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Bill Maher’s Use of Opinion Polls of Muslims is Ahistorical and May Justify Violations of Their Human Rights

Bill Maher and George Bush: Closer in thought then we ever knew?

By Ayman Fadel

A friend forwarded me a September 2014 video telling me “you’re swimming upstream in your defense of Islam.” Not knowing I was defending Islam (I see my political stances as defenses of human rights of people, including Muslims.), I replied, “only out of respect for you did I waste 3 minutes listening to Bill Maher.” He then wrote, “Who better than you, to point out where he’s right and where he’s wrong? Please share your thoughts.” Of course, there are many better qualified than me (see after the blog post.) But, after some delay, here they are.

I’m not going to fact check everything Maher said in the interview clip, which begins at 9:45. But as an example of an incorrect fact, Maher said that over 80% of Muslims in Egypt support execution of former Muslims who renounce the religion of Islam. If you look at the actual poll, it is actually 86% of the Muslims who favored making “Sharia the Law of the Land.” In Egypt, the percentage of Muslims who favored making Islamic law the official law in Egypt was 74%. So the number Maher should have cited was 86% x 74% = 64%.

But in this blog entry I accept Maher’s contention that vast numbers of Muslims reject the liberal views that he believes are essential for good society, and I’ll ignore the vast numbers of Muslims who do hold liberal views. I’ll also ignore the polls which show non-Muslims, including populations in the United States, who hold illiberal views.

I’ll ignore the arguments my brother makes on why it is possible for liberal polities to function with people with illiberal views.

My criticism is that Maher’s message is ahistorical and its policy implications are at best unclear and at worst genocidal.

In a few sentences, I want to say what Edward Said said in Orientalism & summarized in Covering Islam. A poll reveals a snippet of a person’s opinion at a given moment. Is the reason the person answered that way, i.e. held that illiberal view, that he or she is a Muslim? Or is the reason that the person’s analysis of his or her country’s history leads him or her to think that only Divine Intervention can improve it? What would a series of polls have revealed about Muslims? Have their ideas changed over time? If so, wouldn’t it mean that their opinions on things at any one time is more a product of their secular, historical circumstances than their religion? And the corollary would then be that a change of their secular, historical circumstances would change their religious opinions.

Are Afghanis who grew up with war and exile since 1979 likely to have liberal opinions? When the “civilized” and “liberal” world established the Zionist entity on Palestinians’ land in 1947 and then ignored Palestinians’ appeals to liberal ideals for 50 years, is it surprising that many Palestinians have come to see those liberal ideals as false? Why did ISIS start in Iraq & Syria? Does the United States’s destruction of Iraq have anything to do with it?

Focusing on the religion of Islam allows United States “liberals” like Maher to completely ignore policies which have contributed to the circumstances which gave rise to illiberal beliefs among Muslims.

Secondly, I ask Maher what does he think good liberals should do with this information. Should they discriminate against Muslims in housing and employment? Should they support policies which kill large numbers of Muslims, like invasions of Muslim-majority countries and unconditional support for dictatorships which promise to suppress Islamists and for Israel, the majority of whose victims are Muslim? Should they regularly accost their Muslim friends, co-workers, neighbors and strangers with criticisms of the religion of Islam? Should liberals oppose zoning of new masjids and private Muslim religious schools and cemeteries? Should they encourage popular culture portrayals of Muslims as bad people? Should liberals approve of any criticism of Muslims or of historical Muslim figures, regardless of their accuracy? Should liberals support ideological tests for immigration?

I’ll listen to atheists’ thoughtful criticism of Muslims, Islam, the Messenger Muhammad ﷺ and religion in general, but I won’t listen to them if they also support violations of Muslims’ human rights, like Sam Harris and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

In the course of writing this blog entry, I looked up other articles criticizing Bill Maher’s statements about Muslims. I did not use them, but I thought I’d include them below for reference.

Sonia Soraiya’s article ends with a passage worth contemplating:

I think Maher confuses compassion with idiocy. Compassion is a quality that has nothing to do with how smart or how right you are. It’s a quality that is at the root of not wanting to make generalizations, and at the root of wanting to say things that do not horrifically offend other systematically oppressed people. I fully believe that Maher doesn’t understand those well-meaning liberals, those politically correct assholes. I would just rather be one of them, I think, than to merely be right; I would like to be able to understand another point of view, from time to time. And especially on a day like yesterday, I would like to be able to feel compassion.

Bill Maher did in fact criticize the idea of a national registry for Muslims, although he did not explain why. I wonder if he would have done so had President Obama or candidate Hillary Clinton had proposed it instead of candidate Donald Trump.

Originally published on AymPlaying

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    • Joey Sanders

      Lol. If you are going to have people on that make dishonest arguments, then why not have a bunch of people on who deny the Holocaust? Have them on all the time spewing their false rhetoric. It’s a debate. Right?

    • silus

      A debate panel without a debate wouldn’t work.

    • Daniel S.

      Maher trotted out the same tired trope that Milo and some other professional haters have re: “few books translated into arabic.”

      They want to talk about translations instead of bilingual/trilingual speakers since they know (or maybe don’t) that muslims definitely speak more languages than americans. Translations become superfluous if you actually, um, learn the original language.

      Also, Maher falls prey to the cottage industry of islamophobes and fake muslims that prop up “the empty kameez” aka Asra Nomani. She thoroughly showcased herself as an airhead on Maher’s show even though she was never on the defensive… she just can’t even hold a conversation.

    • HSkol

      There are victims within any particular group of people. Far louder and more boisterous, however, than any genuine victim – be that of violence, discrimination, or whatnot – are those who victimize themselves with their persecution complexes … only to dig their generalized and non-nuanced belief systems’ heels into the rug and promote victimization of those not like them – at times, perhaps without even realizing as much. Maher is far too full of himself and his own fears to embrace a compassion that just may help to heal this ridiculous little rock we find ourselves on.

    • GaribaldiOfLoonwatch

      Thanks for the links

    • Thank you. I’m a big fan of Haqiqatjou’s work.

    • Joey Sanders

      Bill Maher claims to be a liberal, but he uses his show to give a forum to some of the biggest right-wing nuts of all time. He is the one who made Ann Coulter famous through her many appearances on Politically Incorrect. Recently, he gave Milo his own time to rant on his show. Then, not too long ago, he had Roger Stone on. This is somebody who is a known liar, but still, Bill Maher gives him a forum on his show.

      More than any “liberal”, he continues to use his show as a platform of spewing Islamophoic rhetoric that is false. Also, he has had on some of the biggest Islamophobes of all time. This list includes Geller, Gabriel, Nomani, Harris and more.

      This loon continually talks about hating all religions, but he chooses to support Israel which calls itself a Jewish state. He has yet to criticize Jews who think God handed them a deed to a property. I always found it funny that one of the crazy Jews he had in his movie Religulous was a rabbi who did not believe in the existence of Israel.

      Hopefully, one day, his show will get cancelled. Unfortunately that will not be for years to come.

    • 1DrM

      Who died and decided “liberalism” or any other backward “ism” out of the bowels of Europe was the benchmark for humanity? Muslims hold to a higher standard rather then becoming carbon copies of euroPeons.

      Zionism is Maher’s religion so why bother thinking this untalented jester has anything to offer but recycled hasbaRat talking points?

    • Joey Sanders

      You are 100% percent correct.

    • GaribaldiOfLoonwatch

      I want to do a comprehensive take down of this trope Maher has been pushing by using the Pew Poll data in the manner that he does. It really is to dehumanize Muslims and justify wars and an assault on Muslims’ human rights.

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