African American; the majority are from South Asia or the Middle East. They still voted overwhelmingly for Obama.
Maybe you should try it sometime.
cokane
@Figs: no. His argument was that problematic Muslims were arranged with the hardcore ISIS types in the middle, then the non violent jiahdis, then the conservatives. The fact that his critics need to lie just proves Harris’ point that to make any critiques is to be lazily labeled an Islamophobe.
This whole thing is like debating with neoconservatives who have no hesitation in pulling out the anti-Semitism cudgel in any debate about Israel.
Omnes Omnibus
@scav: Derp on my part. Yes, the second “reject,” should have been “respect.” When I looked back up at it I read for spelling not for context. As i said, derp.
Marc
@cokane:
Yes, Uganda would never pass legislation to imprison gays. India would never elect a Hindu nationalist as their prime minister. And Israel would never put a second class status on Arabs in their country – or the territories they occupy.
A Humble Lurker
@cokane:
Sounds like you’re arguing semantics to me. At best.
Figs
@cokane: And the clear implication of “in the middle” is that those groups are somehow more purely Islamic than the others. If you say you don’t see this in his argument you’re just being disingenuous.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Chris: Well said.
Some of our friends here who say that “Islam is worse” and the like should review the easily obtainable information about the Lord’s Resistance Army and the “Anti-Balaka” and similar groups leading atrocities in Africa.
Just because we don’t hear about it much, doesn’t mean that some “Christians” aren’t easily just as much a threat to the peace and security of millions as some “Muslims”.
These conflicts are almost never just about religion. Religion is a flag for the leaders to use to get supporters riled up (just as Flag Burning often is in the US). Using religion as a way to put people in “good” and “bad” boxes is just as stupid and counter-productive as any other form of discrimination. It can be deadly no matter what the set of boxes is.
Some atheists express really kooky beliefs. Being right (from our point of view) about whether or not there is a “God” sitting on a cloud watching us all the time does not mean they deserve support. Sam Harris apparently said:
Um, no. I reject that.
Fundamentalist atheists are just as stupid as any other fundamentalism. Couching such arguments in seemingly air-tight “logic” fails no matter what the fundamentalism is.
My $0.02.
[edit:] some mismatched tags.
Cheers,
Scott.
cokane
@Figs: no it isn’t. You’re inventing a straw man. It’s in the “middle” of the problem. Harris nor Maher give a fuck about “pure Islam” because to them, it’s all a bunch of make believe. They are not interested in defining what is true Islam. You’re either incapable of understanding this point or deliberately misreading it so you can dismiss them as bigots.
No one can say what the fuck True Islam is. A guy from ISIS, were he kind enough to sit down for an interview would say he holds the true view of Islam. And he would loudly denounce a fellow moderate Muslim who didn’t cover up his wife and a bunch of other shit as not being a true Muslim. A moderate Muslim would say just the opposite, clearly. Maher and Harris would say that there’s no authority to say who is right, because it’s just some shit that someone made up.
The concentric circles analogy was used to point out — a point Anne entirely missed — that ISIS is only a small portion of a greater illiberalism that’s widespread in Muslim thought today. ISIS fighters are the worst. But so is a majority public opinion in some countries that leaving the religion or slandering the religion deserves a death sentence.
It appears that maybe their arguments are a bit above what some people are willing or capable of thinking about here.
cokane
@Marc: That’s a fair counterargument and I overstated my case on that point, though I think your India example is absurd. I also think that isolated incidents and beliefs in Uganda are not on par with systematic government rules across numerous Muslim states — even the more liberal ones — as well as widespread views held by Muslims both in the Middle East and even those who grew up in Europe. It’s a problem of scope. The scope of religious-based illiberalism is pretty strong among one religion today.
Marc
A minority of Christians – about 1/4 in the US – accept a literal interpretation of the Bible. This is heresy for Catholics, for instance. The vast majority of Muslims accept a literal interpretation of the Koran (90% in Nigeria, for example). The overlap is significant, but Islam is in general far more conservative – and far more hostile to things like womens right, gay rights, and even evolution – than Christians are. If you’re interested in the numbers, see
http://www.pewforum.org/2012/08/09/the-worlds-muslims-unity-and-diversity-executive-summary/
This doesn’t make all Muslims the equivalent of the worst fanatics, nor does it make them unique in having fanatics. But there is a hell of a lot more conflict between Islam and modernity than there is for Christianity. There is also a lack of hierarchy (e.g. no Pope), which makes it difficult for reformers to change “official” doctrine. It also doesn’t help that the most reactionary forms of Islam come from the Gulf States, and that they’ve used oil money to spread their (formerly small minority) views worldwide.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Yatsuno:
It’s early, and I couldn’t figure out why that rankled so much, and I didn’t want to get into full-on jackass mode for no reason, so…thanks.
Chris
Since my knowledge of Sam Harris predates this entire blowup, I’ll just leave this here:
“It is time we admitted that we are not at war with “terrorism”. We are at war with Islam.” (Sam Harris, 2005)
“The problem isn’t fundamentalism. We often hear this said; these are euphemisms… The only problem with Islamic fundamentalism are the fundamentals of Islam.” (Sam Harris, 2010)
The crowning glory, however, is this:
“The dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.” (Sam Harris. 2006).
Anyone curious to know what Sam Harris considers “the real Islam,” see above. Anyone curious to know just how broad Sam Harris’ definition of “problematic Muslims” is, see above. Anyone curious why so many on the left consider him a balls-to-the-wall bigot and a fucking lunatic, see above and specifically that last paragraph. There is nothing lazy in labeling him an Islamophobe, and the fact that he paints with the same ludicrously broad brush when other religions are involved doesn’t change that.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@trollhattan:
I figured it out about fifteen years ago, and have not paid any attention to him since.
cokane
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/sleepwalking-toward-armageddon
ill take something he just wrote as opposed to something almost a decade old:
Patrick
@Phaedrus:
Can’t you say the same thing about Christians and the bible? Eye for an eye and a number of other nasty things if you want to take it out of context…
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Skippy-san:
The point is that the exact same can be said of christianity and christians…and you and Bill are ignoring that.
Chris
@cokane:
Yeah. Like I said: forget it, Muslims, it doesn’t matter how inoffensively you live, it doesn’t matter if you conform to modern secular values, I will still refuse to consider your interpretation of your own religion valid, and I will continue to blame you for your brethren’s actions.
This invalidates and supersedes my previous approval of the fascist (sic) approach to you and your people… somehow. Because reasons.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Chris: It really is astounding how Harris can’t see the lumberyard in his own eye while he lectures other people about what Islam is “really” like. Introspection – how does it work?
Cheers,
Scott.
bemused
I’ve seen Affleck on Real Time a few times before. It doesn’t matter if I have agreed or disagreed with his views, he just grates on my nerves. His debating skills are lousy. He has difficulty in expressing his opinions coherently and “loses his shit” easily sounding hysterical which really turns me off. Maher does that too so watching the two of them ranting at each other gave me a headache.
I’m not a fan of Affleck as an actor either. Meh.
Mike in NC
@Splitting Image: Nobody could possibly be more worthless than Bill Kristol himself.
Kiwanda
@cokane:
While polling from Muslim states shows a lot of shockingly awful opinions, so does polling from Jewish states. From Wikipedia:
What should we conclude about Judaism from such awful results?
Phaedrus
@Patrick –
Exactly the point I made – so tell me the proper contetxt for witch burning?
Sam and Bill are speaking out against the idea that you can treat these scriptures as “Holy”. Moderates select a portion of the books and claim that THAT is what God really means… but as soon as you accept that any part of these texts represent the mind of God you jump down the rabbit hole. On what authority can you say that the biblical “do unto others” is from God, but “kill a disrepectful child” is not? By presenting any part of it as “from God” you legitimize it all – it’s just a matter of interpretation and personal prediliction after that.
The other point they make is that you can rank these texts on how well they fit into secular society. The Koran and Bible, not so much – Bhuddism more. Talking about whether there are mitigating passages in the text, or whether Bhuddists can be violent is missing the point. The Bible calls for witches to be burned and disrespectful children to be killed, full stop. Patrick, you can “context” your way out of this – but Sam and Bill argue that you don’t have to rely on this dubious practice if you just accept the propert context that the Bible and the Koran are simply ancient documents.
Some other comments have said Isis isn’t the “real” Islam – see the “no true Scotsman” fallacy. Were the inquisitors “real” Christians? They certainly knew their bible :)
Patrick
@Mnemosyne: Uh, no. You can NEVER get your information on a religion from actual practitioners of that religion. They all lie. All of them, without exception. 100%. It is structurally impossible for a person to be religious and a scholar of the religion on which they are a student without this happening, because they were lying to themselves before they lied to you. There are about a half dozen reasons why.
One is that religions enshrine ancient values, and have to reach compromise with modernity. But the structure of the majority of world religions is that they can never admit that they’ve compromised their ancient values for that purpose. So data, history, or scripture that highlights those compromises must be intellectually suppressed. This is probably what is happening when someone shows you a Koran passage about tolerating religious minorities and declares that it settles the debate. That’s not the only passage in the Koran, and any honest reading of it would have to admit that there are also passages which demonize other religions and other religious believers. This isn’t to say that those other passages are the “real” Islam, the tolerant passages exist as well, but the point here is that you cannot trust religious believers to cite to the passages that undermine their theology. They’ve spent a lifetime training themselves to pretend those passages don’t exist- they’re not going to point them out to you.
Another is that major world religions tend to be big tents, which means that they tend to have lots of members who hold disparate views, but all of their members have an interest in pretending that they believe the same things. Religions tend to develop structures so that everyone involved can convince themselves that they have a community of like-minded thinkers, even though they believe different things from the people in the next pew.
Look. Ask a liberal Catholic scholar for the church’s view on family planning. Then find an old Catholic scholar, or read a recently dead one. Or ask a modern Christian theologian what the Bible teaches about slavery, then ask a secular scholar.
Asking a religious scholar what their religion teaches is like asking the parent of a week old baby to objectively evaluate whether the infant is ugly. They may know more about the subject matter than anyone else, but their knowledge is oriented directly away from providing objective answers to questions of that nature.
muddy
@bemused: I know, I was also very concerned about the incivility!!! Tone is the most important thing in these debates. I know I personally would not have lost my patience when others were talking nonsense on topics where they always talk nonsense. It would not seem like any kind of straw or anything, and I would not have been dreading in advance taking up this topic with idiots.,
Most importantly, I would be sure to always be super incisive, witty, and concise whilst maintaining my extreme cool and general charm.
Marc
@cokane:
Modi stands accused of at best turning a blind eye and at worst fomenting anti-Muslim rioting, rapes, and mass murders when he was chief minister of Gujarat, so no, it’s not. The BJP’s rise to power has gone hand in hand with anti-Muslim violence.
A bill that’s passed into law by parliament and signed by the president is not an isolated incident or belief – it’s the very definition of a systematic government rule.
[not the Marc @116, btw]
muddy
@Kiwanda: But Maher had a Pew poll from Egypt! I bet they asked people all over that country about their views, even in the parts with no phone service. Polls are inherently correct as we all know, and I’m sure the respondents all felt they could speak honestly, not that it might be a plot to get them to say something against their gov’t. I mean, Pew poll! Of course people everywhere would respect the sanctity of that and spill their guts to strangers on the phone. Western strangers would never get them into trouble in any way, how silly.
Maher said it was a Pew poll! He said it twice, how much more evidence do you need?
Patrick
@Phaedrus:
Good. As long as your argument is the same for Christians/bible and Muslims/Koran I agree.
bemused
@muddy:
There was incivility? Guess I didn’t notice in all the racket.
Matt McIrvin
@cokane:
Help! Help! I said that Islamist states tended to be regressive and now I’m in bigot jail!
PopeRatzy
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, really, those women in Texas are being forced into marriages, not allowed to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative, sexually mutilated as teens, killed for being the wrong sect of a religion. Yet, you equate the two things as if somehow women in Texas are suffering those same depredations.
You are EXACTLY what Maher was complaining about, you do not give a damn about the women in the conservative Islamic cultures because access to abortion services is a greater crime to you than is the death and mutilation of women in SOME Islamic cultures. To be fair there are other cultures that perform the same mutilations but again, no real froth or foam from western liberals as in the case of abortion restriction.
His point being if you actually cared about the treatment of women you would be even more upset by the treatment of women in conservative Islamic culture, but you are not, you only care about the women of your culture, as easily shown by your comment.
Patrick
I guess I should note that there are two Patricks in this thread. I wrote only the post at 129. I’m sorry for not taking better note of the screen names in the thread before posting as “Patrick” with no qualifiers.
PopeRatzy
@Chris:
Your reading skills are obviously too poor to comprehend that there were CLEARLY delineated subgroups that are assholes and not just “Muslims”. But since that failed to meet your need to rant and lie about what was written and defend your need to allow those cultural asshole to continue their depredations upon women.
Again, Maher point, you do not give a damn about the women in the conservative cultures of Islam. You care about your high and mighty, self-important ability to bloviate. Try standing up for ALL women.
Mnemosyne
@Patrick:
So a Muslim or Hindu scholar will always give a more objective view of Judaism than a Jewish scholar can?
PopeRatzy
@Anya:
Which was Maher’s point, most Muslims are just regular humans, it is the asshole subgroups that are the problem. His other point was that all these western bleeding heart liberals (of which I am one) do not give a second thought to the treatment of women and LBGT within those conservative Muslim subgroups. They lose their shit about abortion in Texas or try to rewrite the meaning of words to mean all Muslims and not those specific subgroups so that they can be culturally sensitive and inclusive. Which makes those types of liberals as stupid and bigoted as any rightwing tea party asshole.
PopeRatzy
@moderateindy:
If anyone had listened to the beginning of that segment, before Affleck went nuts, it was exactly what Maher was saying. Give a shit about what happens locally but if horrific crimes are perpetrated under the guise of religion elsewhere it isn’t nearly as important because we must be inclusive of other cultures and religions.
Mnemosyne
@PopeRatzy:
Yes, good thing Christian teenage girls aren’t being forced into marriage with adults in Texas. Or that they valorize keeping their daughters ignorant of little things like knowing how to read as long as they can keep house.
I think you have your head in the sand when it comes to Christian fundamentalists in your own country living right under your nose. You prefer to point your finger at those people, over there and pretend that shit exactly like that is not going on in your own country, because it’s uncomfortable for you to realize that we actually can’t lord it over other countries and tell ourselves we’re better than they are.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@PopeRatzy: It’s a good thing that Maher and Harris are around to tell us what “real” Muslims and “real” Liberals should be doing, huh. It’s fortunate they have time to lecture us, and them, about purity like that.
Do you happen to have links for their treatises about how pure drug-legalization advocates and pure atheism advocates solved the problem of how to express a specific opinion and not be called out for hypocrisy by critics?
Thanks!!1
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
(Apparently Maher and Harris haven’t heard of No True Scotsman.)
Keith G
@Mnemosyne: That’s not what he said. Don’t play those games where you restate the argument of others and manipulate its meaning.
Mnemosyne
@PopeRatzy:
Ah, the right-wing argument rears its head again: I’m not allowed to worry about women being oppressed in the US as long as women in other countries are being oppressed in even worse ways. I have to sit down and STFU about abortion rights and equal pay in the US if women in other countries can’t drive or are being mutilated, because I have it so fucking good compared to them.
Shut the fuck up, you fucking privileged white middle-class dudebro. Don’t fucking lecture me about what my priorities as a woman should fucking be, and don’t fucking think that your position as a white man means you get to lecture women about what their priorities should be. Your self-righteous lectures are no different at base than the ones we got from Jerry Falwell or the ones we’re getting now from ISIL: you know better what women want and need than women do, so women need to sit down and listen to your wisdom from on high, because you can be objective.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
Then what do you think he said? In your own words.
And, no, I’m not going to accept your usual weaseling of Well, I don’t really have an opinion. If you didn’t have an opinion, you wouldn’t have inserted yourself into the argument.
Chris
@PopeRatzy:
Yep, noticing that women in non-Muslim cultures also have problems is exactly like saying that you don’t care about Muslim women’s problems. Yep, noticing that there is nothing specific to Islam about that is demeaning women (and your meltdown insisting that its Muslim women we should care about and that it’s insulting to bring up other peoples plight isn’t). Boy, I’m glad we cleared that up. There are other cultures that perform the same mutilations? Who? Where? Maybe Bill Maher, Sam Harris and our entire media will devote as much time to talking about them as they do Muslim women someday, but it’s not today.
@PopeRatzy:
Bullshit.
Sam Harris has well over a decade of history on the subject screaming himself hoarse to make it clear that it’s NOT just a few subgroups he has a problem with, but the entire religion, and that the people he finds most sensible on the subject (his words, not mine) are people who don’t give a flying fuck about those Muslim women you’re so piously pretending to care about, but who want them ALL gone at best and dead at worst, male and female, religious nut or moderate. I’ll give Maher a pass on account of not knowing his background as well, but if he sided with Sam, I can’t say much for his wisdom.
cokane
Female genital mutilation is probably the perfect case for what Harris and Maher were talking about it.
The overwhelming majority of communities that do it nowadays are Muslim. There are some Christians and other African religious groups that do it, but its mainly done by Muslims. It’s done pretty much solely because of religious beliefs, though of course this does not mean that every Muslim does it. Plenty of moderate, non-violent Muslims support it. Its practitioners are not always the worst of Muslims (ISIS) but they are part of the broader circles of non-violent jihadist or conservative Muslims. It is gruesome practice that far overshadows abortion restriction in its sexism. And in cultures where it’s practiced, it’s a pretty strong signifier of other sexism and other retrograde ideas — child marriages, apostasy execution, etc. It is practiced in Africa, the Middle East and even in supposedly liberal Muslim countries like Indonesia and Malaysia.
In some Muslim countries, 90 percent or more of women are subjected to this. There is no equivalent to this systematic barbarism in today’s Christian, Jewish or secular world. Plenty of FGM supporters might go on record denouncing ISIS and saying that’s a radical perversion of Islam. But FGM practitioners are not liberals, they are part of the non-violent jihadis or conservative Muslims that Harris was saying are still pretty fucked up.
:[
schrodinger's cat
If Islam is to be defined on the basis of its most crazy adherents why not Christianity or any other religion for that matter. It is obvious that Harris and Maher have never heard of Sufis.
Figs
Sam Harris also devoted a whole chapter of The End of Faith to the moral necessity of torture. He is, let’s say, not a rigorous thinker.
Lurking Canadian
@PopeRatzy: that is just plain not true. As was already pointed out in this thread, from the fall of the USSR right up until September 10, 2001, the only Westerners who gave a shit about the Taliban were feminist groups horrified at the treatment of women in Afghanistan. Those groups were taken about as seriously as left radicals usually are in the US. To say that they were downplaying Taliban policies out of some misguided “tolerance” is utter bullshit. There were people downplaying Taliban policies in those years, but they were mostly conservatives who just plain didn’t give a fucking shit about the women of Afghanistan.
Lurking Canadian
@cokane: it is NOT Muslim, in the sense that you are using it. Unless I have been lied to for many years, the Koran does not say women should have their genitals mutilated. That (like most of the misogyny we associate with Muslim countries) is an element of the local culture that got grafted into “cultural Islam”. It’s not like “not suffering a witch to live”, which is at least in the Book.
Keith G
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I do not get off on Bill Maher’s broad strokes. More often than not, he quickly devolves into a gas bag.
Many people in this world live under the repression and/or threats of violence caused by those who claim an adherence to Islam. Some of the oppressors are small nameless groups, while others are established nation-states. Some of the oppression is as simple as limits to movement and dress all the way through to, and including, genital mutilation. As I alluded to above, it seems that we need to have a way to analyze why these things are happening and how they should be confronted.
Yes, other religions have been used as a justification to do bad things, some still are, but right here right now the winner in that category is Islam. What does that mean? Why is it happening? What can be done about it?
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
Actually, it’s a practice that originated in pre-Muslim times and has persisted despite Islam, not because of it. It is prevalent in specific countries and ethnicities but is not at all common in most predominantly Muslim countries.
Most ethnohistorians agree that the practice originated in ancient Egypt and spread out from there.
PopeRatzy
@Mnemosyne:
I am probably far more familiar with them them than you will ever imagine in your darkest dreams. Yet, as I keep pointing out you obviously do not care about women outside your specific belief system. The fact that there are women being sexually mutilated right now, LBGT being killed right now and any number of literally horrific tortures being committed in the name of religion RIGHT FUCKING NOW, your fear is that in some ill defined future where in christian fundamentalists will visit those depredations upon your local women. Ignoring the fact that only the insane christian fundamentalist even come close to espousing the depredations visited upon women withing the conservative subgroups of Islam RIGHT NOW.
So, where is your righteous anger for those women and LBGT? Where are your liberal values for those people being tortured right fucking now? No, you only care about what might possibly happen to you in some unknowable future point in time. You are what I call a selfish liberal, you don’t actually care unless it can possibly affect you.
Patrick
@Figs:
In his own words:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/in-defense-of-torture_b_8993.html
Keith G
@Mnemosyne: In my reading, he said you cannot count on religious scholars to be the truth tellers of their own religion. Seems to me to be a rather simple argument. You added extra conditions to his argument in your restatement.
That is why I inserted myself into the discussion you two were having.
Chris
@Lurking Canadian:
Yep.
Buildin on this – if American liberals pay more attention to Christian fundamentalist efforts right here in America than elsewhere, there’s a fairly simple reason for it: because their efforts are, in fact, happening right here in America. I am not in any more danger of being killed by a jihadi than by a right wing gun nut – and I am in far, far more danger of seeing the Christian Right impose its vision of morality in America than any kind of sharia law. Whether one is worse is irrelevant: only one is in danger of actually happening in America, in the part of the world where those liberal groups are based and where they can do the most good.
“You spend more time talking about fundies in America than Saudi Arabia so you don’t care about Saudis” is an idiotic fucking non sequitur. You might as well say that people who argued for the ACA in America don’t care about health care problems in Botswana.
schrodinger's cat
Let’s see I can make such spurious arguments about Christianity. Here goes, most of the colonial powers in the last couple of hundred years were majority Christian and so was the country responsible for starting the two World Wars. I wonder what makes Christianity such a violent religion.
Mnemosyne
@PopeRatzy:
Like I said, you’re making the exact same argument that people like Pat Robertson and other Christian conservatives love to make when claiming that women in Western countries should stop agitating for their own rights. How, exactly, are you different than a Christian fundamentalist arguing the same thing? I mean, other than the “rationalist” trappings you gather around yourself.
PopeRatzy
@Mnemosyne:
No, you reading impaired faux liberal, I care about ALL women, not just women in Texas or the US. So if caring about ALL people regardless of country is a conservative value I have yet to see it. What is a conservative value is only caring about what will affect you, in some possible and unknowable future time thus being able to exclude those people affected right this minute. Which is exactly what you are espousing.
When you give a crap about the CURRENT horrific depredations visited upon women & LBGT in other countries THEN you will be espousing true liberal values. Until then stop projecting your failure as a parochial human being upon me.
It is nice how you could start your argument with a nice and stupid Ad Hominem. Well done.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
My argument is that you can’t count on scholars of other religious traditions to be the truth tellers about opposing religions, either. A Christian scholar talking about Islam can’t be assumed to be a truth teller any more than a Muslim scholar talking about Judaism can be assumed to be a truth teller. You have to evaluate what the person is saying, not just whether they oppose the religion they’re supposedly telling the truth about.
Sam Harris has a clear and obvious anti-Islam agenda that he’s been extremely vocal about for a couple of decades now, so people should not rely on him for their information about Islam any more than they should rely on the words of an Islamic scholar who claims that Jews really do use the blood of children in their rituals.
Shorter me: all religious scholars have an agenda, and you need to examine that agenda before you accept their statements as true.
PopeRatzy
@Lurking Canadian:
I can’t disagree, but just read the threads here, women not having access to abortion in Texas is a greater threat to women than forced sexual mutilation and murder going on *over there* right now. Many liberals are now so concerned about possible futures here that they no longer care for what is happening now as long as what is happening is not local. This is a failure by those liberals. They are assuming the cultural equivalent of the isolationist conservatives.
I don’t get how you can claim to be liberal and not care about the treatment of women and LBGT in those conservative Muslim cultures. I also don’t get how some here cannot differentiate the conservative Muslims from the more moderate and even liberal Muslims *over there* but can delineate to a gnats ass the differentiation within the US/NA cultures.
sherparick
@James Hare: No, he is quite serious and it tracks with his criticism of Conservative Fundamentalists and Catholics (who, if they had their druthers would not mind lighting a few us up on a nice stack of kindling, the traditional punishment for heretics and infidels). There is distinction here, which I think Ben Affleck was trying to get at: Attack the bad ideas, shame the fundamentalists for their intolerance when in power (whether Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, or Egypt), but defend the individual Muslim who goes about his everyday life with the traditional tolerance of that faith for most of its 1400 years. Maher and Harris instead feed the meme of “Islam and Sharia as the new “Communism,” where a fifth column of immigrants is infilitrating society to take it over and impose the world wide Caliphate.
Mnemosyne
@PopeRatzy:
Ah, yes, the old I care about everyone equally! dodge. It’s a great excuse for not giving a shit about what’s going on under your own nose — it’s not that you don’t care, it’s that people in other countries need your vast experience and wisdom more. You, the Great White Hope, can fix them, unlike those ungrateful bitches you have to deal with in your own country.
I know, it’s so weird that people would care more about things that actually affect their local community than about abstract masses overseas. It’s selfish for me to donate to my local food pantry when people are starving in Africa!
I know, I should stop giving a shit about transgender women murdered right here in the US of A as long as LGBT people are suffering somewhere else. It’s so conservative of me to want Mia Henderson and Kandy Hall’s murderer(s) to be brought to justice here in the US rather than saying that their murders are inconsequential compared to what’s happening to transgender women overseas.
PopeRatzy
@Chris:
Maher point was that those depredations are NOW in those conservative Muslim societies and the response from the basic white North American liberal is to point to things that can probably only happen in a specific subset of areas within our country(s) and claim those to be the threat. Thus not having to concern themselves with actual liberal beliefs that humans, regardless of origin, are important. They take the attitude of “I can’t do anything so fuck it, I’ll worry about me and mine”.
Given how well the current response of Drones & Bombs for Peace is working maybe liberals need to get really pissed and use a bit more forceful tactics than hand wringing and writing sternly worded letters of protest.
Patrick
@PopeRatzy:
And what do you suggest?
PopeRatzy
@Mnemosyne:
Feel free to point out ANY dodge, the fact you can’t read simple English and can only present strawman arguments based upon your own faulty reading is in no way my fault.
Tell you what, when you show you care about the treatment of Women and LBGT in all cultures you can call yourself a Liberal, until then you are just a parochial, shallow and selfish faux liberal.
In the mean time feel good about how you twist plain simple English words into strawmen so you can make your parochial, shallow and selfish arguments.
Keith G
@Mnemosyne: I don’t disagree with the shorter you.
Chris
@PopeRatzy:
If that’s his argument, then Maher is full of shit, repeating an argument contradicted by the actual history of liberal groups in the U.S. in re the Taliban and co, especially before 9/11 put them pn the radar, and specifically an argument that in the last fifteen years has become a trademark of right wingers trying to either cast their pet wars in humanitarian terms, or dismiss the claims of women’s rights advocates as silly First World Problems. And Affleck was entirely justified in losing his shit.
Betty Cracker
@Lurking Canadian:
That is absolutely true. I’m old enough to remember Reagan lionizing the people who would eventually become the Taliban as “freedom fighters” when they were warring with the Soviets.
That said, I don’t think Maher is 100% wrong when he says there are Western liberals who downplay violence and oppression perpetrated by Muslims. He’s just wrong about the liberals’ motives and wrong about the role religion plays in inspiring the berzerkers’ violence and oppression, IMO.
Obviously, people are capable of committing all manner of ghastly deeds in pursuit of power, and they’ll find all manner of justifications for the horrors they perpetrate. Sometimes it’s religion. Sometimes it’s ideology. Sometimes it’s nationalism. But gaining power over others is always at the root of it.
And somewhat on topic, I can sympathize with Muslims who resent being put in the same box as ISIS because, as an atheist, I resent being placed on the same shelf as Harris, Maher, Dawkins, et al. I’m not saying ISIS = Harris, obviously, but I want no part of the most prominent members of my non-faith’s reductive bullshit and sexism, and they damn sure don’t speak for me.
Patrick
@Mnemosyne:
You wrote, “My argument is that you can’t count on scholars of other religious traditions to be the truth tellers about opposing religions, either. ”
You originally wrote, “Sorry, but getting your opinions on Islam from non-Muslim religious scholars is a pretty fucking stupid thing to do.”
Can I take you as conceding the issue?
My views, in short- get your views on a religion from someone far enough away from it to be objective. Ideally, you want secular scholarship. A “religion” is an amorphous cultural and social concept with poorly defined borders. I don’t think there’s a one true Islam that we can precisely define. But I do think that there are a lot of true statements you can make about the amorphous socio-cultural blog that we call Islam. A lot them aren’t positive. This is because any ancient religion enshrines values from less worthwhile times and peoples, and has to make accommodation with modernity in order to fit into modern society. No religion does this perfectly. Islam has, so far, done a worse job than most. Hopefully with more time it will get there. Unfortunately, getting there will involve a lot of lying on the part of religionists, both to themselves and to outsiders. Mostly to themselves. There’s no honorable path forward for Islam anymore than there was for any other religion. But getting there is better than not getting there.
Chris
@PopeRatzy:
So far, all you’ve done is demonstrate that you care about women in one specific culture (or at any rate claim to) and flip a shit at everyone who told you there were other, also enormous problems in other parts of the world where there isn’t a convenient “Islam” to blame for them.
Care about all women equally? Sure. Lead the way, shithead.
sherparick
By the way, Ben could had responded better to Mr. Harris by pointing out that the Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Mississippi etc. legislatures are not passing anti-abortion, ant-contraception, anti-gay, and creationist education laws in 1984, but right now and that these legislatures are not controlled by Moslems; and that violence against abortion clinics and doctors is taking place right now, not 1984; e.g. threats and acts of violence by fundamentalst Christians against those who don’t share their faith. It was a good point that we Americans have directly and indirectly killed hundreds of thousands of Moslems the last 13 years, the guilty and innocent alike.
cokane
@Lurking Canadian: Who are you to say it is not justified by the religion? Its Muslim adherents would vociferously disagree with you. Are they right or are you right? Again, like Harris said, when divine revelation is used as evidence…
There are supposedly hadith used to justify the practice.
PopeRatzy
@Patrick:
Get yourself arrested and make news. Stand in front of the places that matter. Make a lot of fucking noise. There is a historical set of events from the 50’s to the early 70s that are the template and it worked then and it will work now. I know exactly how hard it was, how much work it was and how long it took.
My question is what are YOU going to do? Sure, I can point to a past shared by many of us, but if YOU don’t act what difference does it make?
I do not see anything in our current culture (especially the media) that leads me to believe that the acts of the past have any resonance. Many just find writing things on Facebook and blogs to be sufficient to feel good about themselves and what they a *doing*. All of which just feeds my pessimism and my belief we have trained a whole culture to only care about themselves and their local systems.
cokane
@Mnemosyne: A lot of religious practices pre-dated their respective religions. Praying also predates Islam, but the reason Muslims pray today is because of Islam.
You are so eager to let the religion off the hook. The practice actually spread to Southeast Asia because of Islam — not despite it as you are claiming. The fact that it persists today almost entirely in Muslim communities, with, literally, hundreds of millions of living women today as its victims kind of belies your point doesn’t it?
And seriously… a religion that preaches sexual chastity, especially for women, sure that has absolutely no role in FGM?
Rex Everything
For those who don’t hate him with the burning intensity of a thousand suns, Freddie deBoer’s take on this is fantastic: http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/10/
Mnemosyne
@PopeRatzy:
Yes, I know, I’m a shallow and faux liberal for caring about the transgender people murdered right here in the US every year. I’m a horrible conservative who doesn’t care about anyone except myself because I donate to the AIDS Healthcare Foundation instead of donating to AIDS groups that work overseas. Fuck all of those Americans with AIDS who need healthcare, they can die in the street as far as you’re concerned, right? After all, their situation isn’t nearly as dire as that of people in Africa who have AIDS, so Americans with AIDS need to suck it up and go without medication until everyone else in the world can have healthcare.
And it’s pretty funny that you’re claiming the Civil Rights Movement as your own. Rev. King was working to benefit himself and others like him — doesn’t that make him a faux liberal in your eyes since a true liberal only works for people not like him/herself, preferably people who are safely overseas and will never make actual demands on you?
PopeRatzy
@Chris:
Not even close, I clearly stated that the NOW is much more important than the undefined and highly localized future. Unless you believe the future to be ordained and that the fears of the future in Texas will also be the fears of the future in California And New York your concerns are less important than the current state of affairs for women and LBGT in those oppressive cultures. Not saying they are unimportant (I am sure memosyne will twist that) but shouldn’t Liberals apply those beliefs globally? Should not the treatment of women and LBGT in those cultures make them more angry because they are happening right this minute?
I just find this fear of future that has not been defined, and within US culture most likely easily contained by the changing demographics of the US, to be selfish at best.
Unless someone can show me the future demographic shifts that will allow a rise of such conservative culture as is within the current conservative Muslim communities right now then you are using Strawman arguments to excuse your own inaction
Patrick
@PopeRatzy: @<a href="
So I take it you have been arrested protesting the treatment of gays in Uganda, the country where you will go to prison for life if you are gay?
Chris
@Rex Everything:
What’s the DeBoer controversy? I knohe usef to be an FPer, but I either wasn’t here or don’t remember.
Good article: interesting point about how the West has historically treated those it calls “moderates.”
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
Take another look at my links: FGM is most prevalent in Africa. Islamists in other countries have started to pick up the practice despite it being outlawed by their governments.
Again, read my links. In Africa, it does not persist almost entirely in Muslim communities. It is practiced by people of all religious persuasions in those African countries that practice it. Outside of Africa, it is practiced mostly by Muslim communities, because it has been exported to those communities. Basically, and it probably sounds too flippant to say it this way, it’s become a fad among Muslim communities outside of Africa. It’s not a deep-seated religious practice, which is what you seem to be claiming. It’s only become popular in the past 20 or 30 years as fundamentalism of all stripes and all religions has become more popular.
From after WWII until about 10 years ago, male infants in the US were routinely circumcised at birth for reasons that no one could quite remember anymore. Now the tide is turning against it, but we can’t honestly say it was for reasons other than custom and superstition. FGM is horrific, but stamping out Islam will not stamp out the problem, because it’s a custom that pre-dates any specific religion.
Lurking Canadian
@cokane The argument that has been ascribed to Harris is that this is “true” Islam, and that moderates who disagree with it are lying to themselves.
If it said in the Koran, “Mutilate your women for the glory of Allah”, I would be forced to agree. It doesn’t. It says something like “A modest and chaste life is pleasing to Allah”. Some assholes interpret the latter like it means the former, but it’s perfectly reasonable to blame that on the assholes, not on the scripture.
Rex Everything
@PopeRatzy:
I think we’re using the fact that we don’t live in those countries, that we aren’t citizens of those countries, to excuse our own inaction. And I think this is entirely reasonable. People pour their energies into action upon their own societies: this proves nothing but that we know how our energies are best directed; it certainly doesn’t prove that we “don’t care” about human rights abuses worldwide (Maher’s repeated assertion to the contrary being not only unwarranted and insulting, but demonstrably wrong as a matter of fact).
Mnemosyne
@PopeRatzy:
Yes, those kids in Colorado protesting their history classes being changed to suit local conservatives should shut up and go home because it only affects them. Kids in Afghanistan don’t get a secular education at all, so those kids in Colorado should reflect about how lucky they are to get to live in the US of A and not complain about their situation.
PopeRatzy
@Mnemosyne:
YAY a new strawman!
Where did I say you didn’t?. As a matter of fact I quite clearly stated that localized issues are all you care about. I am sure whatever self aggrandizing claptrap you wrote after that to support your parochial and shallow faux liberalism was quite strong and important in your mind but I lose interest when you start out with a strawman argument. Want to try again using an argument I actually made as opposed to one you made up?
Here:
When the demographic shifts currently occurring in the US come to fruition what do you think will happen with regard to your fears of a dystopian future of right wing religious takeover? While I am pessimistic about our culture in general I am much less concerned about a religious take over because the shifts in our culture, as you have so aptly demonstrated, are to an even more selfish culture and that would be antithetical to a top down religious culture that you seem to fear so much.
Just wondering, do you even know the definition of Strawman Argument?
PopeRatzy
@Mnemosyne:
And a whole new and more than slightly nutty Strawman
Yes, absolutely what stating the demographic shifts in the country imply. Just give up and stop fighting. As opposed to those kids being part of that demographic shift of which I was speaking.
Seriously, try to have your reading make sense.
BTW: The “Yes, ..” part above is sarcasm so try not to get too excited
Rex Everything
@Chris: A seeming majority of BJers just despise him, to the extent that they’ve enshrined as orthodoxy a howlingly wrong assessment of his work—“he can’t write”—as he provides stark evidence to the contrary on a near-daily basis on his blog. At this point the mere exercise of his talents makes them look ridiculous & redoubles their malice.
cokane
@Mnemosyne: I never said it’s a wholly Muslim practice, and there were plenty of caveats in my initial post that already responded to your objections. Your links are pretty thin, nothing personal, but just do not really make a strong case.
http://www.unicef.org/media/files/FGCM_Lo_res.pdf (page 81 of file — 73 by text page numbers) Figure 6.13
As I said:
And this part of this study only looks at Africa, whereas obviously FGM in Arabia or Indonesia would be an even higher percentage. Again, people are very very eager to let Islam off the hook.
cokane
@Lurking Canadian: Well, the argument that Harris actually writes is that there are literal passages in the Quran that invite violent jihad. And that in a world where divine revelation is seen as true evidence, who is to say what is true Islam and what isn’t? You don’t have to read what’s “ascribed to Harris” you can go to his blog and read one of his most recent entries, right now. But why read someone’s arguments themselves when you can read what’s ascribed to them?
Rex Everything
@cokane:
Yeah, and there are passages in the Bible that invite genocide, infanticide, and femicide. Harris must know he’s being starkly dishonest to pretend the Koran is unique.
Patrick
@cokane:
You mean like “eye for an eye” in our book. And Harris is for torture, so I really don’t care what he has to say.
mowgli
@Rex Everything
@Patrick
Bith of your reponses seem to clearly establish that you have read little (or nothing) of Harris’ work. The statement about Harris being for torture and so you don’t care what he says backs this up as well.
To accuse Harris of ignoring the depravity in the Abrahamic tradition is ludicrous. He points it out so often it becomes tiresome.
You seem to miss the point that Harris consitently focuses on Islam because unlike the older Abrahamic religions that have been pushed out of power by secular societies who have (at least at one point) learned the lessons necessary to separate Church and State, Islam is the best ‘case study’ on how religion IN GENERAL is a cloak for protecting pheonmenally bad ideas. And that even moderate adherents (and even many Atheists) follow society’s rules of not challenging these bad ideas due to the special treatment of religious ideas. Confusing those premises with Idlamaphobia is, IMO, missing his point (and proving it) in a single stroke.
muddy
@Rex Everything: @Chris: I have to say I generally find Freddie quite tedious. And disingenuous in his replies to criticisms.
That said, this post of his that Rex Everything linked is excellent in my opinion. Clear and to the point, not overly wordy.
At first I didn’t click through because I sighed, and thought why click when he will probably annoy me. But I took the recommendation and I think it might be the best thing I ever read of his. Not that I have read a ton, you understand, just enough that he makes me sigh and feel tired usually.
But check it. It’s damn good.
Figs
And pretending that Islam exists in some world devoid of colonialism and interventionism is crazy. Blaming Islam for being uniquely violent (look at some statistics on their beliefs, and here’s an out of context quote from their scripture) is not unlike blaming black people for being uniquely and inherently violent (look at some statistics on their imprisonment and graduation rates and here’s an out of context quote from their music).
Figs
That is to say, both criticisms require willful ignorance of the history that gave rise to the present circumstances.
Rex Everything
@mowgli:
First of all, certain of the leading “secular societies” who have separated Church and State are the largest purveyors of aggressive violence around the globe, particularly in the Muslim world.
Second, these “secular societies” have historically used their influence and power to depose more liberal regimes in the Muslim world and entrench more brutal and repressive ones. This has been true for example in the cases of Iran, Iraq, and Egypt, not to mention our perennial support for the epicenter of Islamic extremism, Saudi Arabia.
Third, while the short-term effect of Western-led violence and Western-imposed instability has been widespread death and brutality, the long-term effect is to sow resentment and anti-Western sentiment in the populace, creating a more receptive audience for Jihadist extremists.
Fourth, this process from start to finish is not something U.S. liberals have ever supported, contra Maher. Quite the opposite. If any element in American society consistently opposes it from start to finish, it is Liberalism.
Maher and Harris are just full of shit on this one.
Rex Everything
@muddy: He’s this good quite often, man. Anyway, cheers.
Amir Khalid
@cokane:
From the Wikipedia article on FGM:
Rex Everything
@Amir Khalid: Meanwhile MGM is enshrined in scripture and practiced by basically all Jews and a shitload of Christians… (I got the cut myself & I’m not complaining, but I have a feeling if it were an Islamic tradition we’d hear nonstop wailing about savage & traumatizing infant abuse…)
Chris
@Rex Everything:
The region’s experience with modernism and secularism hasn’t been a happy one, to say the least. The biggest example was Arab Nationalism aka Arab Socialism, which pretty much copied its Soviet patrons’ political, economic and social development model, with predictably unhappy results. And pro American modernizers were no better- the Shah, for example.
I don’t want to overstate the effects of outside influence either. Clearly there were plenty of fucked up things in the local culture that wouldn’t have gone gently no matter what. But it’s definitely A factor, yes. Imagine how modernity would be viewed in the West if our only experience with it had been communism or fascism.
muddy
I was thinking how Fundamentalist Christians of a number of sects would probably not have anything against FGM, and probably wished they got in on that bandwagon earlier, so to claim it for tradition.
But instead of cutting off a girl’s little head, they set to a lifelong programming on the big head, so that there is no longer an communication between the big and the little heads. Symbolically cut it right off, because they are supposed to act like it isn’t there, and indeed many are brainwashed to the point that they would only titter upon hearing “girl’s little head”, because only men have little heads. Look at tumblers about how they don’t need feminism because ..quack quack so empty bullshit etc.
So evil Islam does it with a knife. Christians and all the patriarchal rest of the damn world just wants to brainwash girls to think that they never noticed or needed that part, that the Muslims are physically cutting off. Either way the girl is left without the proper natural use of her genitals.
I was abused in a lot of ways when I was young, and speaking for myself I often felt the physical ones were not half so harmful than the mental ones. At least the Muslims who practice this are upfront about what they are doing and why, disgusting though it is.
The problem, as always, is not Christianity or Islam. It’s the motherfucking PATRIARCHY.
Chris
@Rex Everything:
Not to disagree with your main point, but isn’t FGM completely different and way more harmful than the male kind?
cokane
@mowgli: This, despite your typos! ;p
People are basically falling back on two arguments — Muslims don’t really mean what they say! Awful trends in Muslims societies cannot be blamed on Islam!
or
Anecdotes of bad religion in non-Muslim societies, which pale in their awfulness and scale.
cokane
@muddy: The “big head” damage in today’s Muslim societies far outpaces those in most majority Christian or secular ones, sorry. Consider for a second that women cannot vote, literally cannot physically move about freely, cannot access any kind of education — and this sexual Jim Crow is often backed up with the full force of the law. Whatever homeschooling/fundie school brainwashing you are describing that goes on in say Alabama is nothing compared to what some women undergo in even parts of Pakistan.
Figs
@cokane: Black people are to blame for everything bad that happens in black society, right?
Chris
@cokane:
Cannot vote? Cannot physically move around? What the fuck are you talking about? Did every or even most Muslim countries on Earth become Saudi Arabia overnight?
Betty Cracker
@muddy:
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!
muddy
@cokane: I lived for *many* years in the middle east and have dealt with these issues with actual women I’m acquainted with, as well as my own personal experiences. Sometimes victims don’t feel the way you’d expect.
Everyone does not have the same hierarchy of evil.
muddy
@Chris: No no, Saudi is only the second ring of the evil of Islam, ISIL is in the center, everyone knows they are the worst of the universe. SInce the moderate Muslims are not putting themselves in the media to protest at all times, they are clearly complicit.
I mean, all the middle-of-the-road Americans always do to protest the freakish, callous, hypocritical blood mongering of their “inner circle”. One can scarcely drive about with all the protests of American Christians clogging the streets to be sure we know they aren’t in on the keep-wimmenz-and-others-at-our-discretion-down thing.
I was sure I had run into yet another of these constant street protests when I went to fill Tunch’s weekly shopping bag with animal treats for the shelter earlier. Damn, they were even protesting at the feed store, but I am always glad to see people doing the right thing, so I tried not to get too irritated at the parking clusterfuck. Then it turned out they were having a sale and there was a petting zoo and a bouncy house. I’m sure everyone was on their way to force themselves onto the media for being moderate right after the hotdogs and popcorn ran out though.
cokane
@Figs: You’re trying to conflate race with religion. It really just shows you have nothing substantial to add to the argument.
If you’re trying to say that Muslims have been the victims of historical oppression and this explains their violence, then go ahead and make that argument. But trying to just shout “that’s racist!” in a discussion of religion — ideas — just reveals your juvenile ability to tackle complex ideas.
I’ll just assume the best argument from you for this sake, a sort of propped up iron man. Latin America has also been the victim of European and US intervention, colonialism, and even pretty recent dumbshit foreign policy. Hell the combination of US drug policy and US gun policy is arguably creating more problems in the region than anything the US is doing today in the Middle East. Frankly it has a grievance list as lengthy and awful as Muslim states.
Where are the Guatemalan suicide bombers?
The region isn’t without its problems, for sure. But countries there aren’t really making trouble for the region, and any cultural sexism, homophobia and such is far far less than what we have in Islamic countries. Women can vote in every Latin American country, can serve in office in every Latin American country, can achieve the highest levels of education in every Latin American country. This is despite also having a holy book that has literal passages rendering women to second class status.
So, why are these two fucked over regions so different?
muddy
@cokane: They will also investigate you in case of miscarriage, and if you have a life-threatening pregnancy it’s too bad for you.
muddy
@Betty Cracker: Thanks, I don’t know why people can’t see that it’s just the same shit, expressed in a different culture.
Or maybe I do know why no one wants to address that! It’s the patriarchy that gets to decide what the problems are, and which ones will be made much of in the media and which will be suffocated by their lack of interest.
Figs
@cokane: At no point did I say “That’s racist,” thanks. If you were interested in anything but scoring imaginary points is imagine you’d have seen that. My point was that the two arguments were similar. There is even the popular “Irish and Italian people came out ok” argument that’s paralleled by your repeated invocation of South America. It’s all setup for an attempt to assert that there is something inherently wrong with a particular group. But you haven’t fully engaged with the history of the Islamic world and European colonialism and adventurism; you’ve simply assured that there’s something uniquely and irreducibly violent about Islam as though its doctrines and practice exist in a vacuum.
Amir Khalid
@Rex Everything:
Male circumcision is a Muslim practice. We boys are all circumcised, without exception. (Did you not see Roots, in which Kunta Kinte goes through it with all the other village boys in his age cohort?) I got mine done when I was almost eight, at the hospital where my dad was a doctor. That’s is how the increasingly urbanised Muslims of Malaysia do it nowadays.
schrodinger's cat
@muddy:
True about Hinduism and ultra orthodox Judaism as well.
ETA: In Hinduism, this manifests itself in the preference for the male child and the appalling treatment of widows by traditionalists.
cokane
@Figs: Sure thing boss, I believe you weren’t trying to accuse Harris and I of racism even if no one else will. I’m willing to go out on a limb for you.
Being black or Irish or Italian is not the same as believing in Islam. For a better analogy, how come very very few pro-life supporters are atheists?
We are arguing about ideas. I know this is hard for people who reflexively want to win an argument by labeling someone else as a bigot. As I said way above, it’s the same thing staunch Israel backers do to silence any criticism of that state.
muddy
No, obviously they’re not, However the demonizing way they are referred to by the group in power at the time that they are “an issue” is much the same.
But how many strident atheists don’t come down on “pro-life” supporters at all? Seems like the atheists you hear about never have much to say about fairness for women. Let them duke it out with us on the totally level playing field we have provided sort of thing.
Unsympathetic
I think this is the reality of what ISIS represents:
An evil sociopath saw an opportunity to gain power, using whatever means necessary. He says words about religion that most people won’t look beyond – but even he, the leader of the group, doesn’t actually believe anything.
He just wants power, because the control of lives is his objective.
And the world needs to stop him.
Chris
@muddy:
More to the point, this isn’t just arguing ideas, it’s arguing culture. And that makes it very similar to the black vs Irish Italian argument. It’s been a long time since the argument of blacks as genetically, biologically inferior has been the preferred route of bigots: they much prefer to talk about how It’s Culture Not Race. (Its software not hardware, as PJMedia so pithily put it way back when I first heard the argument).
Not that black people are inherently inferior. No one believes that. But the culture, man! With the gangs and the drugs and the loud and angry music, and the parents who are never home, and the entire families living off welfare, and the cult of victimization where they just blame whitey for everything instead of trying to fix it, I mean, man, why aren’t they doing better? It can’t be racism, because the Jews and Asians are doing just fine! Why can’t they pull themselves up? What’s wrong with black culture? No one’s saying they wouldn’t have turned out better if they’d been raised differently, but as it is, is it any wonder that so many of them turn out badly?
And the liberals! The PC obsessed liberals are enabling this, by refusing to consider all our very reasonable arguments about the inherent flaws in black culture, and by just calling us bigots and refusing to face reality!
mowgli
@Rex Everything
I would agree with all your points about the violence and foreign policy blunders of secular nations.
None of that has the least bit to do with criticizing religion as a bastion of bad ideas and (to loop in the latest flavor of the thread) patriarchy.
So your points in reponse to mine are interesting but irrelevant to my (and Harris’) primary argument.
muddy
@Chris: I know, right? It’s always the same and so frustrating when people act like this is different.
Keith G
@Chris: I think there may be a good deal of inefficiency in speaking about the complexities of behaviour in the Islamic world by using comparisons to our (that is the U.S.) problems in confronting issues of race and ethnicity. The topic of the current manifestations of Islamic society is just too complex and too historically packed with all sorts of information that I’m not sure simple analogies to other situations can be helpful in the least.
Social norms in Islamic societies are what they are and it seems to me that they should be able to be evaluated on their own merits as being useful in a modern society or not or being humane or not. Obviously attention must be paid to how widespread these noticed social norms are. No large group of people should be judged by the worst actions of a small number of their fellow believers.
Figs
@cokane: Neither is being from Latin America like believing in Islam, but you didn’t hesitate to bring that up.
Chris
@muddy:
Eh, speaking of these Irish and Italians, I suppose there’s some comfort to be had in knowing that there’s nothing saod about Muslims today that wasn’t mainstream opinion in re Catholics until 50 years ago or so.
I actually fully expect that at some point in the future, whenever our right wing nutjobs finally get a new bogeyman, they’ll not only kiss and make up with Muslims, but end up encouraging and protecting the most retrograde factions among them, same way they now think it’s tyranny to tell Catholics they can’t screw their employees on compensation packages.
The wheel never stops turning.
mowgli
Not sure if anyone posted this link yet, but it touches on many of the points debated in this thread including FGM and the politics/policies of several Islamic countries often used to make points about predominantly Muslim countries that don’t fit cookie-cutter definitions of theocracies vs. Secular socieites:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/10/05/reza-aslan-is-wrong-about-islam-and-this-is-why/
Figs
@Keith G: It should also be noted that the attractiveness of these ideas to a population is not a fixed quantity and may be influenced by things like geopolitics, war and oppression.
Keith G
@Figs: I guess we could say that about all human behavior. Even ardent racists have been known to soften their views with the passage of time, but does that mean they get a pass in the here and now?
I guess it is true that the attractiveness of certain ideas will diminish with the passage of time when/if these Islamic societies become more secularised.
In other words, sooner or later they may grow out of it.
Isn’t that then a bit of an indictment of the current state of the norms of many Islamic societies?
cokane
@muddy: Islam is in power in a rather large portion of the world. This is actually a very myopic view of things. Islam is not some oppressed power in Syria. It is the downpressor.
Figs
@Keith G: Again, this works fine if you insist on viewing things in isolation. But let’s say you move into someone’s house and insist it belongs to you and that they never had a legitimate claim on the house in the first place. Say after a while, out of desperation, that person stayed resisting you violently. It’s it fair to claim that this is only happening because they’re uniquely depraved and inherently violent?
Keith G
@Figs: What behaviors should we give a pass to with your formulation? It may be a bit patronizing to say to some, “Even though there is a wide-spread general consensus as to what constitutes humane social behavior, we don’t think you guys are up to it yet. Sooner or later y’all will catch on and your religion based behaviors will moderate, but until then knock your socks off.”
Still, I will stick to what I typed at #224 that this topic might be a bit too complex for simple analogies to be very useful.
There are growing issues that need to be addressed sooner better than later. There is so much tumult in the Islamic world and I am still wondering how big a role the religion itself plays in this. And that is why I typed this comment above.
Figs
Nobody said anything about giving anything a pass. You’re not arguing in good faith, no pun intended.
Rex Everything
@mowgli: Maybe not Harris—I’m not sure—but Maher has been saying for years that liberals don’t care about Islamic abuses, and it’s just not true. Liberals do care about rights violations; this is easy to demonstrate. But we also refuse to pretend the regimes that embrace these abuses arise in a vacuum. This isn’t meant to mitigate the abuses, but Maher assumes it is, which is maddening.
JWR
@James E Powell: […] That said, before we reach conclusions about the relationship between Islam and the Koran and the behavior of certain people in certain regions of the earth, we might consider how American Christians would be behaving if the land where they lived had been successively invaded & occupied by hostile foreign powers for however many years. While their own putative governments mostly oppressed them and sucked up to the foreign occupiers. […]
Well said indeed! Sadly, this is a point that bigots like Maher and Harris are either unwilling or unable to see.
If you really want to see some seriously idiotic pro-Maher comments, check out the post on this over at TPM.
brantl
@Anya: You don’t know Maher very well, do you? See Religulous, and try that horseshit, again.