Maher's channelling an alternate dimension left wing O'Reilly here.

The issue here though is that most religions have been interpreted radically at one point or another in time as Levin mentions. Certainly both Christianity and Islam have sufficient sections in their religious books that can be interpreted to incite extremist violence.

Islam being in the spotlight for its radicals has more to do with the social development / HDI measures of majority Muslim dominated countries. As Levin mentions, Islam can also be a façade or rationale for violence in the name of nationalist causes or as a reaction to oppression.

In many cases the Qur'an is irrelevant as those recruited, especially in lower developed countries in the Middle East can be illiterate and ultimately rely on an imam for any and all religious guidance.

Most terrorists are well educated and belong to the middle class. Case in point nearly all the 9/11 hijackers and these two clowns from Boston.

The christian extremists are hidden from the media - the US army have quite a few men prosthelytizing for the war against the enemys of christianity.

Didnt a few get in trouble last year for burning other religion's books?

Cmon....all religion has extremist assholes, the christians just seem to be so much better at hiding theirs from everyone in the west.

wasn't there something at the Air Force Academy too where some cadets were singled out because they weren't christian or something to that effect?

anyway. Maher pissed me off in this segment because he did all the shit we accuse Fox news of doing. Talking over the interviewee and etc. Why have the guy on if you're doing all the talking?

We get it Bill, you don't like religion, many of us don't either. But shut the fuck up Bill and let your guest speak.

Bill is slowly waking up.

you going to elaborate on your vauge nonsensical drivel or are you just going to troll?

If you think Bill is going to magically become more tolerant of Christian idiots and their religion merely because he argues that islamic extremists are *currently* more violent, you really don't watch his show much, do you.

Man Muslims are just batshit crazy. Turns out that when they're poor, bombed massacred and isolated, they get violent strains running through their culture. WEIRD

Sorry, but no. Just no. edit: I strongly disagree. I'm often annoyed by Maher's style, but not here. What he says about Islam being - in this day and age - the most dangerous religious ideology is simply evidence-based, factual truth. And the dickweed in front of him does nothing but throw strawmen (especially the tired "disliking an ideology can only mean disliking everyone who adheres to it") and that pathetic lie of an "insult": "islamophobe".*

There are right-wingers who will bash Muslims (mostly because they are brown "ragheads" and, more importantly, not Christian), but there are cogent arguments to be made against Islam, some of them hinted at here by Maher (e.g. Silencing by Violence), and to refuse to recognise that is to blind oneself from reality.

A fundamentalist is only as dangerous as the fundamentals of his (it's usually a "his") belief system are: I don't see anyone having problems with fundamentalist Jains.

_{*if you want a development of why this term is meaningless and manipulative, pm me, I've ranted enough here as is}

For a sampling of the two simplistic (and equally ignorant) extremes of the spectrum of attitudes towards Islam and violence, see @Babymech's comment above and just about any comment about muslims by @lantern53.

Lets do a challenge, you pick ANY religion or specific denomination of any religion on earth (except Islam) for me to draw (and specify any insult of your choice that I have to take responsibility for), and I'll draw it and post it under my real name in all the usual places. You draw prophet Muhammed just standing there, and post it everywhere under your real name.*

*If you are dumb enough to accept, I'll chicken out because I'll be worried about your safety, not mine.

"I am a truth lover" that's rich coming from Maher

Have to disagree there, if you had said that fundamentalist Islam is a threat I would agree completely but by just saying Islam is a threat you end up insinuating that all followers of Islam are extremists. And yeah I do believe that at the heart of it most religions are pretty much the same in that they all promoted good and bad behavior. But ultimately it comes down to people I believe, people will either listen to their better angels or use the power of religion to serve their own selfish desires.
Evidence based? Factual truth? You're condemning an entire belief system and billions of Muslims based on a statistically small group of whackjobs, doesn't sound very scientific to me.
If a fundamentalist is only as dangerous as the fundamentals of their beliefs then fundamentalist Christians are every bit as dangerous as their Islamic counterparts. I didn't even know what a Jain was until I looked it up, and being based on non-violence "Spiritual independence", "equality between all forms of life"(*) and a highly literate people I would say that sounds pretty cool.
But these things aren't so cool if you're looking to build nations and empires and ultimately become a dominant world religion like Christianity or Islam, BOTH got to where they are today by not being very nice.

(*) taken from the Wikipedia page on Jainism.

I don't see Fundamentalist Islam as a threat simply taking into account the body count. I believe we're up to 3,400 or something people killed from "Terrorist attacks" in this country.

What's the body count up to in the countries that this one is attacking? If anything using the US's logic they're waging a war of self defense. They also have much firmer ground to stand on in most every case.

What "evidence" is this that you're speaking of? I've asked you to provide it before, but instead of providing any kind of empirical evidence you just link to newspaper articles of people behaving badly in the name of Islam (which I could just as easily do for Judiasm or Christianity).

As we've discussed extensively together before, you keep implying there is one "Islam" out there that is practiced uniformly by all adherents as opposed to the reality--multiple incredibly diverse groups of people who believe in one god that sent a prophet named Mohammad to write the Qua-ran in that god's name. They disagree a great deal, however, about how the Qua-ran is to be interpreted in practice, in particular about the parts that reference violence.

I have no problem with people pointing out that certain interpretations of Islam can be dangerous. I do have a problem with people painting a broad brush and equating Islam with danger.

@hpqp How is it ignorant to say that Chechens have been bombed, massacred, and isolated, and are poor as all get-out, you preposterously pompous prick? No offense, just asking.

Debate, yay! Let's take this in order:

@00Scud00 You don't actually disagree with me it seems. Christian fundamentalism is (almost) as dangerous as Islam fundamentalism imo, with the tiny caveat that Jesus' message was mostly pacific passive-aggressive, à la "be nice to everyone here, me and Dad will torture our enemies in the afterlife", whereas Muhammed's was very much "death to the infidel, by our hand and/or God's" (e.g. s2:191-3; s4:89; 5:33; 9:52, etc). As for nation-building, it is more rooted in Islam - if only by virtue of being what their holiest figure did, contrary to the "kingdom-of-heaven-is-not-on-earth" Jesus (of course, Christianity's inherent One Truth totalitarianism is, as history shows, a perfect backup ideology for colonizing and war-weilding as well.
Of course people growing up with Islam will, for the most part, adhere to the good and ignore (sadly, instead of revolting against) the evil, just like with any other religion. That does not change the inherent wrongness and dangerousness of the ideology itself.
"You're condemning an entire belief system and billions of Muslims based on a statistically small group of whackjobs, doesn't sound very scientific to me.the comparatively greater (observable and quantifiable) numbers of threats/acts of violence done in the name of Islam than those in the name of other religious ideologies in this point in history " FTFClarity. If I mention >100'000person-riots demanding the deaths of atheist bloggers, which religious beliefs are most likely to be at the source there? Proportionally, which religious beliefs have, today, the most negative effects on women? Which population of ex-"religion" is most likely to receive death threats and/or be killed for religious reasons? I could go on, but I think the point is made that, proportionally, Islam is the greatest cause of religious-fueled harm today.

@Yogi, apples and oranges dear, not to mention your very narrow definition of Islam's toll (the sunnis bombed by chiites and vice-versa, and all the honour-killing victims, to name only a couple, would not agree with you). The US-wrought massacres in the ME are unforgiveable, no doubt about it, but most of the excuses made to justify it were secular, not religious. Fundamentalist Islam is above all a threat to its immediate neighbours (usually other muslims). Islamist terrorism is only one aspect of the ideology's dangers, and takes its greatest toll in Africa and the ME. Counting only US victims is terribly self-centered.

@SDGundamX Hello old debate-buddy; I will freely admit that I do not want to spend days and days compiling exact numbers of "victims of Islam" vs "victims of other religions", and I think it is rather a dismissive tactic to demand such data. That is why I formulated the question differently in the response above to 00Scud00: take a look at the state of the world, and simply compare. Does this paint all of Islam in a broad brush? You think it does, I do not. I do not find it contradictory to accept the wide variety of "Islams" and Islamic practices/interpretations while arguing that the core fundamentals of Islam, i.e. the founding texts and exemplary figures, can and sadly often do lead to or are invoked to motivate violence and unethical behaviour, and that at this point in history it is the one that does so the most. I do not imply that there is "one" practice of Islam, that is you projecting. There are, however, a set of texts at the core of Islam, and with it a set of beliefs (as you yourself point out).
There is a reason why "moderate" Christians, Muslims, etc. are called "moderate": they only "moderately" adhere to that core. And yes, Muslims disagree with eachother about how to live/interpret that core, and sometimes (like the Christians and Jews etc. before them) kill eachother over their disagreements.

Is there good stuff to be found in those fundamentals? Yes, of course, but they are basics of human empathy and animal morality, and do not require holy validation (this applies for all religious fundamentals of course).

You and many others seem to be unable to dissociate "hating an ideology" from "hating every individual who adheres to it, no matter to what degree". It is noteworthy that the people who accuse others of painting Islam/Muslims "with one broad stroke" are often guilty of implying exactly that when they make that accusation: "you express dislike of Islam and/or the acts of certain Muslims, ergo you can only be expressing dislike for all of them, because one=all!"

As for equating Islam with danger, there is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is to equate Muslim people with danger, and yes, there is a huge difference, one that people like myself think so obvious as to not have to spell it out until opposing voices accuse us of not making that difference, often because they themselves cannot. When the fundamentals say "believing something other than Islam is worse than murder" and "kill the non-believer", it is a dangerous ideology. Thankfully we know that the majority of individuals will eschew that part of the fundamentals, gaining the "moderate" achievement. This does not diminish the danger inherent in the fundamentals.

@Babymech It is not ignorant to say that Chechens have been bombed, massacred, and isolated, and are poor as all get-out. It is ignorant to suggest that these are the only possible reasons a culture might have violent strains running through it, and that one should by all means not look towards the beliefs that explicitly command killing people who don't believe what you do. Moreover, my history is pretty rusty, but of all the many places and peoples the US has bombed and massacred, I don't remember Chechnya being among them. The Boston bombing may have been political in nature, but suggesting that it can only be so and cannot have religious motivations is simplistic and counter to, well, reality.

@hpqp

Jainism tends to be one of the few exceptions, but even there I am sure it has been misconstrued for misdeeds at some point in history.

I would not disagree that in aggregate there are more Islamic extremists in the world than of any religion but that is not because of anything exceptional in Islamic ideology or core* texts. Leviticus to name the obvious, in addition to many passages in the Old Testament using Christianity as an example incite violence.

They key difference is Western society, the rule of law et cetera has largely normalised/PC-ed this text wilfully ignoring or purposely misinterpreting religious instructions to fit with modern practices. I don't see it at all implausible that substituting Christianity for Islam in the world, the alternate religion could not be used to incite equal hatred.

Let's not forget either than Indonesia is the most populous Islamic country. While I will not argue that it is free of Islamic extremism, it's comparable wealth, growth rates and relative government competence is the key factor that stops it from also being the primary disseminating source of Islamic extremism.

*A footnote on this, as you may know Islam as an extension to Qur'an has a number of sayings of Mohamed texts known as Haddiths. There are many of these of various degrees of legitimacy and repute. On that basis you could argue that Islam has the greatest capacity for inciting violence directly through these texts due to the relative looseness of its ideology.

@BicycleRepairMan

See above. Specifically, the ability to silence criticism is a by-product of modern technology interacting with lesser developed societies in the Middle East without a powerful central government authority figure or the rule of law. .

Functionally it's not that different to say the Spanish Inquisition which saw a church establishing itself in a position of authority through negative cohesion and intimidation, it just involves the confluence of different factors.

Tremendous amount of ignorance in here; not the faggoty liberal 'being a meanie' ignorance, but the dictionary definition 'you don't know what the fuck you're talking about' ignorance.

There's very little room for multiple interpretations of Islam. The Qur'an was written by a single (insane) author; with clear instructions on how to interpret it - literally; and how to resolve any inconsistencies within the text - the chronologically later passage supercedes the earlier.

The various Islamic sects differ over the authenticity of the Hadith, accounts of Momo's opinions and behaviour, which they are expected to emulate. None of them dispute the authority or the text of the Qur'an, which they imagine to be the infallible word of god.

There are peaceful, conciliatory passages in the Qur'an; which generally date from early in Muhammad's career, when he wasn't so secure in his position that he could afford to be a total cunt to non-believers. There are violent, xenophobic passages in the Qur'an; which generally date from later in Muhammad's career, when his success as a warlord left him far better placed to be a total cunt to non-believers. The chronologically later passages supercede the earlier.

The favorite example is At-Tawbah 5, the 'Verse of the Sword'; from the chronologically penultimate surah of the Qur'an it scrubs out any earlier peaceful passages by commanding that Muslims:

"fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)"

THIS IS WHAT ALL MUSLIMS BELIEVE

There's a peculiar general tendency to conflate the violent historical practice of other religions, like Christianity, with the actual scriptural commandment to violence of Islam. These are not equivalent. In any case the big M positioned Islam as a continuation and successor of Christianity and Judaism, admitting the validity of their prophets and texts, so it has to inherit their crimes as well.

Ultimately, all the religious are criminals. In abandoning reason and responsibility for their own actions, in turning over their volition to the dictates of invisible spirits, they have disposed of ethics and their own humanity.

Deuteronomy 13:6-9

6 “If your brother, your mother’s son, or your son or daughter, or the wife [a]you cherish, or your friend who is as your own soul, entice you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods’ (whom neither you nor your fathers have known, 7 of the gods of the peoples who are around you, near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other end), 8 you shall not yield to him or listen to him; and your eye shall not pity him, nor shall you spare or conceal him. 9 But you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.

There's little misinterpreting that either.

In my experience, Muslims are generally as horrified about the radical Islamic fringe as Christians are regarding Westboro Baptist Church.

@hpqp I’m not saying the Boston marathon bombing was political in nature, though I would guess it’s very hard for a radicalized Chechen Muslim to keep politics and religion separate. I’ve also never said that the Boston bombing was a response to any specific US action. Finally, I’ve never said that Islam isn’t batshit crazy (in fact I’ve said it is). However, I am saying that Islam is not fundamentally different from Christianity, which Maher contends that it is.

Poor, oppressed Christians do crazy violent shit with religious motivations and approval . Poor, oppressed Muslims do crazy violent shit with religious motivations and approval. Rich, comfortable Muslims aren’t violent, they’re just oppressive and keep others poor. Rich, comfortable Christians aren’t violent, they’re just oppressive and keep others poor. That doesn’t mean that Islam is a religion of peace – it means that the poor have incentive to turn their religion into violent action, and the rich have incentive to turn their religion into conservative passivity.

I thoroughly dislike religion and religiosity, but I’m not going to ignore the importance of the fundamental materialistic basis of conflict, dressed up as religion.

(by the way, a brief but reasonably good article from the wildly left-leaning and ignorant radical publication The Economist: http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2013/04/russian-politics-0 )

Er you mean the CRUSADE? Begun by a born again Christian? With biblical chapters etched into our gunsights? Where we 'don't do bodycounts?'

The excuses are secular (OIL THEFT) but how do you think half a million radicalized angry orphans see it? I guess our kids will find out..

Bill must acknowledge the truth that TODAY, the 2 largest, nuclear stocked, and most dominant and domineering military nations in the world are the US and Israel, and both countries are Judeo-Christian.

Maher is quickly falling into the trap of many 'New Atheists' and turning towards a strong denouncement of Islam (http://www.salon.com/2013/03/30/dawkins_harris_hitchens_new_atheists_flirt_with_islamophobia/).

The end of that article is particularly telling after having read the whole thread of comments here:

"Proving that a religion — any religion — is evil, though, is just as pointless and impossible an endeavor as trying to prove that God does or doesn’t exist. Neither has been accomplished yet. And neither will."

One thing that has been hinted at here but not overtly said is that there is a dominant, violent ideology which certainly rivals if not trumps the posited "evil" Islam in terms of casualties and suffering. Who builds the drones and the bombs and the fighter jets that rain fire from the skies? Who manufactures the small arms and ammunition that fuel countless civil wars across the globe? For me the answer is clear: oligarchical, capitalist states. Let's put them (and by them, I mean complicitly us) under the microscope for their acts instead of undertaking the Sisyphean task of proving that one religion is more evil than another.

I don't know of any country or organization in world history who doesn't say they want peace. Hitler marched under the banner of Peace, it's just peace within certain parameters. Same with Defense, I don't know of a country that attacks another without invoking their right to defend themselves. It's bullshit. It doesn't matter what books Islamic people read or Christian people read. People are going to justify the actions they want to take any way possible.

This is sort of like the argument that lays a Billion peoples deaths at the feet of Communism. It doesn't much matter what the "Communists" actually believe, only what they say they believe and what they do.

This is sort of a completely pointless argument anyway, the West has been waging horrific wars against the Islamic world for the past century, and we blame them? When you attack a country and destroy it you are responsible for all the carnage that follows even when not committed by you, because you created the conditions in which they could happen. That's called waging a War of Aggression. It's the crime that the Nazis were guilty of in the Nuremburg Trials and is considered the supreme international crime.

@RedSky I would add that the Jewish laws of Leviticus, Deuteronomy etc. are the foundations for Sharia law, but that most Christians throughout history see Jesus as having repudiated Jewish law (this is of course a question of interpretation), causing it to have "lived on" almost exclusively in its Islamic form. I still hold that as far as fundamentals go, the Quran and life of Mohammed are somewhat more easily used as unequivocal justification for violence than the New Testament and Jesus. (I would reference gorillaman's comment, but... see below)

I'm glad you brought Indonesia into the picture, as it is a good example of my argument. It may be the most populated muslim country, but it has repeatedly refused to let its central gvt be encroached upon by Islam, i.e. to become an Islamic state or espouse Sharia (despite the pressure from noisy fundamentalists).
In the one part of the country where Sharia is allowed to be enforced, Aceh, you get the same amount of unethical conduct and discrimination/violence towards women, homosexuals, non-jilbab-wearers, "adulterers" etc as you'd expect in the meanest of the Islamic states. And where do they find those discriminatory laws and the "divine" authority to enforce them? The Quran of course.

@gorillaman You make a few salient points (about the life/example of M. and the fact that, unlike The Bible, the Quran is the work of one author, alive at the time of the religion's birth) but you lose all credibility by
a) using a homophobic slur as a pejorative in your first line and
b) making gross (and false) generalisations, notably the all-caps
"THIS IS WHAT ALL MUSLIMS BELIEVE" which is so easily demonstrably false (simply ask the nearest muslim). If it had read "this is what fundamentalist muslims believe" or even "this is what all muslims should believe if they want to honestly hold that the Quran is the perfect word of God" then you would be a bit closer to reality.
Finally, the hyperbole of your last paragraph does not help your credibility either. I am as antitheist as one can be, and the gross demonisation of religious believers (aka fellow human beings) as criminals and inhumane, ethic-less zombies not only made me shake my head sadly, it also reminded me of how religious extremists depict atheists.

@Babymech You do know that most of the Islamist terrorist attacks were perpetrated by middle-to-upper-class, well-to-do educated men, not poor and desperate Jean Valjeans, right?
The reason I pointed to your first comment as one of the "ignorant extremes" of attitude towards Islam and violence is that, the way I read it, it illustrated the common rebuttal that often comes from the far-left when a terrorist/mass-murderer is found out to be a Muslim extremist: "it must be other political/socio-economical factors, it can't be plain old religious fanaticism" or "it's our fault for waging war on them". While I agree that the US should never have gone a-warring in the ME, it's often a false equivalence and ignorant simplification to exclude or minimise the religious factor. In hindsight it was maybe rash of me to read that much into your comment, but I hope I have made clear what I meant.

As for Maher's stance that Islam is (in this point in history, as he stresses) worse than Christianity: for my opinion see above, and feel free to refute my "argumentum ad comparatio" to support your disagreement.

I agree with most of your last paragraph, namely that greedy and inhumane capitalism causes huge amounts of damage (arguably more so than religious ideologies), but that is not the discussion here. What, pray tell, is wrong (both morally and factually) with strongly denouncing Islam?

As for that appalling, intellectually dishonest hackjob of an article you link to (which of course uses the term "Islamophobia" non-ironically, displaying it's dishonesty from the get-go), PZ Myers expresses better than I would* how such atheist-bashing fails hard, with the bonus of putting Sam Harris in his place viz. "the war on terror" (Harris lost most of his credibility for me when he defended racial/religious profiling, and Dawkins when he took the wrong side in the feminism debate, but I digress).

If you really agree with the lines you quoted, you might want to read a history book or, you know, watch the news. I would snidely suggest you go live the life of a woman, atheist or homosexual (to name only a few) in a place ruled by religion if you still adhered to such a belief, but that would be meanness beyond even me.

*http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/04/03/both-wrong-both-right/
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/04/12/why-should-anyone-have-to-read-your-goofy-holy-book/

Maher is partly correct that 'today' Islam is the most extreme of the big three religions but wrong in that it wasn't always so. There was a time, not very long ago, even up into the early 80s where extremist views of Islam were a weaker majority. Still a problem, but a minority. Then of course we got involved in their problems with the USSR and we put the extremists into power. Can we really expect anything less than the current state of Islamic terrorism and violence or wonder why the rest of Islam hates the fuck out of us for putting those people in power?

Where Maher is wrong is that Islam is the only religion this way. Sure you don't see Christians going over there in secret to blow themselves up but there are still plenty of people in those wars specifically to fight Islam. Let us forget as well how radical Christianity can be here. Murder, bombings, assassination against those who believe different than they do. All it takes is the right events and political mixture and Christians can and are just as violent.

Muslim fundamentalists seem to be more numerous and powerful than the Christian ones. The reasons for this have little to do with the religious fundamentals themselves as laid out in their holy books. Both books are full of soaring praise of peace and execrable lust for vengeance over imagined slights. Both books really do say that those who don't worship your way should be put to death. Whether you listen to the nasty parts or the nice ones has everything to do with your relative economic situation. If you are satisfied with your lot, it is easy to find the passages of your screed that advocate peace, harmony, and tradition. If you are unhappy and see yourself as oppressed, it is easy to find the passages that advocate war, upheaval, and radical acts of violence against the oppressor. Muslim fundamentalists are more numerous and powerful than the Christian ones because the Muslim countries are poorer. The radical messages get more traction among them. The more poor Christians we accumulate in this country, the more our own homegrown radicals, the WBC, will be taken seriously.

@hpqp The point is that there is no such thing as "plain old religious fanaticism" - it's always tied up in whatever economic and political circumstances are shaping the region and family and the person committing the act. Sure - religious people would like to think that their religion is separate from their worldly circumstances, but if you don't give credence to any supernatural dimension of religion, it also becomes impossible to separate religion from the other socio-cultural-economic-historic factors that also drive conflict.

I work regularly with Muslims who each are rich enough to buy my worldly belongings a couple of times over, and violence is the farthest thing from their minds. Exploiting migrant workers and suppressing equality and freedom of speech is quite familiar to them, but violence - despite their Muslim faith - is very foreign to most of them. Which of course is why Al Qaeda considers them traitors to Islam - they have too much in common with their supposed enemies the Israelis or Americans, and almost no common points of reference with a radical Muslim Chechen or Afghan.

Islam today is the most violent religion only in its overlap with regions that are good breeding grounds for violent extremism anyway - there's no reason to believe that in a country with the material preconditions the US has that fundamentalist Muslims wouldn't be more like the Westboro Baptists. By trying to indicate that Islam is in itself a greater driver of violence than Christianity, Maher conflates extremely disparate cultures and regions and obscures the real issues.

All religions are shit, Islam is even more shit right now. It's easy.

no one has bombed more than the judeo-christians
atomic bombs
fire bombs
cluster bombs
smart bombs
daisy cutters
and general purpose, gravity guided, high explosive

Christian Identity. You know, the Aryan Brotherhood's religion? Insult the leaders. I bet you 50K you'll be dead before me. I can at least hide from Islam...

It's about the modifiers.

Is Radical Fundamentalist Islam the worst religion on the planet? Probably, only because the Radical Fundamentalist Christians are numerically inferior. Islam isn't the problem religion. Radical Fundamentalist Islam is the problem religion and when you leave off the modifiers, you get these long arguments back and forth.

Can't you forget about hating the west long enough to see what's actually happening in the world? All the accusations against 'Islam' or more accurately 'Islamic extremists' are overwhelmingly in regards to the number of Arab muslims that they have killed in the Middle East. Sunni and Shia killings against each other are happening EVERY DAY. On a good day the worst such killings claim less than a dozen lives. Entire nations of millions of people in places like Pakistan uphold and support that blasphemy and converting away from Islam should be a capital offense. Those accused rarely make it to trial before being killed by an angry mob.

This is NOT about western abuses against Islamic peoples, and Islamic people fighting back. That's ridiculously narrow minded ignorant approach of a western obsessed mind. The crimes being committed and painting 'modern Islam' so badly are ignoring the west, and are entirely made up of extremists killing their (muslim and non-muslim) neighbors in the name of Islam.

For me, it's simply about percentages.

The majority of Christians and Muslims are good people.

Both religions have some funny ideas that most modern people find abhorrent.

Some, like slavery, have been almost universally discarded.

Others, such as the role of women or tolerance of homosexuality, less so. I'd argue that, for all its faults, Christianity has made more progress in this area than Islam. It's by no means perfect (see WBC, women priests, etc), but it's better than the way women are treated in places like Saudi.

The fact is that taking a random sampling of their congregations, Muslims are more likely to hold beliefs that are incompatible with modern human rights values.

Partially, I believe that part of the problem is inherent in the teachings of Islam.

But I feel that a significant factor has been ignored in this debate.

Muslims make up a much larger percentage of the worlds poor and uneducated, and that to my mind, is probably the most compelling explanation as to why there are more radical Muslims.

Well apparently you just can't fucking read. I addressed that in my post, The West, meaning America and Britain primarily has carved up and destroyed the Middle East several times over. The Atrocities that happen in the wake of that happen in the context of previous wars and atrocities. So if you destroy a country and suddenly there's no food and people are killing eachother for food, it's YOUR Fault. You created the conditions in which this horrible shit can happen.

That is exactly what The Nazis were found guilty of, waging a war of aggression. That is what we did in Iraq, it is not surprising to any knowledgeable person that this created power issues and ignited other tensions. In fact most Iraqis agree it was the US that caused the civil war and escalated the violence.

Next time try to read and maybe do some research. It is about Western Powers destroying and trying to create Nations and failing miserably, helping to start and escalate a cycle of violence in those regions.

Long story very short...I KNOW MORE THAN YOU ABOUT THIS ISSUE.

I would agree with you, if the poor and uneducated were the ones who historically caused or permitted the genocides of the world. Mostly it was the Richest and the Highly educated that worked very hard to kill and destroy as many people as they could. It continues today, very intelligent, very privileged people constantly defend a nations right to murder whoever stands in its way.

Sorry, but those are lame and old excuses. The Soviets were doing the exact same thing too, why do you singular blame carving up of nations on the west? More than that, there has never been a time in all of human history when that was not happening. Before the British empire it was the Romans, before them it was the Egyptians, along the middle of that was mohammad and his crews attempts at their own empires.

I'm not willing to excuse atrocities and crimes because of earlier atrocities and crimes. The Sunni on Shia and Shia on Sunni violence predates America by a few centuries anyways, and it does nothing today to dissuade, prevent or even retaliate against the West. It is vile and far beyond what is seen by proponents of any other major religion.

The very rich exploit the poor and uneducated to their own ends.

It's a lot easier to convince someone who is uneducated and hungry that the evil jew/gay/adulterous woman is the cause of his suffering than someone who is well read and well fed.

It was the middle class who had time, money and education that brought about the enlightenment. They were the ones who ended slavery. They were the ones who gave women the vote.

The very rich didn't want it because it upset their lifestyle and the poor didn't want it, frankly because most of them were kept in ignorance, and their priests told them it was gods will that homosexuals were evil, women were incapable of rational thought and that the white man was divinely ordained to run the planet.

The sad thing about Islam is that we really cant know if this is a fringe element that is violent or not.

"There are two forms of lying to non-believers that are permitted under certain circumstances, taqiyya and kitman. These circumstances are typically those that advance the cause Islam - in some cases by gaining the trust of non-believers in order to draw out their vulnerability and defeat them."

Muslims can lie to non-believers with the intention to convert them, so saying "no most of us are peaceful" could well be another ploy to gain trust. We can't know and sadly even if a Muslim joined the argument right now and said "no, we really are peaceful" I would be hard pressed to believe them.

Unfortunately I think Bill makes the best point here (one brought up by Orson Scott Card in Shadow of the Hegemon). Islam is the only religion today that you are not free to leave without fear of death. If it is to be a free religion that is followed based on faith and not fear that must change.

I will get to what is wrong with strongly denouncing Islam in a second....

As for the article, I hadn't actually read the whole thing but rather had heard coverage about it along with an article on Al Jazeera. Specifically, I take issue with Harris and his stance on the 'war on terror' (and aren't you essentially advocating for religious profiling by condemning Islam and its practitioners? Or is it rather that you identify it as a threat but wish to see no action taken?) I also have problems with Hitchens and his enthusiasm for the invasion of Iraq.

As for the quote I posted, after re-reading it, I think that I saw something that wasn't there. I believe that trying to prove that one religion is more evil than another is pointless. Reading history books, which oddly I have done, will not disprove that belief but rather reinforce it as the tragedy of all religions would be laid bare.

Finally, I would gladly take up your 'snidely', non-issued challenge. As a matter of fact, I've already done it. I lived in Indonesia for a year both in Muslim dominated areas and tribal, animist Christian dominated areas. While I am by no means an atheist activist, I nonetheless lived openly as an atheist and honestly answered the question of my religion (I have none) when it was asked of me. Nothing happened to me. Furthermore, I currently live on the Thai-Burma border in a Buddhist dominated country and do not hide my lack of belief when asked about it.

And that is where I come back to the problem of denouncing Islam. Just last month there were pogroms against Muslims by Buddhists in Burma (a smaller conflict than that which occurred last year against the Rohingya in Rakhine state). The proximate cause of this pogrom was a Muslim jeweler refusing to pay for damaged jewelry of a Buddhist woman. But more generally, it is a result of a campaign of extremist Buddhist monks issuing edicts about the evils of Islam and the dangers it represents to Burmese culture. Unequivocally condemning an entire religion invariably leads to this type of violence, and therein lies my concern.

While I find it intriguing that Bill Maher is defending Christianity in this clip, I find it even more intriguing that @hpqp is defending Maher defending Christianity in this clip. I double-checked to see if the apocalypse had begun before writing this post.

That said, I would like to interject a very basic fact, which is that immoral and corrupt behavior is natural to humans, regardless of what belief system they might claim. Therefore we must evaluate any particular belief system by what it teaches (and ultimately on truth):

If you want to evaluate Islam, look at the Quran. The reason there is radicalized Islam is because the Quran commands holy war against nonbelievers, especially Jews and Christians. It commands them to be murdered and says that even the rocks and trees will cry out against them. I am not condemning Muslims for being Muslim, but I will say that the Quran teaches them things which are contrary to the will of God. 200 hundred thousand Christians are martyred every year, many of them by Muslim extremists.

If you want to evaluate Christianity, look at the teachings of Jesus Christ and His apostles. If everyone followed what Jesus taught, there would be no violence at all. There would be harmony between the nations, the poor would be fed, clothed and sheltered, and everyone would love one another.

I noticed someone pointed out that the bible teaches that anyone practicing certain sins should be killed. Yes, that was the law in Israel for that particular time, but that was under the Old Covenant between God and the Jews. God made a New Covenant with the entire world through Jesus Christ which does not include those laws.

God bless

I totally agree g.

Hey Blurry Shiny, good to see your input on your favorite topic. Please drop us some of those old school jebus quotes and get at least 100 comments for this thread

I like being an atheist - we don't demand that people be in our special club or go to eternal hellfire.

People can and should be nice people without any christianity, faith or dogma - simple common sense, a well rounded moral compass, a general sense of not being a dick to people gets all that stuff done.

The one commandment: Be nice.

Would have been a good book.

Two commandments actually:
Be nice
Be honest

And @shinyblurry aren't you bring kinda disingenuous? Didn't Jesus say something like "I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it"?

I love how such a narrow clip provokes such wide-ranging discussion here on the Sift. I think the clip itself raises two central questions:
1) Is Islam - in this point in history - more dangerous a religious ideology than the others, and
2) Is such a question/comparison even relevant? Or perhaps "promotes Islamic hatred" as the douchebag facing Maher seems to think?

To 1), I've argued above that yes, it is. as for 2), raised mostly by the commenters here, I would have to say "no, but" to both. Religious (and non-religious) ideologies should be strongly and non-violently denounced whenever/wherever they do harm. In the US, for example, Christianity does way more harm (to women's/gay's/atheist's rights, to education, etc.) than Islam does, but neither excuses/diminishes the evil done by the other. The "but" would be for when people get accused of discrimination and "islamophobia" when calling out the evils of Islam.
The necessity of the second "but" is illustrated by @shinyblurry's comment: there is always the danger of right-wing and/or Christian fundamentalists taking criticism of Islam to be a defense/validation of their own strain of wrong/dangerous BS and/or racisms (to be fair, sb only exhibits the former). This is inevitable, and should not stop people from criticising/denouncing unethical ideologies, nor should it prompt amalgamation of "criticising Islam" with "hating the for'ners/ragheads/Muslims".

Beyond the subject of the video itself, the correlation between poor socio-politico-economico-etc. status and the adherence to extremes, a point well-made by @Babymech, @Yogi and others is an important factor in the higher numbers of "Islamist evil" worldwide, one that I am well aware of. There is no better way of turning whole populations to fundamentalist extremes (or at least worse ones than they had before; let's not fall into the "noble savage" fallacy) than by meddling with their politics and then bombing the hell out of them. The danger is to go to the extreme of excluding the very nature of those fundamentals from the picture, which is just as simplistic and false as is blaming them exclusively.

Moreover, I always shudder at the left-wing strain of argumentation which puts ALL the blame on the Western invaders, (edit: 19-20th c.) colonisation and co. This view relies heavily on the "noble savage" form of racism, which assumes that only "White people/Westerners/Judeo-Christians" can wreak political/social havoc in the lands of those poor, innocent "Brown people/Muslims" (those two often being conflated). Having lived in Africa for 5 years I have a knee-jerk reaction to this kind of self-centered guilt-tripping, which deprives the "Brown/Black people" of one aspect of human nature: the ability to be evil, to fuck themselves up without any help from the "West". They can, and they do.

This tangent may seem irrelevant here, but the reason I bring it up is because that it is this sentiment that is behind much of this "Islamophobe" name-calling in the US and Europe, and behind the difficulty many "Westerners" have in bare-facedly criticising Islam, when they often have no such difficulty with their "home"-religion, Christianity.

@aaronfr raises the problem of how to go about denouncing an unethical set of beliefs, and gives several good examples of how not to (it is noteworthy that the only example of violent action is one taken by other religious people; I have yet to hear of atheists using anything other than words and pictures to make their point). Hitchens’ endorsement of the Iraq war lowered my esteem for him greatly (somewhat saved by the fact that his stance on this was of no influence to anyone, contrary to his huge effort against the evils of religion), but it is noteworthy that he and Harris are the most criticised (and the least influential) when they hold such positions.
On the side of the religious, however, it is often the crazy fundies who are the loudest and, in certain areas (with the aid of socio-etc factors of course) the most influential. And they have, especially in the Quran and the life of M., a reliable and divine source of hate/violence-mongering.

As you say, peace and prosperity are some of the best deterrents to religious extremism and unethical behaviour (but not solely; cf: the US, Saudi Arabia and co.) This does not render unnecessary denouncing the unethical nature of Islam, Christianity, etc. As noted above, the negative effects of religion are still felt in relatively peaceful and prosperous nations today (in France, for example, homophobes of Christian, Muslim and possibly Jewish faiths are causing a significant rise in homophobic violence ever since the gay-marriage hearings).

So long as the distinction between "Islam(/religious ideology)" and "Muslim(/person)" remains clear, we should be free to criticise and denounce the former to our hearts content. (Note how "Islamophobia" shits all over that distinction; one of the many reasons that term should never be uttered unironically).

_{My apologies for the dissertation-length comment}

@hpqp Thanks for taking the best of what I said and ignoring the slight and/or sarcastic comments. Well done to you sir. And your two bolded points:

Religious (and non-religious) ideologies should be strongly and non-violently denounced whenever/wherever they do harm.

So long as the distinction between "Islam(/religious ideology)" and "Muslim(/person)" remains clear, we should be free to criticise and denounce the former to our hearts content.

http://youtu.be/zI5hrcwU7Dk

Israel acts like an asshole, yes, but it doesn't really fit... any of those words. It likely has nuclear weapons, yes. But it almost certainly has fewer than Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan...

He's an expert?

As "poor, bombed massacred and isolated" as 1.4 billion can be, huh? That must be it. They were DRIVEN to their violent, sexually-repressed, misogynistic culture by outside forces. I guess it really IS ok for them to fly planes into buildings, spray acid in the faces of young schoolgirls, dismember strangers watching a footrace, kill cartoonists who draw their prophet (or just... somebody because a cartoonist drew their prophet), and kick and beat and stone to death daughters who dishonor their family by going and getting themselves raped. Islam has nothing to do with it.

Ok.

Another thousand-yarder who translates "Christianity is less dangerous than Islam today" into "BM is defending Christianity". And some of you still feel compelled to engage this nutter? He's good for a chuckle, I guess, but his prattle is nothing but SPAM.

I don't demand anything of you gwiz. What I'm doing is telling you what Jesus said, which is that He is the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by Him. That we are all sinners in need of a Savior, and that the only way to receive forgiveness of sin is through Jesus Christ. Other than that, all I can do is pray for you. I hope you get right with God because I care about you.

People can be loving and nice whether they are Christian or not, because they are made in Gods image. He designed us that way. What you're missing is not an understanding of morality, but rather an understanding that you're morally accountable to Him.

Yes, Jesus said that, and He fulfilled it on the cross. That is why He said "It is finished". If you would like to understand the differences between the Old and New Covenants check this out:

http://outoftheoverflow.com/2009/09/22/whats-the-difference-between-the-old-covenant-new-covenant-in-the-bible/

My comment has nothing to do with the criticism of Islam. It's the fact that Bill mentioned Christianity without spending the next 10 minutes mocking it which I found amazing. The difference between Islam and Christianity is Jesus Christ. It isn't a competition; either you respond to what Christ has claimed or you reject it, and Islam is the only religion in the world which specifically rejects Christ in its writings. If there is any reason its wrong, that is it. That doesn't validate Christianity; what validates Christianity is that Jesus Christ is alive; He is the living God.

@hpqp

I'm at work, so I can't write a very long reply and besides which many others (especially @aaronfr) have already expressed ideas similar to what I would have said, so I'm not sure it's even necessary. I will say that I think you've done a great job of responding to comments made in this thread and that the tone of your posts has improved dramatically (I see you've even gone back and toned down a post using the edit function) from when we used to spar on the forums. I know that was something you said you'd be working on, so kudos for that.

Just one thing I would like to point out: Islamophobia can be demonstrably shown to exist. You can see ample evidence of it in the NYPD's illegal surveillance of the entire Muslim community in the NY/NJ metropolitan area and the hysteric outcry that accompanies the building of new mosques in many U.S. states. I understand why you yourself would not want to be labeled an Islamophobe as you've taken great pains to explain your problem is with the religious texts and teachings and not people who happen to be Muslim. But certainly, I think you've recognized that, for example, Sam Harris advocating racial profiling is irrational and not a logical extension of his arguments against Islam's teachings.

Can we not agree then that Islamophobia--defined as an irrational fear of or hatred of Muslims simply because they subscribe to Islam--does in fact exist? I think it's difficult to maintain the position that it doesn't exist in the face of the discrimination many Muslims face in some Western countries.

Are you serious? These assholes? Sure. I could really need 50K, but Im not sure I'd be willing to risk your life and a riot in the islamic world for it. but sure, I'd have no trouble mocking those racist scum any day. I'd also feel pretty safe afterwards. groups like that are used to living in a world where they are met with nearly universal contempt, and they probably thrive on it. It feeds perfectly into their "Us v Them/Jews brainwashes everyone"-worldview.

@SDGundamX

I cannot agree with that definition. The problem I have with the concept of "Islamophobia" is as I've stated above: it conflates the individuals and the ideology, thus causing those who use the term to be guilty of the error they are often accusing their opponents of. And that conflation lets it be used - by Islamists as well as by self-righteous (or ill-placed-guilt-ridden) lefties - to silence criticism of Islam. This term has been particularly abused in this manner in Europe, where the ghost of the Holocaust weighs a lot heavier on politicians and the media than it does in the US.

"Muslimphobia" may not roll of the tongue quite as nicely, but it would at least be a more honest and acceptable term to denote the irrational fear/hatred of Muslim people. Mostly, what people refer to as "Islamophobia" is a combination of religious discrimination, xenophobia and racism, and we should not be afraid to use those meaningful terms in our criticism of such discriminatory behaviour. It may even help to break it down in that way, instead of trying to wrap it up in a simplistic and ambivalent term.

There is another big problem with "Islamophobia" which I have already discussed here: http://videosift.com/talk/Dare-we-criticize-Islam, (the difference to be made between what one is and what one believes).

As for Harris' unfortunate and highly irrational/illogical defense of racial profiling, the Cephalopod Prof says it better than I can (as he often does).

edit: ach, how can I be such a cad and forget to thank you for the kudos? I still have much to learn, but thank you for taking note of my reduced antagonisation, knee-jerk reactions and general verbal belligerance.

Bill Maher just lying right out, like Christians haven't been fanatical or some shit?

Cmon, oh maybe it was some hundred years ago, but you know it's not the church fault they've stopped burning and crusading, it's the society and people that got fed up and got educated and stopped their bullshit - not the religion.