Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Bill Maher Is Right On Islam


Many liberals are too afraid to criticize Islam lest they be accused of being called "racist" or "islamophobic." But of course, Islam is a religion, not a race, so opposing it can't be racist by definition. And I think being concerned about the threat that the Islamic world poses is more than justified. Because Muslims are a minority in the West and they've sometimes been targeted because of their religion or appearance, many liberals automatically treat them as if they're untouchable to criticism, similar to how Jews have historically been given so much protection because of the holocaust and the discrimination they've gone through. It seems to me that the only people willing to step forward and duly criticize Islam are right wing Christians and outspoken antitheists like Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.

Maher called out the liberals on his panel the other week for bending over to Islam while neglecting that a very large portion of the Islamic world is antithetical to common liberal values. The same Western liberal who'll passionately protest against anyone infringing on their abortion rights, will refuse to criticize the Islamic world where they still stone to death adulterers, deny women basic equality, and jail homosexuals and bloggers for violating Sharia law. It's totally hypocrisy, and it needs to be called out, as Maher rightly does. Liberals need to stand for liberal values, no matter who's against them or where they're being violated.





8 comments:

  1. The criticism of Islam from Right Wing Christians tends to be off the mark in my experience.
    You only need look at all the accusations of "creeping sharia" and the like from the right to see that.

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  2. There is little threat in the US of a creeping sharia right now, but you only need to look to the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany, and elsewhere in Europe where some Muslim extremists want sharia law zones, and you'll see that the threat is very real.

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  3. Which is basically my point - The Christian Right point to nonexistent problems, rather than what should actually concern them.

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  4. Right, but the point about giving due criticism to Islam is not only about sharia law being enforced onto non-Muslims. Although, the goal of Islam overall is for the world to be living under sharia one day. Just look at the link I gave in the post.

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  5. I wasn't disagreeing with you - sorry if I gave that appearance. I was pointing out that the Christian Right don't tend to have valid claims regarding the threat of Islam.

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    1. In a way I would agree with many Christians on Islam, it is a threat to Western secular democracy, but I do think they over exaggerate the threat of sharia in the US. The hypocrisy though, is that while many right wing Christians want to prevent sharia law in the US, they also want to establish a Christian theocracy here and force everyone to live according to their Christian beliefs.

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  6. It's interesting also that Arab Muslims are at times quick to cry "racism" when Islam is criticised, and yet often don't consider Indonesia, which has the largest population of Muslims, to be really Islamic (lack of Arabic Muslims).

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  7. I heard them discuss this on the Adam Carolla podcast. Liberals have a conflict or interests at times that keeps them to seeing the big picture and prioritizing their causes.

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