Bill Maher and Sam Harris arguing with Ben Affleck about Islam

This guy has absolutely zero credibility.

The opposite is true.

 

Idiotic comparison. Interesting that you would compare Sharia to rape and child molestation, though. Considering Muslims' actual opinions about Sharia, they might not take kindly to that comparison.

Here are some actual opinion polls of Muslims about Sharia.

http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/...ligion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/





















If anything, the vast majority of Muslims in Muslim-dominated countries want stricter Sharia laws:

 

Have you debated the points of Maher and Harris?

 

This is correct, my statement was incorrect mathematically insofar.

Now, what difference does that make?

Care to comment on the fact that the majority of Muslims in Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan (countries with a population of about 300 million people, which is almost a third of all Muslims worldwide) thinks that the penalty for leaving Islam should be death? And that adulterers should be stoned to death?

As you are so good at math, care to calculate the number of Muslims in the countries polled alone who think that you should be killed for leaving Islam and stoned for adultery? Are we talking about just a few outliers, about a radical fringe here? Or are we talking about hundreds of millions of people?

How is Maher wrong on anything? He says it's like the Mafia - you want to leave our club, we'll f***ing kill you. He's 100 % right.

Do you agree with Maher or do you agree with Affleck?

 

I re-watched it, just for you.

So Azlan is right about two things:

- the female genital mutilation is more of a regional/cultural problem than a religious problem - he correctly points to Eritrea as an example of that. Obviously, in some countries where culture and religion are extremely interwoven, it becomes hard to separate the two, as religious leaders will say it's a thing commanded by religion.
- he is also right that Saudi Arabia is one of the most extremist Muslim countries in the world, if not the most extremist (let's pause here for a second and remember that Mathloom posted he loved it there and would love to live there...). I think that we should not be allied with that country, and that there is somewhat of a double standard if leaders of Saudi Arabia are embraced and we deliver weapons to them, while we (rightly) portray ISIS as the devil.

Other than that, it is extremely obvious that he is very aggressive and gets extremely angry when Islam is questioned (remember, he went from Muslim to evangelical Christian back to Islamist, even though his appearance is deceiving). As in previous interviews, he tries to ride on his "academic credentials" and tries to belittle Maher as "a comedian who is not sophisticated on the issue" (remember your quote, New Yorker, when you can't debate the points, attack the messenger? That's exactly what he is doing here).

He tries to portray the subjugation of women and the extremist beliefs in countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as "problems of the individual country" when it is clear that there is a common thread, there are common underlying beliefs, that there is a common "legal system" (Sharia). A majority of people in these countries hold the same belief that someone who leaves their cult should be killed, and that adulterers should be stoned, and they take those beliefs straight out of their "holy book". Considering that, it is disingenuous at best to say these are socio-economic problems that are specific to the country, but you cannot blame the religious ideology for it.

In general, he comes across as a passive-aggressive, arrogant, misogynist prick who hides behind an academic affiliation which he feels legitimates him to speak as some kind of "expert", in reality however is a paid propagandist for his ideology.

 

Why? I realize he is a leftist, and he has very strong opinions on various issues, where it is unlikely that everyone agrees with him on everything (conservatives won't like him because he is a leftist, Christians/Muslims won't like him because he is anti-religion, some leftists won't like him because he is anti-Islam), but he certainly doesn't seem stupid to me. Personally, I also find him funny.

I don't see how the US and Japan would need to be mentioned in the same breath as to the treatment of women, compared to the treatment in the Muslim world, other than for purposes of moral relativism. It's not the same, and it's not even close to being the same.

Yes, it matters. The more people clearly realize what we are up against and speak up against it, the better. It's way too easy to ignore things as long as you are not personally, directly affected. I feel that especially people from the left close their eyes to the ideological threat of Islam because it messes up their ideological positioning. Leftists are generally anti-Israel, among other reasons because for them, Israel/Jews = capitalism, and the enemy of their enemy is their friend. Then, at some point, they realize that the enemy of their enemy stands for things they have been up in arms against in their countries for decades, and in a much worse way. They have been fighting for rights of homosexuals, for freedom of speech, for freedom of the press, have been fighting tooth and nail against Christian churches for being "conservative and backwards". Suddenly, they sooner or later have to realize that the Muslims who they thought were their friends because they are anti-Israel are "worse" than conservative Christians in every single aspect of what these leftists have been fighting for.

 

Which is why I posted actual, unbiased opinion polls. Can you please address them?

A majority of Muslims in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt demands the death penalty for leaving Islam and the stoning of adulterers. We are talking about a combined population of 300 million people just from these three countries alone (I am not even going through the effort of counting all the other polled countries).

Do you think a majority (or even 1 %) of Catholic people in any country in the world approves of priests raping children?