Bill Maher and George Bush: Closer in thought than we ever knew?
You might be reading the title, Bill Maher Sounds Like Jerry Falwell and thinking to yourself, “What?! Bill Maher hates religion, and if I recall he blasted Jerry Falwell at the time of his death for being an intolerant, huckster con-man.” It is true that Maher has made a lot of money out of mocking religion, all religion, he made a movie about it called Religulous. In fact, Maher is constantly seen with his anti-religion crew promoting atheism and agnosticism.
So how could he possibly sound like a Christian fundamentalist such as Jerry Falwell? An analysis of Maher’s work and comments about Islam reveal he has a special and unique bias against Islam that goes well beyond his condemnation or mocking of other religions, which is unfortunate because he has a lot of hilarious and witty things to say about various topics.
Maher’s bias leads to moments where he loses his rationality and rather than comment with his usual sardonic logic, he falls into emotion and repeats worn out stereotypes and caricatures of Islam and Muslims. If that weren’t egregious enough, he also makes statements that are flat out empirically false.
So how does an atheist who prizes rationality and empirical evidence fall so hard off of the beaten path? Some might say it’s the weed but let’s look at the evidence for a second.
The first piece that I want to draw to your attention is a five minute section of the New Rules portion of Bill Maher’s Real Time.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39d1fHRHrM4&feature=player_embedded 350 300]
Maher is on the wrong foot from the very beginning. He starts his monologue by creating an exclusive frame that depicts Islam as the “other,” something that is “outside” and does not belong to the West. This might have something to do with Maher’s ignorance of history since Islam has been a part of the West for over a millennium now. There is no need for me to go into detail about the historical interplay and exchange of commerce, goods and ideas between the Muslim world and the West, nor of the presence of Muslim communities, but if the construct of the “West” is to mean anything it has to include Islam and Muslims.
Omar Baddar makes just such a point and a further rebuttal in his excellent article in the Huffington Post on Maher’s recent confusion,
The implied premise that Judaism and Christianity belong to a cohesive unit called “the West” which stands in distinction from another cohesive unit called “the Muslim world” is absurd. But even if one accepted this false dichotomy, why did Maher’s example of “the craziest religious wackos we have here in America” stick to nonviolent fanatics? Why not abortion clinic bombers?
And what about Jewish extremists in the Palestinian territories? I haven’t heard an argument for why their brutal attacks on western human rights activists accompanying children to school, routine vandalism, and other violent acts coupled with chants of “we killed Jesus we’ll kill you too” are any less wacko.
Structural constraints are another obvious factor to consider. You see, the Taliban can act like they do because they live in a lawless state, and extremist settlers can act like they do because of a culture of impunity provided by the structure of Israeli apartheid. So while Pat Robertson may seem harmless, by comparison, when he issues a death fatwa on Hugo Chavez, or when he blames a hurricane or an earthquake on gay sex or a pact with the devil or something, a useful question to contemplate is whether he and his followers would be as benign (if one could describe them as such) if they could get away with worse behavior. Thankfully, we live in a system that can enforce law and order; and our wackos have the alternative outlet of lobbying the government for wars against Iraq and Iran, and they send over 100,000 emails to the White House for the perpetuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, so direct violence from them is somewhat less likely.
I would just add one more comment to the prescient points raised by Baddar above. Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did and do have an active religious component in them. How else can we characterize the war briefings read by Donald Rumsfeld that were always headlined with quotes from the Bible? The Daily Times reported at the time,
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was sold as a fight for freedom against the tyranny of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.
But for former U.S. defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his elite Pentagon strategists, it was more like a religious crusade.
The daily briefings about the progress of the war that Mr Rumsfeld gave to President George W Bush were illustrated with victorious quotes from the Bible and gung-ho photographs of U.S. troops, it has emerged.
….
One of the top-secret ‘worldwide intelligence updates’, which were hand-delivered to Mr Bush by Mr Rumsfeld, includes an image of an F-18 Hornet fighter jet roaring off from the deck of an aircraft carrier.
On it were the words of Psalm 139-9-10: ‘If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast, O Lord.’
The cover of another featured pictures of U.S. soldiers at prayer with a quote from Isaiah: ‘Whom shall I send and who will go for us? Here I am Lord, Send me.’
A photograph of Saddam Hussein included a quotation from the First Epistle of Peter: ‘It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.’
The religious theme for briefings prepared for the president and his war cabinet was the brainchild of Major General Glen Shaffer, a committed Christian and director for intelligence serving Mr Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In the days before the six-week invasion, Major General Shaffer’s staff had created humorous covers for the briefings to alleviate the stress of preparing for battle.
But as the body count rose, he decided to introduce biblical quotes.
…
Mr Bush, a born-again Christian, believed the invasion was a ‘mission from God’.
Another of his briefings included the words ‘Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed’ alongside a photo of a U.S. marine with a machine gun.
And on an image of U.S. tanks rumbling through the Victory Arch monument in Baghdad was a quote from Isaiah: ‘Open the gates the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps the faith.’
A photograph of U.S. tanks in Iraq used a further passage from Isaiah: ‘Their arrows are sharp, all their bows are strung, their horses’ hoofs seem like flint, their chariot wheels are like a whirlwind.’
…
These are wars that have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and were instigated and supported in large part by right-wing Christians and Zionists. It is also salient to mention the involvement of Erik Prince the leader and founder of Blackwater, a security service hired by the State Department and who many consider to be nothing more than a squad of mercenaries. Prince himself is a Christian supremacist and in an affidavit from a former employee is accused of viewing “‘himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,’ and that Prince’s companies ‘encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.’”
There are many more examples that we can give, the Lord’s Resistance Army, Christian witch-hunts, American Evangelical collusion in the Uganda gay death bill and the war on Gaza in which Israeli soldiers were told by Rabbis in pamphlets to be “cruel” and not to “spare” the Gazan population, even “innocent civilians.”
So the claim that Muslim “wackos” are somehow uniquely more dangerous or wacky than extremists in other faiths is not only false, it is disingenuous.
However, Maher’s bigoted rant didn’t stop there, it also included his preaching about how “our culture” is better than their “culture.” I thought Maher would have realized by now that NOT ALL MUSLIMS are alike. Not all Muslims speak Arabic, live in caves, beat their wives 24-7, etc. It’s a point that As’ad Abu Khalil made painfully obvious to Maher and his guests ten years ago when Maher hosted Politically Incorrect (video at bottom). Did Maher just forget that convenient fact or is he just fulfilling the buffoonish American caricature he so often loves to lampoon?
Omar Baddar commented on Maher’s incoherence quite succinctly,
I described Maher’s tirade as incoherent because the “them” in Maher’s equation shifted from “the developing world” at one point, to people whose culture “makes death threats to cartoonists,” to “the Taliban,” and eventually to “Muslims” (not exactly interchangeable terms). None of these categories can be lumped into a “Muslim culture” because the Muslim world is simply too vast to collapse into a cultural category. From Eastern Europe to Africa, from Lebanon to Pakistan, and from Iran to Indonesia, we are talking about completely and fundamentally different cultures. In all five Arab/Muslim countries where I grew up (and went to school with girls in all of them), women are an integral part of public life, and many of them dress like Western women do. So I can assure Maher that many of these societies are not waiting for “the West” to lecture them on whether women can work.
The incoherent ramble got even more incoherent, after making a mealy mouthed and half-hearted disclaimer that “in speaking of Moslems we realize that the vast majority are law abiding, loving people who just want to be left alone to subjugate their women in peace” Maher went on to preach to Moslems saying,
“but I got to tell ya, civilized people don’t threaten each other…threatening, that’s some old school desert s***, and I am sorry, you can’t bring that to the big city. I am very glad that Obama is reaching out the Moslem world, and I know Moslems living in America and Europe want their way of life assimilated more, but the Western world has to make some things clear, somethings about our culture are non-negotiable and can’t change and one of them is Freedom of Speech, seperation of Church and State is another, women are allowed to work here and you can’t beat them, not negotiable, this is how we roll, and this is why our system is better, and if you don’t get that and you still want to kill someone over a stupid cartoon, please make it Garfield.”
The fact is Muslims didn’t react to the South Park cartoon. This was a controversy completely whipped up by the media that gave a group of four-nobody-morons far more attention than they deserved. If Bill Maher and his staff had done a little research, instead of focusing on Revolution Muslim, they would have asked the far more penetrating and relevant question of why so much attention was given to an unknown group that has zero credibility or support amongst American Muslims. Of course this would not fit into the preset narrative that the “Godzilla of crazy religions” (as Maher would put it) “must be offended and threatening.”
Bill Maher also should be put on notice, about how people who don’t believe in his “us vs. them” mentality roll. He should be put on notice about what democracy really is about. It isn’t about high voltage diatribes, and self-congratulatory head nodding, or putting down “the other”. There is also a duty to uphold justice and equality. Muslims don’t want to “assimilate more,” (last I checked that isn’t a condition for being Western) they are already here, they are integrated and they are contributing, and he should know the highest incidences of domestic violence occur here in America, where 2 to 4 million women are the victims of domestic violence every year and in which a quarter of the population will have been victims of domestic violence in their lifetimes.
After this show Bill Maher was on Anderson Cooper 360, and in my opinion it was one of the worst interviews I have seen in a long time. It was so bad that I wished I was watching Bill O’ Reilly or Glenn Beck. On the show Bill Maher repeated many of things he said on Real Time, but one thing was exceptionally noteworthy:
“I haven’t read the Quran in its original, when you read the translation there are many, many, many passages that are not peaceful at all, that are about killing the infidel and so forth, there are many passages like that in the Bible too, not as many.”
Is he serious? The Quran itself is about the size of the Psalms, and only a few hundred of the 6,000 verses relate to fighting and all of them have a context and explanation. None of them command a Muslim to just “slay the infidel.” However, the Bible is filled with exhortations to violence, wiping out whole nations, slaying pagans, enemies and non-Jews who live in Israel. This is one of the reasons that the Israel-Palestine conflict is so intractable, the view by religious Jews that not one centimeter of historic Israel should be owned by a non-Jew.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZN-FhDrB3A 350 300]
I would challenge Bill Maher to find one verse in the Quran equal or even a quarter equal to this odious commandment in the Bible,
“How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock.” Psalm: 137:9
He will be unable to as there are no verses that come close to advocating such horrendous behavior in the Quran. As far as his retort that Jews and Christians don’t follow such things, a simple search on the internet will disabuse him of that and reinforce the fact that there are people who take the Bible literally and are willing to exact Biblical commandments such as the one above (see Sabbath breakers getting stoned, and license to murder babies).
Part of me believes all of this is for attention. It seems that Maher desperately wants a fatwa on his head. He wants the status it would give him: the fame and the soaring ratings. He’ll have ensured himself a position next to Salman Rushdie as one of the victimized on the pantheon of atheist stardom. Maybe it will give him some meaning in an utterly purposeless life?
This whole episode reminds me of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a story in which the pigs lead the other animals in a coup overthrowing the human beings who rule the farm. Once the pigs come to power, they take on the same odious traits of the human beings that had led to the revolt in the first place. The pigs became intolerant, manipulative, chauvinistic, and shallow. Orwell meant it to be a story about the failures and potential flaws of communism but the analogy could be applied equally to many of the new atheists, of whom Bill Maher is one, who rant and rave about the intolerance, shallowness, and wide sweeping claims of the religious but like the pigs are taking on those very same traits.
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Please check out this very instructional episode of Politically Incorrect a few months after 9/11. It is very interesting and highlights the psychology of Islamophobia that languishes deep even in self professed liberals. As’ad Abukhalil really lays it into them,
Part 1:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu1jajbOnBw 350 300]
Part 2:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STY5FwyJ2O8&feature=related 350 300]
Part 3:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5ENu4zT92c&feature=related 350 300]
Part 4:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqnuKfCddK0&feature=related 350 300]
May 10th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Great piece! Maher does have a special hatred for Islam due to his political Zionism/unconditional support Israel. That’s where it comes from.
I like that you mentioned As’ad Abukhalil in your article. I love his blog. =) Like Maher, he is also anti-religion, but unlike Maher, he has actual principles. Every Muslim I know respects him despite differences in faith (AA was born into a Muslim family). The linked Maher show was not too long after 9/11 and it took guts to defend Arabs and Muslims the way Abukhalil did.
Funniest part of the show:
Lady: “…You’re so rude. I thought you were such a nice guy.”
AA: (straight face) “I’m not.”
“Part of me believes all of this is for attention, the truth is Maher wants a fatwa on his head, he wants the status it would give him, the fame, ratings will soar, and he’ll ensure himself a position next to Salman Rushdie as one of the victimized on the pantheon of atheist stardom. Maybe it will give him some meaning in an utterly purposeless life?”
I think that’s very possible.
May 10th, 2010 at 7:09 pm
I found that he mocks Christians more, in what I know of him. It appears to be so in Religulous.
May 10th, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Maher maybe be projecting his own insecurities about his society onto Islam as many westerners tend to do….it is interesting to turn what he says about Islam to American society/values because that is what his insecurity is about.
May 10th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Thanks for the article. I was waiting for Loonwatch to do this piece.
I agree Leonora, Bill Maher mocks Christians more frequently but I think this shows that he holds some religions in more of a negative light than others. I think Islam might be the religion he mocks the second most but has most vitriol against.
May 10th, 2010 at 8:05 pm
“Orwell meant it to be a story about the failures and potential flaws of communism but the analogy could be applied equally to many of the new atheists, of whom Bill Maher is one, who rant and rave about the intolerance, shallowness, and wide sweeping claims of the religious but like the pigs are taking on those very same traits.”
What nonsense; atheism isn’t like religion since it’s simply a lack of belief in divinity, there are no atheist states where women are flogged in public and there is no equivalence between idiots like Maher and religious bigots. Intolerant atheists limit themselves to ranting; I have yet to hear of any atheist stoning someone for being religious or killing children for being religious.
May 10th, 2010 at 8:38 pm
@Hobbes
How about militant atheists like Christopher Hitchens who support wars in Muslim countries for anti-religion reasons?
And atheistic Communism was extremely brutal when it came to suppressing religion and religious followers.
May 10th, 2010 at 9:27 pm
Hobbes:
“Intolerant atheists limit themselves to ranting; I have yet to hear of any atheist stoning someone for being religious or killing children for being religious.”
Whilst it is true the new age, militant athiests of the likes of Dawkins, Hitches, Dannit et al do not enact their intolerant, genocidal views that is simply because they do not have the means or power to act on their convictions. Lets not forget history has shown numerous examples of murderous athiests some of whom have been the most notorious mass murderers/dictators in history….Stalin, chairman Mao, Pol Pot are a few.
May 10th, 2010 at 9:45 pm
There needs to be a like set that seperates honest criticism from hateful bigotry. Seriously answer this question: what do u think should define that line?
May 10th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
“How about militant atheists like Christopher Hitchens who support wars in Muslim countries for anti-religion reasons?”
Christopher Hitchens’ support for the Iraq war has nothing to do with religion seeing as Saddam’s regime was secular not to mention Hitchens’ support for the Palestinian cause which has a strong religious element. Besides even if you were correct about Hitchens how would some guy’s opinions come close to theocratic rulers?
“And atheistic Communism was extremely brutal when it came to suppressing religion and religious followers.”
Atheism is simply the lack of belief in divinity, communism is a brutal totalitarian ideology that would have caused atrocities with or without a belief in God. That argument is popular beause it allows opponents of atheism (ie people who want to change the US into a Christian theocracy) to imply that rejecting religion will lead to gulags and the like, when in reality it doesn’t have any basis in fact. Never has a causal effect been demonstrated by any historian (much less a theist in a debate) between atheism and the actions of, say, Stalin. Stalin ordered the deaths of thousands because he deemed them a threat to his government –a government that was dogmatic and powerful. Indeed, on could easily argue that Stalin’s position was that he “replaced” God and inserted himself as the national deity with statues and portraits in all public (and many private) lands and buildings. Those that carried out his death warrants did so because they believed in Stalin –because they “worshiped” him.
May 10th, 2010 at 10:39 pm
@Arsha
Please cite evidence that Dawkins, Hichens and Dannit are ‘genocidial’ and ‘intolerant’ otherwise you just committed libel. The crimes of Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot are examples of what communism causes not atheism, atheism is just the lack of belief in God(s) that doesn’t support murder. Communism on the other hand is a totalitarian ideology whose founders preached genocide; Marx and Engels believed in the existence of ‘counter-revolutionary nations’ fit only to be exterminated. Also please read this:
http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/10-myths-and-10-truths-about-atheism1/
May 10th, 2010 at 10:59 pm
Hobbes, or Cagliostro, etc.
I let you have your say, which has nearly zero relevance to the topic at hand. I am going to allow Les to have the final say if he or she wishes to so since you got the first say. I don’t want this to get off topic this early in the discussion.
May 10th, 2010 at 11:05 pm
@ Les, thanks for the comment. I don’t have direct evidence that proves Maher’s special hatred for Islam stems from his pro-Zionist leanings. It was however surprising how he was gushing over Netanyahu on his show, and how he completely dropped the ball by having Brigitte Gabriel on. He doesn’t hide his pro-Israeli sympathy.
I think his anti-Islam views come from people like Sam Harris who said something similar about how Islam is the worst of all the religions, etc.
May 10th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
You just posted sam Harris’s website. That guy basically said it would be moral to nuke iran.
Watch him get his ass handed to him in his debate with Reza Aslan. He would talk about how iraq is an example of why religion is evil by shiite sunni violence, but then Reza Aslan would counter astoundingly by going into details of tribal conflict, sunni on sunni violence based on ethnicity, shiite on shiite violence based on ethnicity. Harris had no real rebuttal to it, when discovered that he made a religious cause over a non-religious conflict.
May 10th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
@ Arsha,
Excellent comment. I too believe that if some atheists had the means they would also act as terribly as people of religion. Sam Harris said some wild and scary things in his book, End of Faith, like entertaining the thought of a nuclear first strike against “Islamists,” support for torture, and murdering people just for things they believe.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/80449/
Harris responded to Hedges saying his comments weren’t taken in context, he was misquoted, etc. However, his response isn’t really convincing and just sounds like a lot of back tracking and apology.
May 11th, 2010 at 2:02 am
I think I’m in love. With As’ad Abukhalil.
This guy is boss.
May 11th, 2010 at 6:09 am
Bill Maher has the misfortune of continually falling into the trap of overestimating his own intelligence.Anyone who prides himself with the mantle of civilization and then thinks that what Israel does to the Arabs is
a good thing,is, pardon me, as dumb as a doorknob.
May 11th, 2010 at 7:27 am
@Hobbes,
You’re trying to rewrite history. One of the key hallmarks of Communism is atheism. Capitalism only tolerates religion as long as it is subservient to its predatory objectives. The statement that militant atheists have not used deadly force against others is a blatant lie. Ataturk, Stalin, Mao, Hoxha all come to mind. They destroyed Churches, Mosques, Synagogues, tortured and killed clerics and outlawed the religious way of life. Even Gorbachev had to come out and admit that it was a terrible mistake to persecute the faithful.
Western civilization itself is atheist due to its secularism, its destructive tendencies have not changed. Voltaire and the Pope were indistinguishable in their support for Western hegemony over the “inferior peoples” of the world. On a personal note, one of my older brothers was a Marxist in the 1970s but could not swallow the anti-religious propaganda which came with it and eventually left it behind.
Maher’s atheist act is rubbished by his relentless support for Israel, a Jewish expansionist state built on extreme Biblical interpretations. The fact that Maher’s fans have not picked up on this reflects their ignorance and intellectual shallowness. The “new atheists” are nothing more then recycled left overs everyone forgot about. For all their arrogance, atheism never produced a figure like Mother Teresa(who Hitchens callously attacked with his poison pen) or Imam Abdullah, the man who rescued my great grand mother(a Hindu) from the lustful eye of British slavers.
May 11th, 2010 at 10:30 am
You were right to say that Maher is looking for a fatwa on his head to get more ratings. This is a classic Muslim-bashing technique. Everyone wants their 15 minutes of Muslim-bashing fame. I hope Muslims will never give it to him.
Also, it seems Anderson Cooper is opening up to the Islamophobes. He has Ayan Hirsi and Bill Maher on his show to bash Islam and did not bring on a Muslim to challenge their bigotry. That’s really too bad because I liked AC. Not anymore.
May 11th, 2010 at 10:48 am
Jeremy Scahill has been the key journalist investigating Blackwater. He has obtained a recording of a private speech that Erik Prince gave recently where he reveals a lot of hair raising things.
Check it out: http://rebelreports.com/post/569103736/secret-erik-prince-blackwater-tape-exposed
May 11th, 2010 at 11:04 am
I think your title is literally on point. I ran across a piece on Maher’s show on the conservative blog, Newsreal, that essentially says that all that Maher sounded like a conservative and that it was time for him to take the next logical step and declare himself a conservative.
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/05/03/bill-maher-sees-a-difference-between-christian-and-muslim-radicals/
May 11th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
More on religious wackos running amock: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-mea-she-arim-mob-1.289570
May 11th, 2010 at 11:56 pm
Me too. And that would fit perfectly in the script.
May 12th, 2010 at 8:56 am
excellent piece, Ill be paying attention to this site more often!
May 13th, 2010 at 4:14 am
As’ad AbuKhalil has been nominated for the Anti-Loon Hall of Fame. I just watched the interview, and it’s unbelievable how stupid everyone on that panel was except for As’ad. It’s amazing how bad mainstream media–including this show–is. They do what they do with Ron Paul…trying to make him look so out there that there is no reason to even listen to him. It’s almost hilarious how some in the American media will try anything to remove the link between the U.S. military escapades in the Islamic world and the anti-Americanism in the region.
But anyways, I really think verbal debates are not very useful, since educated rebuttals are in depth, not just superficial two liner sound bites, which Maher excelled at it in that clip.
May 13th, 2010 at 9:59 am
@Danios
You have to check out some other As’ad interviews.
Debates:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd0_GHEoqnQ (As’ad destroying someone from the Israeli consulate over the Gaza “war”)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntr3Q3S3dmA (As’ad debating the pretentious Irshad Manji)
Interviews:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTuBuNAqrps (lots of good points made)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEEW9XJyZ3I (talk on Israeli apartheid)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaLvBoT5uqg (talk at Harvard on Obama’s ME policies)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIRp4qKp138 (airline security)
May 13th, 2010 at 11:47 am
Well Bill Maher is a hardcore Zionist. He is indeed no different then the Neo-Con Right Wingers that he mocks. Not surprised here.
May 13th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
Western civilization my a$$. Europeans learned to wear pants from Muslim emperors in India. The British liked it and then took it to Europe where they wore skirts before.
May 14th, 2010 at 10:49 am
***FXG Says:
May 13th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
Western civilization my a$$. Europeans learned to wear pants from Muslim emperors in India. The British liked it and then took it to Europe where they wore skirts before.***
Imagine if the word European was changed to African, Muslim or some other group of non-white, non-Christian people.
I think some author from this site with too much time on his hands would probably devote a five page essay ranting and raving on the inherent racism of most Westerners.
Oh, you denigrated Europeans and Western civilization. That’s ok then.
May 14th, 2010 at 11:53 am
FXG,
Take it easy. No reason to go off on the West. The West is okay, some people are just going through an identity crises.
May 14th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
Bill Maher is a typical faux intellectual know-it-all religion basher. He thinks he knows more than he really does. Like Bill O’Reilly, he thinks talking over his guests who disagree with him. His comments about religion in general and Islam in particular shows just how ignorant he is about history — despite being a Cornell History major.
May 16th, 2010 at 10:21 pm
@Ustadh and jihadbob. I was simply criticizing Bill Maher when he uses the us versus them attitude. I was criticizing how Bill Maher was showing his arrogance about western civilization when a thing as simple as pants were borrowed from a “primitive culture(Muslims)”. He seemed to praise the judeo-christian culture in that show in order to gain support. He conveniently forgets that Christianity and Judaism came from the middle east not the west.
As a person from India I could claim how my civilization is 10,000 years old and thus we are superior than you. There is no need for these superiority complex especially when the west is pretty much built upon ‘other people’ slavery, colonialism, imperialism etc which are all documented in history.
May 17th, 2010 at 5:46 pm
Excellent post…I also urge readers to check out this piece, featured on the blog Wide Asleep in America:
http://www.wideasleepinamerica.com/2010/05/ridiculest-bill-mahers-cultural.html
May 17th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
Very good link Jabbawock.
May 17th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Just read some of his other pieces. He’s a very good writer. Adding his blog to my Google Reader. Thanks Jabbawock!
May 29th, 2010 at 5:15 am
Bill Maher is hardly a “hater.” He disapproves of pretty much all religion but he has a special place in his heart for the one major monotheism that openly professes the acceptability of violent tactics. Yes he does support the existence of Israel, but he’s hardly a die hard Zionist, he critiques the actions taken by Israel on a case by case basis, as most intelligent people do. He will himself admit that many of his views have changed as the nature of the issues in question have changed over time, making the use of decade-old video clips from a show that went off the air before I was in high school(I’m currently a senior in college) is kinda sleazy.
You seem to be asking the West to tolerate intolerance, that would be the only reason to use Bill Maher’s “Non Negotiable” New Rules segment. Us vs. them was a line the Muslim community drew in response to Western exploitation. Was that exploitation justified, certainly not. But we’re in the modern age now, and there are certain practices that the West will never respect you for. For example, we’ve had women as second class citizens in the past, and guess what, women didn’t like it, men got fed up with it, and we have a better way of doing things now. You’re not working with some sort of knowledge or understanding that we do not already possess, and if you believe you are, then you are proving Bill Maher’s point about the arrogance of religion. Don’t bother attacking me about any sort of misconceptions about the Arab World, the Muslim community, or the Middle East in general, I promise you I have taken extensive care to familiarize myself with the Middle East (as a Political Science major, I kind of had to). I know that the Burqa is not required in every Arab State, but enough of them do require it.
And as for freedom of speech, we’ve never prevented you from showing or saying whatever you want, why must you make death threats to the makers of South Park. And for the record I’m not unfairly grouping you with the people who made those threats. You grouped yourself in with them when you decided to use a Clip of Bill Maher defending free speech against a self-proclaimed terrorist organization as evidence to equate Bill Maher with Jerry Falwell. Terrible things have been done on all sides in the name of religion and it is usually the west with their boot on the neck of some part of the Muslim world, we should be able to agree that the majority of the world’s people are good and that a few bad apples have been spoiling the bunch since the beginning of time. But at the end of the day, no “Christian” in the developed world has ever killed anybody or threatened to kill anybody for making a cartoon, the muslim faith and developing world simply cannot say that. The west considers freedom of speech more sacred than any religious image.
You write about Bill Maher as if he’s speaking in a vaccum, where nothing else happens, you forget that context matters as much, if not more than anything else. What he was doing was defending the free speech of a couple of guys whose lives were threatened by a group of young men living in New York who made the conscious decision to use their own freedom of speech in order to impose themselves upon others, seemingly oblivious to the irony. I’m not saying Bill Maher is perfect, but by saying that he is intolerant and Islamaphobic, you are in essence taking up the cause of the people who, in this instance, committed an act of oppression. I actually know of one Muslim immigrant in particular, an engineer from Turkey who came over about ten years ago, he’s one of the nicest guys I know, but he has told me outright, that if he ever runs into Salmon Rushdie, he will kill him on the spot, no questions asked. Again, he’s one of the nicest guys I know, but what the Hell is that about? That’s one of those Western values that I feel like we don’t share: I don’t feel like anyone should ever have to die for writing a book… EVER. It’s fine, you don’t need to become part of the world community, we can agree to disagree, but if the Islamic world does not learn to lighten up and loosen up it will not be Islamophobia that keeps the Middle East from integrating into the rest of the world. Because I’m actually proud to say that Freedom of speech is not going to leave anytime soon.
July 20th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
@Dn Reds
You wrote:
“But at the end of the day, no “Christian” in the developed world has ever killed anybody or threatened to kill anybody for making a cartoon, the muslim faith and developing world simply cannot say that.”
I think you are mistaken. I hear South Park was to air an episode showing a gay Jesus but was threatened by Christian fundamentalists with death which is why they decided to stop the airing of the shown. If anything, all this shows me is that while people are regularly exposed to the wrongs of the Muslims, the same crime done by Christians is often overlooked or ignored.
And yes Bill Maher is not only a Zionist, he is also islamophobic and intolerant. In the youtube video debate with Asad AbuKhalil, he takes the stance that the Muslims are the only ones that “fly planes into buildings”. WTF? Having a political science major, you should be able to see that is a highly unfair and biased statement to make.