These days, even if you’re racist, most people generally know to try and keep that to yourself. Not so much with people’s ire for Muslims. On Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Ben Affleck, of all people, set the record straight when he felt that Bill Maher and author Sam Harris were being “gross” and “racist” in their generalizations:
Affleck reacted furiously to claims by Maher that Islam manifested as “the only religion that acts like the mafia” and which would “fucking kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture or write the wrong book”.
“Hold on — are you the person who officially understands the codified doctrine of Islam? It’s gross and racist. It’s like saying, ‘Oh, you shifty Jew!’ Your argument is, ‘You know, black people, they shoot each other.’” Affleck added: “How about more than a billion people who aren’t fanatical, who don’t punch women, who just want to go to school, have some sandwiches, pray five times a day, and don’t do any of the things you’re saying of all Muslims. It’s stereotyping.”
How about them apples.
Team Blackness also discussed the white lesbian couple crying over a biracial baby, new strides in marriage equality, and Thug Kitchen.
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Villago Delenda Est
Maher’s Islamophobia is well documented. He saved heaping abuse on Muslims until the end of Religulous, I think pretty deliberately as it to lead the impression that “yeah, those fundie “Christians” are nuts, but if you really want nuts, you have to look at Islam”. Many Muslims are about as wild and crazy as many Christians…that is, not at all wild and crazy, but the wild and crazy get all the media attention.
Frankensteinbeck
Those are some pretty good apples.
I believe 9/11 plays into our current racist freakout. For decades, American racists have had to strangle down their urges. By the 90s, they couldn’t even publicly talk about how young black males are all gang members and be sure they wouldn’t get called on it. 9/11 happened, and they were handed an ethnic group it was perfectly okay to pour overt, no-code-words racist bile on. They got a huge high from that, and now they don’t want to go back to pretending they aren’t filled with hate.
Yatsuno
You’re being a bit unfair to Ben here. Affleck has shown to be quite the astute political observer on many issues so the fact that he stood up for the faith of a billion humans on this planet isn’t that unsurprising. Of course Maher was going for the big dumb Hollywood type here, though he honestly should know better.
Thomas F
I don’t think religious identification is synonymous with skin color – although they can of course overlap sociologically – and I think conflating the two is quite dangerous, in fact, for those of us who wish to maintain a secular public space.
That being said, I largely agree with the objections to Maher’s bombastic approach.
Mayken
Sadly Maher is proof that liberals are not immune from racism, sexism and anti-science quackery. Had to stop watching his show because I’m just so over “allies” like him… I’d much rather watch John Oliver anyway.
Haven’t had a chance to listen to the show but I’ll be very interested to hear the panel’s take on the Ohio couple with the bi-racial baby. Have had loooong discussions with various folks about that situation and was kinda shocked by the racism disguised as being oh so understanding of hw hard it must be for these mothers. Talk about gross!
Thomas F
Let me also add that bigotry is not always reflective of some innate, subconscious fear. “Islamophobia” is a deeply flawed term.
Mayken
@Thomas F: I think it’s very clearly linked with racism in most white Christian countries. Witness how many Christian Arabs get lumped in with the “terrorists.” The islamaphobia and racism against brown and black persons are very intertwined.
Tractarian
Generalizations are bad, mmkay?
That said, I don’t see any fundamentalist Christians or Jews claiming that it is against their religion to allow infidels’ heads to remain attached to their bodies.
JWR
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the first 20 or so comments over at TPM agreed with Maher, and that Afleck was way out of line. Screw that! I watched the video, and Maher was clearly in the wrong. Anyway, that’s my 2¢.
Thomas F
@Mayken: What you say is accurate. What is also true is that fundamentalist Muslim preachers — more so in Europe than here — insulate themselves from much deserved criticism, particularly of their misogyny, by crying “Islamophobia” or “anti-Islamic racism.” They tend to be more successful in Western Europe because of the prevalence of deeply misguided hate speech laws.
The basic point is that Islam is a belief system, not a race. Discriminating against Muslims is very wrong, but criticism of their religion does not qualify.
Again – because people are daft – none of this is a defense of Maher.
aimai
@Tractarian: What a bizarre thing to say. Cutting someone’s head off is, to modern western sensibility, currently a shocking thing but its no different than any other form of killing and Christians and Jews have both shown themselves to be quite willing to kill other people in and out of the name of their god. It was Christians who mass murdered the Bosnian Muslims and raped their women to boot as a deliberate war crime. There are Jews in this country who have supported the droning of civilians in other countries as well as who support Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. Other than the “ick” factor with beheading–which is a perfectly common form of execution in some countries and was in France during the revolution–what is it about beheading that makes it either peculiarly islamic (its not) or peculiarly worse than other forms of killing.
Porco Rosso
Use of the term thug appropriates indian culture.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee
Mayken
@Thomas F: I get what you’re saying. (And yes I get that you are in no way defending Maher.) It is a tough area because, yeah, the attempt to deflect legit criticism is harmful to women etc. who genuinely suffer from the less evolved flavors of the religion. OTOH, I can’t tell you how infuriating it is to be told by some sources (present company excepted) that calling out bigotry against Islam = defending ALL aspects of Islam.
FlipYrWhig
@Porco Rosso: It’s pundit nirvana, but bad karma for moguls.
beth
@Tractarian: Really? I guess gunning down abortion doctors in church because of your religion is okay? Oh, it’s just some Christians who kill abortion doctors? If it’s okay with you and Mr. Maher, I’m just going to assume and loudly proclaim that all Christians are doctor murderers.
CONGRATULATIONS!
This explains why I was constantly beaten by Good Christians until high school for being of a different religion (i.e. none) than they were.
Look, I actually don’t disagree with Maher about Islam, not one bit. But to pretend that such behaviors are limited to Islam is bigoted and frankly insane, given the mountains of evidence to show otherwise. All followers of religion do this. All the time.
RaflW
So the Inquisition never happened? The Crusades didn’t wreak endless havoc? I get that what happened 15 minutes ago is now considered forgettable, so history, whatever? But, fuck you, Bill Maher. Even if what Christendom did back then doesn’t justify what some Muslims are doing now, one cannot pretend that religious violence is some new, unimaginable Islamic invention.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tractarian: Christians prefer civilized capital punishments such as burning at the stake or various Inquisition methods. Jews used to just love stoning.
Decapitation also has a long and glorious history in Christendom.
Villago Delenda Est
@RaflW:
One can if one is an intellectually dishonest sack of bigoted shit.
That would be Bill Maher.
Mayken
@RaflW: And of course good Christians didn’t string up black men nor gun down abortion doctors nor beat gay men nearly to death and leave them to die of exposure? And of course the Holocaust…
Shall we go on about modern sins of Christians?
Villago Delenda Est
@Mayken:
Like, for example, the entire Graham family.
Mayken
@Villago Delenda Est: @Villago Delenda Est: Seriously!
NonyNony
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I’d go farther and say that there are always going to be people who do awful things. And awful people will justify what they want to do using any tool necessary. Religion is one of those tools.
As examples – Christians in the American South used their Christian religion to justify owning and horribly abusing slaves (to the point of brutally killing them if they needed to to make a point). Hitler used his Martin Luther-inspired Christianity to justify the Holocaust against the Jews. Mao used his devotion to his vision of Communism to justify the Cultural Revolution. Stalin used his devotion to himself to justify his purges. The robber barons and government officials of the Gilded Age used their vision of Capitalism to justify the murder of striking workers. The list goes on and on – human beings justify their actions any way they can. And horrible human beings will do horrible things and use whatever is at hand to justify it to themselves.
japa21
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Overgeneralize much. No, not ALL followers of religion do this. Some may do it some of the time, a smaller number do it all of the time. But the vast majority of religious folks don’t do any of the stuff you are talking about.
Villago Delenda Est
@FlipYrWhig: I see what you did there.
Patrick
@Mayken:
Don’t forget Christians pushing anti-gay laws in Uganda. If you are gay in Uganda, you will go to prison for life. It seems rather hypocritical for Christians to mouth off about Islam, when they have plenty off baggage of their own.
Whatever happened to “love thy enemy”? Or did today’s Christians erase that from the bible?
What was it Gandhi said; “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ”. So true…
And I stopped watching Maher a while back. If I want to watch ignorant racist crap, FoxNews would be just fine.
RaflW
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
That’s absurd. But as a piece of rapid fire blanket generalization of the highest order, it is a thing to behold.
RaflW
@Villago Delenda Est: Watching the guillotine fall was quite the social highlight in many a town square in Christian Europe.
We, of course, are much more civilized with our bungled IV drips in tiled rooms complete with glass-partitioned gallery. Not so rousing to the excitable rabble.
Patrick
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
My Uncle was a pastor in lutheran church. A very kind man. He would be an exception to your claim.
For any religion, whether it is Christianity or Islam or whatever, there are bad people. But not every Christian is bad just like not or every follower of Islam is bad.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@japa21: I don’t agree. And the few who don’t have the guts to act on what their religious leaders and sincerely held beliefs tell them to do, go through agonizing intellectual contortions to pretend that there’s some kind of “moderates” who don’t subscribe to what the “bad actors” are doing – just as you do here.
From where I stand, I’ve taken too many fists to the face to indulge in the myth of religious moderates. Maybe, if you believe you’re one of those, you should put some pressure on your extremist friends to stop beating those who won’t subscribe to their creed.
You won’t, of course, because they’ll turn on you and do what was done to me my entire life until I got big enough to start hurting them more than they could hurt me.
Mayken
@Patrick: Also good points.
I’ve always loved that Gandhi quote!
japa21
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Quite honestly, that garbage doesn’t deserve a response. I am truly sorry you had to go through the experiences you did. But what is the difference between what you are saying and the person who says all blacks are bad because he got beaten up by some blacks a couple times.
I have been at church meetings which were open for discussions of religion in general. At one, a declared atheist got up and tried to explain why he believed as he did (or didn’t believe as we did) and he started being yelled at by a member of the church. He was shouted down and told if he couldn’t be respectful he could leave.
And last I saw, you have no idea who I am or what I have or have not done.
scav
The current locally favored Christian! execution method is injecting unknown drug combos of dubious legality and provenance into the condemned by officers with iffy medical skills at best, standing back for 45 minutes or more until a heart attack intervenes and insisting that, unlike those tender tender 3-months fetuses, no pain was felt! It was all totally usual, unexceptional and uncruel! Th Unmatched Eternal shining Glow from that Compassion (The Halo! The Nimbus! The Aura!) has eliminated the need for street light at night in many towns of xian ‘merca.
VincentN
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Considering the majority of people on Earth have some kind of religious affiliation and atheists and agnostics are in the distinct minority are you seriously trying to argue that pretty much everyone is a religious extremist? Then the term has lost all meaning. Because that’s what you’re saying when you say there’s no such thing as a religious moderate.
It’d be much easier to argue that humans just suck. I’d disagree with you but at least that would be more intellectually honest than trying to argue that it’s somehow uniquely religion’s fault that people do bad things. At least misanthropy is equal opportunity hatred.
Citizen_X
@Tractarian: Still got a way to go before they approach the numbers of the Committee for Public Safety. (Or, for that matter, of our best buds the Saudis.)
That said, I’d rather lose my head with Dr. Guillotine’s invention than endure one of these “strap ’em down and inject whatever we can find in the garage” executions our “Christian” neighbors are so fond of.
ShadeTail
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Ah, the old “moderates are responsible for the extremists” line of bullshit. No, they aren’t. People are responsible for themselves, full stop. Your position of blaming people for the actions of others is understandable, I’ll give you that, but it is still utter bullshit.
sm*t cl*de
The Mafia? A form of organised crime with a code of silence, centred in Italy? Which religion does this bring to mind?
kc
@Mayken:
By all means.
Omnes Omnibus
@kc:
Since no one is arguing this, why do you bring it up?
kc
@Omnes Omnibus:
I deleted it. You’re being disingenuous, anyway.
Omnes Omnibus
@kc: Disingenuous how?
Mandalay
WYFP with Ben Affleck? You need to clarify that.
kc
@Omnes Omnibus:
ETA
You know what, never mind.
kc
@Mandalay:
I was wondering that myself. Affleck has always seemed like a reliable sort on social issues.
Mnemosyne
@RaflW:
I have to admit, Mme. Guillotine is looking more and more humane these days.
Keith G
I am sure that it was well with in Ben Affleck’s ability to make some cogent criticisms of the thesis shared by Maher and Harris – – there certainly have been a few thoughtful ones typed on this blog, but Affleck right out of the gate said that their ideas were gross and racist which is a way to shut down a conversation instead of examining a problematic premise.
Ben Affleck was trying to out-Maher Bill Maher. Not a good strategy.
metricpenny
Maher’s done a 180. Praising them after September 11th, maligning all Muslims now.
Ben Affleck was right. As a black American, this was the first thing I thought of — 50 years ago, a lot of white Americans were saying the same thing Maher is about my people.
Affleck had always been meh to me until a few years ago. Channel surfing one evening, I come across a “Lifetime Achievement Award” show for Matt Damon. Affleck spent the entire show scowling at everything anyone said. Of course Matt chose him to introduce him and present him with the award.
Affleck, serious as hell and obviously disturbed, begins with, “I don’t know what this industry is coming to. Matt’s only made like 8 films.”
Anyway I’m happy to see Affleck has finally gotten serious about his career in recent years. Early on it seems he was only interested in the fame and was sleepwalking through his roles.
I’m doubly happy that he has become the type of person who will vehemently defend any persecuted group, even on live TV with 2 or 3 highly anticipated movies on, or coming to, the big screen. That’s real integrity.
Mnemosyne
By the way, that survey that Harris and Maher think proves that all Muslims are horrible, murderous, backwards assholes? I’m sure you’ll be surprised to hear that they’re lying to you:
And if anyone is surprised that people in the Palestinian territories, Afghanistan, and Egypt (which shares a border with Israel) are the biggest supporters of religious violence, you may have just woken up from a coma.
Roger Moore
@Patrick:
Some words in The Bible are market in red to show they’re optional.
Roger Moore
@scav:
I suggest that lethal injection should have to be carried out in a medical area that meets the criteria of an ambulatory surgical center, and the people carrying it out should be required to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
Perhaps the country that carried out the strategic bombing campaign against Germany and nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki shouldn’t be pointing fingers about blowing up civilians.
Patrick
@Keith G:
It seems like people who agree with Bill Maher didn’t think it was a good strategy, while people who agreed with Ben Affleck think it was a good strategy. Not too surprising…
cokane
http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-controversy2
“As I have pointed out before, when The Book of Mormon became the most celebrated musical of the year, the LDS Church protested by placing ads for the faith in Playbill. A wasted effort, perhaps: but this was a genuinely charming sign of good humor, given the alternatives. What are the alternatives? Can any reader of this page imagine the staging of a similar play about Islam in the United States, or anywhere else? No you cannot—unless you also imagine the creators of this play being hunted for the rest of their lives by religious maniacs. Yes, there are crazy people in every faith—and I often hear from them. But what is true of Mormonism is true of every other faith, with a single exception. At this moment in history, there is only one religion that systematically stifles free expression with credible threats of violence.”
Mandalay
@metricpenny:
Win!
It’s disappointing to see some on BJ criticizing Affleck because he was to too strident when he went after Maher and Harris. Screw that – the man was angry, and rightfully so. He had the balls to go after them, yet most public figures would have agreed with them, or stared at their feet.
scav
@Roger Moore: Well, that’s cetainly an option, but not the one currently defended, often vehemently, by the bulk of the pro-execution crowd of this reportedly perfected nation that is beacon of civilized not-to-be-questioned center-right christianity. Beheading (by a fine French swordsman) is commonly understood as Henry VIII being charitable, compared to being chopped with an axe (see Mary Q of S) or being burnt to death. Charitably being burnt to death (a method esp associated with crimes of faith) was having a bit of gunpowder added so you’d be blown up (whee!).
It’s not an especially clearcut set of wonderful options. I’m finding it a laugh a minute that a shared fondness for capital punishment is one of those things common to many ME nations and the USofA when compared to other ‘developed’ nations.
ETA, I forgot to add that you did make me laugh.
ETA, properly laugh.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
I see somebody has never heard of Mark Hofmann. Oh, those wacky Mormons, killing each other over their scriptures — who do they think they are, Muslims?
Also, George Tiller’s widow would like to have a word with Harris if Harris genuinely thinks that only Muslims stifle free expression with credible threats of violence. I would say that shooting Tiller dead in the vestibule of his church was a pretty credible “threat of violence,” wouldn’t you? Or does that not count because Tiller was a mere abortion doctor and not a vitally important political cartoonist?
Cervantes
@Elon James White:
What does this aside mean?
(Thanks.)
gian
Maher is not a “liberal”
He’s a pot smoking Republican aka “libertarian”
His old show title was a dig at liberals “politically incorrect”
Mnemosyne
Also, people unfamiliar with the Danish cartoon controversy may want to read the Wikipedia article about it, which is reasonably balanced. It wasn’t exactly, We published these cartoons and people immediately rioted! More like, We published these cartoons, were publicly assholes about it, and people rioted six months later after they got tired of the bullshit excuses for not apologizing.
Amazing how many proponents of “freedom of speech” think that there is no reciprocal right for others to respond to their speech. You are free to say whatever you want, but I have equal freedom to call you an asshole for saying it.
ETA: I especially love the detail that the first death threat was phoned in by a teenager whose mom turned him in. Oooh, scary!
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne:
Actually, one could argue that it’s (some) Israelis who are “the biggest supporters of religious violence.”
Calouste
@Mnemosyne:
But that cartoonist was published in a newspaper, just like Rushdie is a writer, they are people, not like some abortion doctor. Journalism is one of the most inbred professions around, in the eyes of journalists, what happens to a journalist is 100 times more important than what happens to other people.
cokane
@Mnemosyne: I guess you fail to understand what systematically means. Good effort though, at least you’re citing real world examples.
Patrick
@cokane:
Which religion in the Unites States is it that harasses poor women on their way to the abortion clinic? It is so bad that they are forced to have escorts:
Here’s the words from one escort:
I’ve been a volunteer escort at an abortion clinic in Englewood, New Jersey, for the past six months. My first few weeks on the sidewalk were a rude awakening about abortion access in my own state, as I tried mightily to walk patients through a literal gauntlet of shame and intimidation, as you can see here.
In that time, I have seen countless women reduced to tears and shaking, just for trying to access the health care to which they are constitutionally entitled. Prior to the implementation of our buffer zone, there would be two men positioned on either side of the door, filming the faces of every single patient and companion who walked inside. I’ve had patients ask me, with terror in their eyes, “Why are they doing this to me?” I have witnessed a man whose wife was terminating a wanted pregnancy due to a fetal anomaly be lectured by an anti-choice “sidewalk counselor” on why God has a plan for that “baby” and he should “be a man, Dad.” I have watched as patients and companions cover their face to avoid being filmed by the anti-choice protesters who put their images online. I have watched one of my fellow clinic escorts be violently shoved by an anti-choice protester. I have personally been sexually harassed by an anti-choice protester.
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/06/30/supreme-court-see-see-abortion-clinic-escort/
I feel more threatened by these Christians since they are my neighbors here in the US.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
I guess an entire website dedicated to tracking abortion doctors isn’t systematic enough for you. Or boilerplate legislation written by a single organization. Yep, it’s all a bunch of disconnected lone nuts and certainly not a systematic attack on abortion rights by conservative Christian religious nutjobs.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
And, of course, one can expand the list of people who have at least been threatened for expressing unapproved views about Christ. For example, a theater where The Last Temptation of Christ was showing was firebombed, and potential distributors were threatened in various ways to discourage them from distributing it. Andres Serrano received death threats over “Piss Christ”, the Catholic Church sued to block it from being exhibited in Australia, and it has suffered from repeated attempts to vandalize it.
cokane
@Mnemosyne: Your myopic view of the world really is staggering.
If you’re going to talk about abortion, let’s do it. You are comparing violence in a country where abortion is mostly legal to countries where religious law outlaws abortion, in some cases female initiated divorce, supports child marriages and a host of other things. Maher and Harris have roundly slammed Christianity and its contributions to Western sexism. But the fact that you think this shit even approaches the levels seen in numerous Muslim majority countries just shows a baffling amount of unexamined privilege. What the fuck do you think happens to a known abortion doctor in Pakistan, for example?
The number of women killed for religious reasons by the followers of Islam in the past decade far outpaces those killed by Christians — this is despite the fact that there are about 50 percent more Christians in the world than Muslims. It’s sad that this fact cannot even be stated without its speaker being branded a bigot. This is exactly the blindness Maher spoke about, you are living up to his caricature of liberals, sadly.
The fucked up thing is you bring up example after example of bad shit Christians do in the name of religion. Totally disingenuous or just straight ignorant that in nearly every case that shit is worse in Muslim majority countries. And yet you cannot even countenance someone saying, hey maybe there’s a problem here! without shouting them the fuck down with pathetic mewlings about bigotry.
Keith G
@cokane: But…but…but…in the 1600s Christians burned witches.
cokane
@Keith G: ;]
ShadeTail
@cokane:
That is hilarious, coming from you. You blithely ignore anything that doesn’t fit into your neatly sorted world view, and if you can’t ignore it, you invent tortured justifications to claim that it doesn’t count.
Terror is terror, murder is murder, and it doesn’t make a difference if it’s being done here by Christians or somewhere else by Moslems. Your refusal to admit this basic truth shows what a simple-minded bigot you are.
Cervantes
@cokane:
In Pakistan, abortion is legal through the first trimester to save a woman’s life or to provide what they call “necessary treatment.” After the first trimester, abortions are allowed only to save the woman’s life.
It would be silly to conclude that all Pakistani women (or girls) who want an abortion can get one. It would be equally silly to conclude that there are no “known abortion doctors” in Pakistan.
Roger Moore
@Keith G:
And there are plenty of revanchists who would love to go back to those days, and the days of stoning adulterers, locking people up for blasphemy, and censoring anything that disagrees with their religious views. If extremist Christians don’t act as bad as extremist Muslims do, it’s not because they have better will but because they live in societies that don’t give them full control of the reins of power. The Muslim world behaves worse because it’s full of absolute monarchies and dictatorships.
Grumpy Code Monkey
I am a little-a atheist; I don’t believe in God or gods or other supernatural beasties, and I don’t give a crap what anyone else believes or doesn’t believe, up to the point where those beliefs compel them to harass or harm others. I don’t give a crap about “In God We Trust” on money or “Under God” in the pledge.
CONGRATULATIONS! is committing the sin of confusing anecdotes for data. I don’t doubt he (or she) was beaten up by religious fanatics. When I announced at age 12 that I was an atheist, I caught some shit on the playground for it too (that was my first object lesson in “not everybody thinks like you do”). But by the time puberty hit, nobody really cared anymore.
Two of my best friends are strongly religious; one’s an ordained Methodist minister. They’re the kind of Christian that actually tries to live by the more positive aspects of Jesus’ words, which frankly isn’t a bad way to be for the most part.
It’s the Old Testament Christians you have to watch out for. They’re the ones more likely to quote Leviticus than the Gospels, and they’re the pool from which the true fanatics are drawn.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Tractarian:
The Christians prefer stonings.
The Douche-canoe sure didn’t take long to show up.
Patrick
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Don’t forget all the victims of child molestation, which frankly the catholic church couldn’t care less about. I know one those victims and he will never have a normal life again. Guess which religion he fears the most. It starts with a C…
Chris
@Cervantes:
So, the other day we were told that restrictions specific to Saudi Arabia were in fact a sin of the entire Muslim world. Today, we’re being told that a country that has legal abortion (more than cam be said for certain Christian nations even today) does not have legal abortion…
Well, my days of not taking him seriously are certainly coming to a middle.
Keith G
To my mind there are couple of major problems facing Islam’s place in the modern world.
One is that it just happens to be a/the predominate religion in many societies that have not gotten to the point where they give much of a fuck about human rights, equal justice, and civil liberties as the West understands these ideas.
Another, maybe more significant, is that there is no hierarchy of authority in Islam. Thus, no way for what might be considered a Islamic mainstream to identify itself and protect itself from heresies, counter-orthodoxies, and dangerous splinter groups. Thus the cloak of Islam can be used to cover “righteous” behavior which is in fact horrible, and there is no organ within the religion itself to confront this.
Sometimes it seems to me that Islam is heavy on the id and light on the ego – in this case the id of young men from fractured societies all believing that their emotional striking out is the action of a pious man. This is well and truly fucked.
It is a weakness of this religion and a danger to the world that these misbelievers are not (or can not be?) dealt with within their own community of faith.
Citizen_X
@cokane:
But not with facts or anything, right? Because here’s a map showing the level of abortion restrictions worldwide. The Catholic world doesn’t look any better than the Islamic world does.
Oh, and honor killings? Happens among Hindus and Sikhs, as well as Muslims. It’s a cultural thing, not a religious one.
Tony P.
Some Muslims do horrible things in the name of Allah. Some Christians do horrible things in the name of Jesus. Can we infer from this that both religions are equally GOOD?
Most Muslims in the world are ordinary, inoffensive people; so are most Christians. Do they NEED their respective religions in order to be that way?
Christian parents tend to produce Christian children; Muslim parents tend to produce Muslim children. If religions are mostly hereditary, do ordinary, inoffensive people take seriously the scriptures and dogmas that differentiate religions one from another?
–TP
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@cokane:
And again, we can look to christian extremists and the murder of gays, abortion providers, transgender people, and others.
Harris is wrong, and your are wrong for propagating his incorrect assertions.
Mandalay
@ShadeTail:
Well certainly not to the recipient, but surely the degree and extent of all that terror and murder is also relevant?
For any evil committed (nominally at least) in the name of Islam, counterparts by other religions can surely be found elsewhere if you look hard enough. We see BJ posters doing that here all the time, including in this thread. But the larger point that Maher et al are making is that Islam is worse – much, much worse – than any other religion when it comes to intolerance, and the consequences of that intolerance.
We all roll our eyes when some Villager trots out the “both sides do it” argument for Democrats and Republicans. Sure both sides do it, but one side (Republicans) really is much worse than the other. So it is surprising to see so many here jump on the “both sides do it” bandwagon when it comes to Islam and other religions.
I have no time for Maher – the more I see of him the more I am convinced that he is a really nasty and dangerous piece of work – but that doesn’t mean that he is automatically wrong on everything. His presentation tactics are odious, and his arguments are blinkered, and he certainly needs to focus on cultural issues more before condemning Islam, but he still has something of a point underneath all the bile and hatred he spews.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@cokane</a
Only if you exclude “murikafuckyeah” as a religius reason.
Because, you know.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
Not much, because — surprise! — abortion is allowed in Islam, just like it is in Judaism. If you bothered to read the survey that you yourself linked to yesterday, it’s mostly conservative Muslims in Western countries who are anti-abortion, because they’ve been influenced by Christian conservatives.
It’s funny how you keep claiming that I don’t know what I’m talking about when you don’t bother to read your own fucking links.
Specify “religious reasons.” Are you talking about women who were killed during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Honor killings? Women being killed by ISIL? You need to be specific about what you’re claiming. Again, in the survey that you yourself linked to, honor killings were only thought to be acceptable in three (3) of the surveyed countries. Why, exactly, are Indonesian Muslims responsible for honor killings in Iran?
I had no idea that Morocco was such a hellhole for women. Yes, that’s right — Morocco is more Muslim than Afghanistan, which comes in second.
I also can’t help noticing something that some of the most Muslim countries — specifically Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, and Iraq — have in common other than all being majority Muslim. Can you guess what that might be?
Mnemosyne
Can I please be released from moderation for having more than three links? KTHXBAI.
Mandalay
@Keith G:
I suspect you are really onto something about the lack of hierarchy and authority figures in Islam, but I’m not so convinced about those pious young men.
The reason ISIS has so many recruits isn’t the cause, it’s the money. They are swimming in cash, and can easily afford to pay their grunts far more than they would otherwise get in the real world. And importantly, if you die fighting for ISIS they will take care of your family. That’s a pretty potent policy for getting recruits.
Keith G
@Roger Moore:
Ah…false equivalence….it’s just not for wingnuts or the press.
Yeah, there are far too many religo-crazies on this subcontinent for my tastes, but the numbers just do not add up.
I am a guy. I love getting fucked by other guys (and vice versa). That has been the case since the 1970s. The only time I got hit by a rock is when I was 7 and got hit in the head by piece of flagstone chucked over a fence by some asshole brat. In college at OSU, as part of a gay students group, I used to speak to sociology classes all over central Ohio – including Ohio Dominican University. No stones.
So let’s just stop with the foolishness that outlier behaviors in the West equal inhumane behaviors and policies that receive the support of both many citizens and many governments in the Islamic world.
I do can not say that the belief system of Islam is riddled with problems/dangers for the modern world. It does seem that there are serious problems caused by the social architecture of Islam.
Cervantes
@Chris: Well, if more information is useful, here are details re Pakistan, collated by the Population Division at UN DESA:
These restrictions reflect the relevant Pakistani laws as last altered in 1990 — I think.
It’s also worth noting that in Pakistan, birth control, or family-planning generally, has been part of the government’s health initiatives for decades — but access is not as widely available as it should be.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
That is the claim, yes. But they neglect to show proof and only provide anecdotes. The very survey that Harris and Maher claimed backs them up actually says the opposite on most of their points — I linked to it above at #48.
Afghanistan has been perpetually at war since at least 1979. I suggest that the fact that they have been perpetually at war for over 30 years might have something more to do with their backwardness than their religion does.
Keith G
@Mandalay: I am saying that piety is used by some as a cover to justify the unjustifiable. Others might well be in their minds true believers who are being (willingly?) misled.
Cervantes
@Mandalay:
Do Maher et al. offer any evidence in support of this “larger point”?
PhoenixRising
@Mandalay: Exactly. While both sides may do it–yes, there are Xtian terrorists–the differences are in the degree of success enjoyed by extremists affiliated with every religion [that I’m aware of].
Yes, cultural differences play a role. Female genital mutilation isn’t an Islamic problem, it’s a sub-Saharan-African problem. Honor killings aren’t an Islamic problem, they’re associated with the tribal cultures of SW Asia. Etc. To the extent that ISIS (or some whacko in Cleveland who kills his sister because she dated) blame Islamic mores, they’re using ‘Muslim values’ as a cover for their misogyny.
This is the problem: In Islam, it’s the year 1435. Not surprisingly, the process of shaking out the winners and losers among followers of the One True Prophet are violent. To make the peaceful omelette known as ‘European democracy’ available to you today, some eggs got broken 600 years ago. The many Muslims alive today who want to drag the most regressive of their fellows into the 21st century have a hell of a job cut out for them.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Patrick:
And?
Because some Catholic clergy sexually molested children, all Christians must be child molesters? Is that the point you’re trying to make here? Or is it just that all Catholics are child molesters? Or just all Catholic priests?
The fact that so many priests raped children and that the RCC covered for them is reprehensible, but that’s a problem with the RCC as an institution, not Christianity as a religion, unless you can point to a passage in the New Testament that calls for sexytime with preteens.
You can make the case for small cults (a few dozen to a couple of hundred people) that all members of that cult hold the same beliefs with equal fervor, but we’re not talking about Jonestown or Heaven’s Gate.
I mean, there’s several billion people on this planet who adhere to one of the three Abrahamic religions. These people will fall onto some kind of bell curve where most are “socially” religious, a few are pretty apathetic, and a few are fire-breathing monsters willing to slaughter any and everyone who doesn’t think the exact same way they do.
I know a bunch of Christians, Hindus, pagans, and atheists. Some of them are upstanding folk; some of them are real pieces of shit. Any correlation to their religion (or lack of same) is weak at best.
True fact, the people I’m least likely to hang out with are other atheists. You get too many of us together in one place, and we tend to get really annoying.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
You might want to cancel that vacation to Uganda. The fact that it’s a majority Christian country is not going to protect you from being imprisoned. In fact, it’s not going to protect you in most African countries. India is also not a good place for you to hang out, despite being majority Hindu — being gay has been illegal there since 1860.
Patrick
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Where, oh where in my post did I say that? You are putting words in my mouth. I talked about my friend who was molested and who he fears the most. Have a nice day.
Mandalay
@Cervantes:
Sorry, I’m not your research clerk. Look it up yourself if you really care.
Keith G
@Mnemosyne: Jesus Christ. I hoped we were past this.
Have you no shame? (asked and answered)
Yes, and penguins in Antarctica ignore the starving offspring of their missing neighbors. The brutessss!!!!
Incidents of cruelty and/or repression abound. Some places more than others. Sometimes there is not an inter-societal connection for repression. Sometimes there is.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Patrick:
So why bring it up in response to what I wrote?
Mandalay
@Keith G:
Your choice, but be aware that you are choosing to interact with a type 4 internet troll:
Keith G
@Mandalay: Thanks for the (symbolic) Zen slap.
Time to feed the kitties, and then the humans.
Patrick
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
You brought up a post by CONGRAT… who had been abused. So I brought up another example of abuse.
What’s the deal?
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
Sorry to be a buzzkill about India. And Russia. And most of sub-Saharan Africa. Not to mention a lot of Asia. And South America. In fact, most of the non-Western world, only some of which is majority Muslim.
Again, it’s not the religion, it’s the region. Christian and animist African countries are just as likely to be anti-gay as Muslim ones, despite what Sam Harris told you.
cokane
@Keith G: haha love your posts man
Plantsmantx
@metricpenny:
More than a few are saying it now, and they’re using the same kind of rhetoric. You could change “ISIS” to “black thugs”, and “moderate Muslims” to “the black community” in Maher’s and Harris’ tandem tirade, and you’d pretty much have the current rhetoric of anti-black racism.
cokane
choice abortions are not legal in Pakistan and even Indonesia and Malaysia and the overwhelming majority of Muslim countries. Health and life saving abortions are of course permitted almost anywhere. But yes somehow isolated extralegal prolifers in the US are as bad or worse than governments and widespread bans on choice in most of the Muslim world.
I expect the sophistry to march on, ever clueless.
mclaren
So Islam is “the only religion that acts like the mafia”?
I seem to recall something called The Grand Inquisition. Lasted for about 5 centuries. Burned and tortured and mutilated millions of people for imaginary crimes like “consorting with Satan’s imps.”
I think the folks doing all that burning and torturing and mutilating were Christians…
cokane
@Plantsmantx: this is part of the problem Maher is talking about actually. Islam is not the same as blackness, sorry. And it’s a pathetic and facile comparison. The idea that Islam is an oppressed minority is a very US/Western centric view of things. For many people living in Muslim majority countries, Islam is the most dominant political force in their lives. It really shouldn’t be compared to an oppressed minority (African Americans). Because in many cases, it is the oppressor. It is the poverty creator. It is the war creator.
In fact, it was even aided by the US government in some cases in the past. But that does not excuse today’s oppression.
Plantsmantx
@cokane:
Just like the person I replied to, I recognize this bullshit. I can’t afford not to recognize this bullshit. You know what is “Western-centric”? Their White Man’s Burden shtick, which is also deployed against my people. The threats raised against the Muslim population of the United States damn well does make them an oppressed minority.
I recognize their bullshit, and my reasons for standing against the deployment on it against Muslims aren’t all altruistic. If they’d do it to them, can I trust them not to do it to us? Hell, no. I can’t.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
I didn’t realize that the Texas legislature and governor were “isolated extralegal prolifers.” I’m pretty sure that the guys passing the laws in Texas are by definition not “extralegal.”
But, like most white dudes, you’d rather worry about distant problems than the problems right here in the US, because you can picture being in the World Trade Center on 9/11/01, but you can’t picture even for a minute what it’s like to be a poor woman in Texas who just had Christian extremists pass a law that means you can’t get an abortion.
Cervantes
@Mandalay:
Wait — you assert someone’s “larger point” but then you can’t tell me if they offer evidence for it?
As for your not being my “research clerk” — I couldn’t agree more, and hadn’t meant to suggest otherwise.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
Just out of curiosity, do you have any awareness that talking about “Islam” and “Muslim countries” as a monolith makes about as much sense as grouping all of Europe from Portugal to Russia together as “Christian countries” who all act in a monolithic way based on their shared faith of Christianity?
Mnemosyne
@Plantsmantx:
I managed to figure out back in 2008 that the reason so many conservatives were calling Obama a “Muslim” was because it was their new code word for “nigger.” Not sure why so many of my fellow white people remain clueless on that.
Cervantes
@cokane:
In that light, perhaps you can help me address this question raised by, well, someone:
Do you have a good response? How about the following?
LAC
Still trying to figure out how a d list douche comedian is the embodiment of liberal thought and should be taken seriously.
Irony Abounds
Citing what Christians did several hundred years ago is silly. This ain’t the 1500s. Claiming that Maher and Harris were saying all Muslims are horrible just shows you weren’t paying attention to what they were saying. Saying that large percentages of Muslims are peaceful people, while true, does not address the fact that even if only 20% of Muslims believe in abhorrent ideas such as death to infidels and the subjugation of women that means you have well over 200 million people of a particular faith believing in those things. Maher’s and Harris’ point was if 20% of Christians held such beliefs and acted on them liberals in this country would be outraged and rightfully so, and condemn it in the strongest terms, so why are liberals so hesitate to condemn the horrific behavior undertaken in the name of Islam by what is undeniably a significant percentage of Muslims. You can’t condemn beheadings or terrorism in the name of Islam without recognizing they are motivated by religious beliefs.
Try being a woman in Saudi Arabia, or Taliban or ISIS controlled areas. Try being an apostate Muslim in most Muslim countries and freely expressing your views. Can anyone really argue that the ill treatment received by those people is a result of anything other than Islamic beliefs?
With all that said, however, I am in complete agreement that simply equating Muslim to bad person is horribly wrong. On the other hand, ignoring the fact that Islamic beliefs are a source for a significant amount of violence and human rights abuse in this world is political correctness run amok. If you are prepared to fight against US bombings, drone policy and imperialistic overreach in the Middle East, you should also be prepared to fight against the beliefs and practices held by a large number of Muslims that likewise result in violence and bloodshed against innocents.
Mandalay
@Cervantes:
Incorrect; I could easily tell you, but I choose not to, because of your lazy, pompous attitude. You can easily find the evidence (or lack thereof) in seconds yourself if you genuinely care, and post your own views.
But you don’t. You just want to meta-comment from the sidelines, and snap your fingers when you want someone to do your bidding.
The onus is on you to refute the views of others, and almost everyone here except you seems to grasp that simple concept.
Plantsmantx
@Mnemosyne:
I think all the talk about the President not being a “real American”, not being in tune with American culture, the “American way”, “Americanism”, etc. aren’t really rooted in his having fairly recent ancestors in another country. They’re rooted in how these people view black Americans in general.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: Nah, if you make a claim and someone asks you to support it, the onus is on you. You were taking up cudgels on behalf of Harris/Maher or so it seemed. Asking for support of that position is completely reasonable.
Meta-note: Cervantes makes his/her positions clear. S/he is sometimes arch and formal in style, but s/he is unfailingly polite. S/he often asks people to expand on statements and, at the same time, is willing to do the same. Why be an ass?
Cervantes
@Mandalay:
For someone who objects to “meta-comment,” you’ve just issued about a hundred misguided words of it, with an additional zero words actually addressing the question at hand.
Well done!
Anne Laurie
@Keith G:
It’s also a standard long-time complaint from the Catholic church about the Protestants, except that today the Prots have more old men “striking out against the world” than young ones. The last Pope but one actually went to a great deal of trouble to make common cause with “organized, historical” Protestant groups, like the Lutherans & Anglicans, against the wild-eyed Pentacostals on both sides of the divide.
The GIGO Gecko
I can only assume that you didn’t even watch the “Real Time” segment you’re posting about here. That, or you’re not the sort of person who “gets” things easily. To classify either Maher or Harris as “racist” on the basis of their remarks is akin to calling someone a misogynist for factually pointing out that some women willingly have dozens of sexual partners a year.
As for the material you quoted, it is, intentionally or out of ignorance, misleading. Affleck spouted his “codified doctrine” blather near the beginning of the discussion; Maher’s “fucking kill you” observation was toward the end. The quote makes it appear that Affleck (who looked drunk and sounded like a whiny middle-schooler) said the former in response to the latter.
jon
I love how polls prove Muslims are nuts. Polls also prove that North Korea has not just a Dear Leader but the Dearest Dear Leader who ever Leaded Ever in Eternity Times Infinity Ultra.
Very convincing. Also, too: ISIS prisoner statements are not made under duress and no police officer knows of any corruption.
Chris
@Omnes Omnibus:
The arrogance of these liberals, asking for people to actually back up their assertions. Who do they think they are? What kind of world would it be if climate deniers, creationists and We Will Be Greeted As Liberators believers had to actually support their claims? Complete madness!
@Anne Laurie:
The hierarchy thing is something I’ve often heard in Catholic v. Protestant arguments, but I’m not sure I find either side that convincing – Catholics object (as Keith G did, if I understand correctly) that without a central authority, people are free to believe anything they want with no one to confront them (e.g. people who might otherwise have been restrained are free to indulge their worst instincts), but Protestants argue that with a Vatican style central authority, a small group of people is empowered to force other people to believe whatever they want with no one to confront them (e.g. people who never would’ve done so on their own are forced to believe fairly awful things or go to hell).
Like I said, not sure I find either argument more compelling than the other – but in any case that’s just comparing theories. In practical application, it’s not hard to find Catholic believers who ignore their church whenever they want to or Protestant clerics who keep their congregations on as tight a leash as any Pope ever did.
It does occur to me, though, that if you want to talk about that “hierarchy” argument as applied to Islam, the Sunni/Shi’a divide might be a place to look. The clergy is plays a more important role in Shi’ism than Sunnism and the religion tends to be more centralized, even when it doesn’t rise to the level of Iranian style Shi’ism with a Supreme Leader (itself an innovation of Khomeini).
lethargytartare
“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” –Steven Weinberg
Jon Marcus
Tell Yitzhak Rabin and George Tiller that Jews and Christians won’t kill you for offending their religious beliefs. And there are plenty of slightly less crazy Jews and Christians who nevertheless embracee and cheered on the murderers who killed both of them.
Socrates
It is NOT racist to despise an oppressive, authoritarian ideology.
Cervantes
@Socrates:
No, but it might be anti-Catholic bigotry.
Anoniminous
Test