Liberal opinion of Bill Maher's views on Islam...

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So I'm guessing this will be another thread that just hates on Bill Maher without responding to anything he specifically said.

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If you're comparing current policies of Islamic states, supported by majorities of Muslims, to policies from Catholicism of the 16th and 17th centuries, you're making Maher's point for him. How long have you been a racist, Antonio?

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Alcon, people hold troubling views around the world, many times due to their religion, but what I don't get is why are we talking specifically about muslims?

I'm sorry, I don't mean this to sound dickish, but exactly how do you, and so many other people, not grasp the distinction? People talk "specifically" about muslims because there is no comparable religious/political ideology in terms of sheer scope and scale that influences people across the world to justify the subjugation women, gays, and other religious or social groups as much as Islam. "But what about the Christians" is a stupid comparison. Majorities of European and American Christians do not support the death penalty for leaving the religion. Or for virtually any other sin that isn't murder. (Hell, and even then..) Even the "But, Africa!" deflection fails in this regard. Christians, to the degree of Muslims throughout the world, do not support the utter repression of female rights and autonomy, nor to anywhere near the violent degree that they have been held back.

Whenever people defend Islam from these criticisms you keep acting like Islam exists in this fictional scenario where its followers are equally as bigoted or enlightened as any other given religion around the world and are unfairly singled out; this simply isn't reality. They are especially focused on because Islamic society and mainstream Islamic thought for even purported "moderate" countries are especially violent and repressive relative to nearly anywhere else. There is absolutely no denying this. There has been absolute evil carried out in the name of all sorts of religions and ideologies, and I would absolutely criticize those too, but we live in the present.

Look, I don't believe in racial profiling, I think there's absolutely an unfortunate strain of anti-Muslim bigotry that has been born from all of this and we shouldn't give quarter to those people, and I have no reason to feel personally threatened by Muslims I would meet in my life. But we as people who support liberal principles need to stop deluding ourselves about the dangerous beliefs that are being fostered in that religion, and in those societies, and from those governments, and we need to get real about one major thing in particular: These views are not rare, radical sentiments only shared by the fringes of Muslim society. They are frighteningly common relative to nearly any other major religion on the planet right now, and they are dangerous.

To handwave away the repugnant views of these majorities of people by saying "well, they go about the rest of their day living like normal human beings" is absurd. Many terrorists have gone through their lives living completely normal day-to-day, everyone around the oblivious to what was really going on in their heads until the moment something horrific happened; and we're just talking about situations that pop up in the Western world, not the actual theocratic societies that may as well be making these outcomes an inevitability themselves. There is absolutely a huge difference between fundamentalist Islam and violent individual Muslims who end up terrorists, but the difference between fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam is that the latter is several orders of magnitude more common, and unlike the former, several orders of magnitude more difficult to criticize because people are afraid it might seem racist to not confront it as they are minorities in our societies, and any criticism of minorities is abhorrent to social justice activists. (Sorry that the co-writer behind Feminist Frequency is turning out to be a crank, traininthedistance.)

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And just to get this off my chest:

There are multiple lefties on this forum, TNF and Lief chief among them, that will beat their chests and openly advocate for literally throwing racists, sexists, homophobes, etc, behind bars. Who will completely decimate the reputations of individuals for the slightest of things, who see vicious -isms behind the mildest of transgressions and poor wordings.

There's an enormous irony in the fact that some of the same people who will go on and on about how wildly offensive American culture is because they think it's genuinely patriarchal, about how our entire system is racist and misogynistic top to bottom, are the same ones who run defense and play games of whataboutery when it comes to actually misogynistic ideologies, actual out-and-out racism, and actually violently patriarchal societies. When it's white American racism, it's throw those people behind bars. When it's perceived sexism in media, get rid of that dangerous trash. The tiniest reference to guns in political imagery is "they're encouraging violence against political targets, those monsters!" But when it comes to cultures that are far more intolerant, far more misogynistic, cultures and strains of thought that are far more accepting of violence, it's "well, what about the Christians" and "muh cultural differences, you're being racist and unwelcoming." If a politician here said they believe gays should be put to death, you wouldn't be defending them by saying "well, they go about the rest of their lives totally normal!"

If you're the sort of person that actually gets outraged by every little thing in Western society that someone could maybe, if you look at it the right way and click your heels a few times, be construed as bigoted and violent, there is literally no better target, no more influential of a target, than Middle Eastern countries and all-too-common fundamentalist Islamic thought. Start holding these people to similar standards or throw your standards in the f**king garbage and stop making such a show about how you care about the plight of women and other disadvantaged groups around the world.

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I'm not trying to play the "Stop complaining about your four-star meal, there are starving children in Africa" argument. I'm a bit miffed because some of the same people who would tell me I'm some sort of woman-hating monster for liking songs with "bitch" in the lyrics are the same people who would argue we shouldn't be too loud in condemning the more dangerous aspects of Islam because it might make people feel bad.

It's perfectly understandable (and normal) to not be outraged at all the bad things in the world, we have lives to lead and it's natural we would be more focused on what we see in front of us, but to be so hyper-judicious in your social justice activism yet handwave away (and be all "Oh, but come on guys" about) things like "these hundreds of millions of people think I should die if I say something bad about Muhammad and think women should be beaten and not allowed to drive or read" there's some contradiction that happened along that reasoning process.