Bill Maher and Sam Harris arguing with Ben Affleck about Islam

The question is what you define as "religious freedom".

It is obvious that you are having a very hard time intellectually in reconciling these poll results. I never called that part of the poll stupid. I am calling you stupid (but that's obvious to everyone anyway).

Let me try and help you:

"Religious freedom" isn't defined further in the poll, other than "Muslims who say non-Muslims in their country are very free to practice their religion and consider this a good thing".

At the same time, 250 million Muslims in 5 countries alone say that Muslims who no longer want to be Muslims should be put to death.

Now, even someone who is intellectually challenged like you would realize that these two poll results seem contradictory at first.

One could think that perhaps they are okay with others practicing their religion, but they are not okay with Muslims leaving their religion to join another one.

That in itself would already not be "religious freedom". Real freedom would mean that you are actually free to leave one and join another one, right?

But a strong majority think it is religious freedom that people of other religions are not killed or prosecuted. They do not seem to think that it is not religious freedom that someone should be killed when they want to leave Islam.

The issue is clearly that they have a very different understanding of "religious freedom" than we have.

If you go through the list of regions:

E.g. in Middle East/North Africa, "religious freedom" in almost all countries clearly does not include proselytizing for anything other than Islam. Yet, the poll respondents seem to think that e.g. Christians are "very free to practice their religion and that is a good thing".

The Daily Telegraph is certainly not an ultra right-wing publication, so it should be an acceptable source:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/rel...anity-close-to-extinction-in-Middle-East.html

Christianity 'close to extinction' in Middle East
Christianity faces being wiped out of the “biblical heartlands” in the Middle East because of mounting persecution of worshippers, according to a new report.

The study warns that Christians suffer greater hostility across the world than any other religious group.
And it claims politicians have been “blind” to the extent of violence faced by Christians in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
The most common threat to Christians abroad is militant Islam, it says, claiming that oppression in Muslim countries is often ignored because of a fear that criticism will be seen as “racism”.
It warns that converts from Islam face being killed in Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Iran and risk severe legal penalties in other countries across the Middle East.
The report, by the think tank Civitas, says: “It is generally accepted that many faith-based groups face discrimination or persecution to some degree.

"A far less widely grasped fact is that Christians are targeted more than any other body of believers.”
It cites estimates that 200 million Christians, or 10 per cent of Christians worldwide, are “socially disadvantaged, harassed or actively oppressed for their beliefs.”
“Exposing and combating the problem ought in my view to be political priorities across large areas of the world. That this is not the case tells us much about a questionable hierarchy of victimhood,” says the author, Rupert Shortt, a journalist and visiting fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford.
He adds: “The blind spot displayed by governments and other influential players is causing them to squander a broader opportunity. Religious freedom is the canary in the mine for human rights generally.”
The report, entitled Christianophobia, highlights a fear among oppressive regimes that Christianity is a “Western creed” which can be used to undermine them.
State hostility towards Christianity is particularly rife in China, where more Christians are imprisoned than in any other country in the world, according to the report.
It quotes Ma Hucheng, an advisor to the Chinese government, who claimed in an article last year that the US has backed the growth of the Protestant Church in China as a vehicle for political dissidence.
“Western powers, with America at their head, deliberately export Christianity to China and carry out all kinds of illegal evangelistic activities,” he wrote in the China Social Sciences Press.
“Their basic aim is to use Christianity to change the character of the regime...in China and overturn it,” he added.
The “lion’s share” of persecution faced by Christians arises in countries where Islam is the dominant faith, the report says, quoting estimates that between a half and two-thirds of Christians in the Middle East have left the region or been killed in the past century.
“There is now a serious risk that Christianity will disappear from its biblical heartlands,” it claims.
The report shows that “Muslim-majority” states make up 12 of the 20 countries judged to be “unfree” on the grounds of religious tolerance by Freedom House, the human rights think tank.
It catalogues hundreds of attacks on Christians by religious fanatics over recent years, focusing on seven countries: Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Nigeria, India, Burma and China.
It claims George Bush’s use of the word “crusade” after the September 11 attacks on New York created the impression for Muslims in the Middle East of a “Christian assault on the Muslim world”.
“But however the motivation for violence is measured, the early twenty-first century has seen a steady rise in the strife endured by Christians,” the report says.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq left Iraqi Christians “more vulnerable than ever”, highlighted by the 2006 beheading of a kidnapped Orthodox priest, Fr Boulos Iskander, and the kidnapping of 17 further priests and two bishops between 2006 and 2010.
“In most cases, those responsible declared that they wanted all Christians to be expelled from the country,” the report says.
In Pakistan, the murder last year of Shahbaz Bhatti, the country’s Catholic minister for minorities, “vividly reflected” religious intolerance in Pakistan.
Shortly after his death it emerged that Mr Bhatti had recorded a video in which he declared: “I am living for my community and for suffering people and I will die to defend their rights.
"I prefer to die for my principles and for the justice of my community rather than to compromise. I want to share that I believe in Jesus Christ, who has given his own life for us.”
The report also warns that Christians in India have faced years of violence from Hindu extremists. In 2010 scores of attacks on Christians and church property were carried out in Karnataka, a state in south west India.
And while many people are aware of the oppression faced in Burma by Aung San Suu Kyi and other pro-democracy activists, targeted abuse of Christians in the country has been given little exposure, the report says.
In some areas of Burma the government has clamped down on Christian protesters by restricting the building of new churches.
“Openly professing Christians employed in government service find it virtually impossible to get promotion,” it adds.


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Keep in mind that Christians even "enjoy" "special protection" under Islam. The situation for people who believe in something entirely different that didn't exist when the Koran was made up is even worse!

So all this part of the poll says is that in theory, as an abstract principle they believe that "religious freedom is a good thing". But when it comes down to what this means concretely and in practice - 250 million Muslims from 5 countries alone want to see someone killed for leaving Islam. If that is their understanding of "religious freedom", then that is not worth much.

 

If you asked a poll asking all the men in Muslim countries "do women have enough freedom in your country", I bet you would get a 90 % + yes.

That doesn't mean that women actually have enough freedom in their country and culture by Western civilized standards, though.

It's the same with the "religious freedom" question. Yes, most of them think that non-Muslims have more than enough religious freedom in their countries.

That does not mean that that is actually the case.

And the best proof of that is the answer to the question what should happen with a Muslim that decides to leave Islam: A vast majority of Muslims in several very populous countries thinks that they should be killed for leaving Islam. That is not "religious freedom", yet, they think they have it.

It's not surprising that you do not understand that intellectually.

 

I have read it and I posted the link to it on page 2 of the thread (post 29). Thanks for the re-post and for admitting that you have not read it. You should read it, too.

 

News flash: You should read the poll.
News flash 2: I didn't say that one part of it is flawed. In fact, I explained from my point of view how the results fit together.
News flash 3: You would make a better poster if you read the material first, rather than babbling senselessly.

Oh, and I see that Sweet Lou/New Yorker has edited some of the insults he had directed at me. One of them was that I was "racist" (apparently because of my criticism of the ideology of radical Islam).

Here is something for you, New Yorker:

 

By the way, here is more from the poll:



This is for those who say that honor killings "have nothing to do with Islam, but are merely a cultural practice".

Clearly, and without exception, there is a strong correlation between being against honor killings and against Sharia.

 

I see the trap you are trying to build:

That you are trying to create a false equivalency between antisemitism and "Islamophobia" (which is a misnomer and a propaganda word).

To answer your question in brief:

It applies to judaism as a movement and ideology having to accept being questioned and challenged as an idea, without threatening to cut people's heads off just for that. Judaism needs to accept that just like any other religion or ideology. There is no "insult" in that.

However, antisemitism and "Islamophobia" are not the same thing.

First of all: European Muslims have nothing to fear from European Jews. European Jews have everything to fear from European Muslims.

Secondly, Jews are not out to kill "infidels". Too many Islamists sadly are. To try and create a false equivalency here between victims and perpetrators means downplaying the holocaust itself.

Thirdly, here is an article for you that explains it in more detail:

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Anti-Semitism-is-not-the-same-as-Islamophobia

The Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) of the Technical University in Berlin has scheduled a conference on December 8 titled "The concept of the enemy Muslim - concept of the enemy Jew." In publicity for this conference the ZfA writes that the "paradigm" of accusations against Muslims is known from "the history of anti-Semitism." It seems that the organizers feel there is a moral equivalence between garden-variety prejudice (portrayed as "Islamophobia") and anti-Semitism. This is a dangerous course, particularly in Germany, which saw the quintessential manifestation of anti-Semitism in modern times. Quite aside from the fact that Judaism embraces both a race and a religion, whereas Islam is strictly a religion, anti-Semitism is different than other forms of prejudice or racism. Whereas the racist view of blacks, for example, holds that they are "below" whites, anti-Semites think Jews are planning to rule the world. The Israel Lobby by American academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt is just one example of this viewpoint. Anti-Semitism was the motif for the Holocaust. Those unprecedented crimes combined religious Jew-hatred, quasi-scientific racial theories, and modern anti-Semitism in all its forms, including a comprehensive worldview. It is the anti-Semitic worldview that distinguishes anti-Semitism from racism. This irrationality on a global scale is hardly new. As early as 1543, Martin Luther blamed the Jews for almost every evil on earth. Later, during the early 20th century, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion appeared. This poor Russian forgery had a significant impact on German and European thought, and is now a hot item in the Muslim world. In it, Jews are not portrayed as second-class human beings, as in other racist thinking. On the contrary, they are seen as would-be lords of the world - an evil, unseen power behind everything. The Protocols contend that Jews run the media, organize wars and establish or control national financial systems. One of its more overtly bizarre claims is that Jews organize the construction of subways (which were novelties in New York or London at that time) in order to literally undermine societies. No other group of people has ever been blamed for such a welter of "evils" - capitalism, communism, liberalism and humanism. None of these anti-Semitic accusations are used against Muslims today. In fact, Islamic terrorists use these very canards in an attempt to justify their anti-Jewish actions. RACISM HAS a rational dimension; its use to justify exploitation is one central purpose. Anti-Semitism, with its irrational, implacably genocidal dimension, is totally different. Furthermore, there are some Islamicists who openly advocate the takeover of Europe, the West and the world. The nonsense in the Protocols notwithstanding, the Jews have never had or claimed such a goal. To equate anti-Semitism with racism, let alone to try and draw a parallel with the term Islamophobia (a word invented by the Islamic Republic of Iran), is therefore dangerous. It has nothing to do with scholarly research, nor with an accurate examination of the real and significant threats posed by Islamic Jihad. A center for the study of anti-Semitism should be aware of these facts, and not equate anti-Semitism with Islamophobia or other forms of prejudice. That kind of postmodern relativist philosophy is just another way of refusing to research anti-Semitism as a phenomenon sui generis. The Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) and its director Prof. Wolfgang Benz, if they really believe Muslims in contemporary Germany are threatened like the Jews were, are badly misinformed. If the ZfA equates anti-Semitism with criticism of Islamic Jihad, this would signal the end of serious research on either subject at that center.

 

English, please?

Also, tl;dw

 

So he is saying that

- one should not demonize Maher and Harris - ok
- the next 6 minutes are some garbled English/Arabic stuff that is all over the place and makes zero sense to me

How much longer will this go on? Is he ever going to get to making a point?

Okay, I watched another 2 minutes...the longer it goes on, the more confused it gets. Can't listen to this nonsense any longer, seeing that the video is 40 minutes long and I have no idea if he is ever going to say anything that remotely makes sense.

Can anyone summarize and give me the cliffnotes?