Bill Maher On Islam: "All Religions Are Not Alike"

You know the debate part of the thread is over when we've moved on to single line insults of people who disagree(and agree) with us.

Hail the victorious provocateur!:good4u:
 
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Voltaire said:
On his HBO show "Real Time" this week, host Bill Maher discussed the problem of radical Islam and how he gets booed by liberals for being a critic of the religion. Maher, known for his atheism, does not hold back when he criticizes Islam.

"There is something that I would like to name and that is 9/11 liberals," host of HBO's "Real Time" Maher said to his guest Salman Rushdie this week during a discussion of Islam. "Because, remember the 9/11 conservatives? These were people like, Dennis Miller was one, Ron Silver was on, Rudy Giuliani perhaps. These were people who were like changed by 9/11 but they became conservative, they wanted war."

"9/11 liberals are different," Maher said. "That's like you (Salman Rushdie), me, Chris Hitchens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who else? Sam Harris. These are people -- we are liberals, and we are liberals on almost every issue, but not the Muslim issue."

Maher went on to discuss the vitriol from his liberal audiences when he lays into Islam.

"Let's define where we are different than the mainstream liberals because I have routinely gotten booed here on the show sometimes, on my stand-up act, when I say, and liberals hate to hear this, that all religions are not a like. When you say that, they think that you're a bigot and we're not a bigot," Maher said.

Maher says there is something different about Islam, nothing that "there is no other religion that is asking for the death" of people who dare to criticize it.

"You wrote an essay, I think it was an op-ed in the New York Times soon after 9/11, you said and I think it was entitled "Yes, This Is About Islam" because that's the mantra, is that it's not about one religion. And I think that what us 9/11 liberals say is, yes it is about this one religion because it is different. There is no other religion that is asking for the death of people, and Sam Harris say it this week, he said that 'We are free to burn the Koran or any other book. We are free to criticize Muhammad or any other human being. But without apology,'" Maher said on "Real Time."

"The point that Ayaan was making -- this is her Newsweek cover about a week ago (photo of cover) and there a lot of people who reacted to this, 'How dare you do this?' Well, you know that the problem is that liberals see this picture and they go 'this is not all Muslims.' And that is very true. Most Muslims don't go in the street like this. The point that she is making, that I've tried to make, is yeah, but most Muslims, at least half of them, I think, around the world think it is okay to kill somebody if they insult the prophet. And that is a big problem," he said.

"That is a clash of civilizations," Maher declared.

The "Real Time" panel then weighed in on Maher's clash of civilizations observation.

"In the Muslim world, much of it, they can not conceive that something coming out of the United States that wouldn't be sanctioned by the government because in their countries, everything is sanctioned by the government. This is why it's important to keep Kate Middleton's tits in the news because every time they see those pictures of Kate Middleton's tits, it shows that the government doesn't sanction everything," Maher said.

"We in the West are free to do stuff that the government doesn't want," he concluded.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...her_on_islam_all_religions_are_not_alike.html
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Yea Maher makes some valid points. Like I heard him once say "When was the last time you heard of Norwegian terrorist hijacking an airplane?"
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
There are many people who call themselves liberals who allow others to do their thinking for them. It's like a club where you check your brain in on entry and it is taken care of just in case you should ever need it again. It has never ceased to amaze how many people will try to equate Islam with Christianity, Rune is a good example.
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As an apathist I could care equally less about either religion. Hows that for equating the two? :)
 
hazlnut said:
Islam is Christianity's little brother, always acting out and throwing tantrums to get attention.

Their much older brother, Judaism, and older cousin, Buddhism, just shake their heads and roll their eyes: "Kids today..."


The Spanish Inquisition lasted up till 1834 don't forget.
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Islam isn't the problem. It's the ME peoples being stuck culturally in the middle ages and a power elite who will not reform the cultural infrastructure that will permit modernization. Since most of the unwashed masses in the ME/Arab culture are uneducated, they don't know better and don't really desire change. The real problem is not the religion. Look at the regions of the Muslim world in which modernity has taken root and the people have a modern middle class standard of living. You don't see radicalization to the degree you see elsewhere in the Muslim world.

The problem in the ME/Arab culture is not Islam, its the handful in the political class who are rotten and corrupt to the core who have prevented the development of modernity such as, secular public education, democratization, development of an entrepranueral and professional class that are the problem. Islam may acts much as an enabler for these assholes but by blaming Islam you're making the mistake of addressing the symptom and not the problem. The problem in ME/Arab culture is the vast numbers of uneducated poor who are kept that way by a completely rotten and corrupt political structure. Radical Islam is a symptom and not the problem.

That's what makes the Arab spring so fascinating to watch. The Arab Spring revolts have largely been initiated because the corrupt ruling classes did not understand the implications of something as simple as cell phones becoming widely available having such a democratizing influence. No cell phones, no Arab spring. It's amazing.
 
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Aoxomoxoa said:
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I wrote a novel in my AP Creative writing class when I was in HS... The basis was that aliens come to earth and take two people up to negotiate peace among the galaxy as Earth is more peaceful than any other society that made it into space. They deemed our progress as glacially slow due to the fact that most of their scientific discoveries were based in war machines. The Earth itself was a useless planet...

Anyway, one side picked up an Israeli "Freedom Fighter" before 1940, the other side picked up one of the PLO... and "hilarity" ensues...

I had to write it in a Semester and it wasn't fleshed out enough, IMO, to be good. But that was the premise.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Islam isn't the problem. It's the ME peoples being stuck culturally in the middle ages and a power elite who will not reform the cultural infrastructure that will permit modernization. Since most of the unwashed masses in the ME/Arab culture are uneducated, they don't know better and don't really desire change. The real problem is not the religion. Look at the regions of the Muslim world in which modernity has taken root and the people have a modern middle class standard of living. You don't see radicalization to the degree you see elsewhere in the Muslim world.

The problem in the ME/Arab culture is not Islam, its the handful in the political class who are rotten and corrupt to the core who have prevented the development of modernity such as, secular public education, democratization, development of an entrepranueral and professional class that are the problem. Islam may acts much as an enabler for these assholes but by blaming Islam you're making the mistake of addressing the symptom and not the problem. The problem in ME/Arab culture is the vast numbers of uneducated poor who are kept that way by a completely rotten and corrupt political structure. Radical Islam is a symptom and not the problem.

That's what makes the Arab spring so fascinating to watch. The Arab Spring revolts have largely been initiated because the corrupt ruling classes did not understand the implications of something as simple as cell phones becoming widely available having such a democratizing influence. No cell phones, no Arab spring. It's amazing.
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And the depressing part is we're going to end up at war with those nations because they didn't freely and of their own will elect the "right people". Instead we're dumping problems on them that we can't solve and complaining when they make bad decisions.

It's the equivalent to putting a new guy in a job, giving him problems and issues that made that last three people resign and then firing him because he doesn't have an instant solution. Give the Arab Spring countries 20 years to sort themselves out, countries and cultures don't change over night.


Poking them(see anti muslim cartoons and movies) is only going to make them dig in their heels and go back to what they know(IE radical islam and militant dictatorships).
 
GRIND said:
not the same. WBC is like the most extreme christians we have right now, and they haven't killed anyone

on a global scale, islam is the major thorn in our side these days, and it's not even close. It is a violent religion with many prole followers. It's a great example of why religion is bad for humanity.
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Islam is no more violent than Christianity. You're not considering the fact that poor and hungry people are easily manipulated into a frame of mind where they will commit violence.
 
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Mott the Hoople said:
Islam isn't the problem. It's the ME peoples being stuck culturally in the middle ages and a power elite who will not reform the cultural infrastructure that will permit modernization. Since most of the unwashed masses in the ME/Arab culture are uneducated, they don't know better and don't really desire change. The real problem is not the religion. Look at the regions of the Muslim world in which modernity has taken root and the people have a modern middle class standard of living. You don't see radicalization to the degree you see elsewhere in the Muslim world.

The problem in the ME/Arab culture is not Islam, its the handful in the political class who are rotten and corrupt to the core who have prevented the development of modernity such as, secular public education, democratization, development of an entrepranueral and professional class that are the problem. Islam may acts much as an enabler for these assholes but by blaming Islam you're making the mistake of addressing the symptom and not the problem. The problem in ME/Arab culture is the vast numbers of uneducated poor who are kept that way by a completely rotten and corrupt political structure. Radical Islam is a symptom and not the problem.

That's what makes the Arab spring so fascinating to watch. The Arab Spring revolts have largely been initiated because the corrupt ruling classes did not understand the implications of something as simple as cell phones becoming widely available having such a democratizing influence. No cell phones, no Arab spring. It's amazing.
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I read a paper once that stated if you want to modernize a culture, educating women is the answer.
 
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