Let’s listen to Bill Maher: On Paris, religion and race, Maher walks a fascinating and tricky line

He lists a number of reasons that Maher is wrong that have nothing to do with his education. In the interviews I have seen, Aslan mentions his education when people make stupid statements like "why did you, as a Muslim, write a book about Jesus," at which point Aslan outlined his background and education as a scholar of religions.

He fully admits that women's rights issues exist in many countries. However, in many Muslim majority countries, women's rights aren't issues like they are in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Their women's issues are more analogous to those in the United States than with oppressive, autocratic regimes.

He didn't say there aren't issues in Bangladesh, he said that the issues aren't as bad as those in Saudi Arabia, which, objectively, they aren't.

 

Actually, there are aspects of women's rights in Bangladesh that are actually worse than in Saudi. There is a greater percentage of child marriages in Bangladesh for example. Find me a Muslim majority country that is analogous to the United States when it comes to women's issues.

Aslan continuously points out how Mahr is just a comedian and doesn't have any nuance in his rhetoric when Aslan has the same amount of nuance as Mahr when the best he can do is point how Bangladesh had a female head of state. He uses the argument from authority fallacy in plenty of his rhetoric. You just watched that atrocious Fox News interview and believe that is what I'm referring to. No, watch more of his debates that are posted on youtube. He continuously uses the argument from authority card.

Notice Aslan will never engage in a nuanced debate about the actual text of the Quran, Hadith and the tafsir that comes along with it. All his rhetoric stems from the notion that everyone interprets religion differently thus actual text of the dogma doesn't matter which is asinine. He literally believes no religious dogma is inherently more violent than another and that they are all equally the same. Every debate, same exact rhetoric. This guy just espouses empty rhetoric with no basis behind it. I'm sorry, but there are much better Muslim apologists out there that actually are wiling to engage in nuanced debate with actual text of the Quran and Hadith.

 

He isn't even "on point" about his PhD topic or his career. And by on point I mean he is a complete liar. He constantly trots those out to give his religion apologist argument credibility, and to dismiss other's arguments so how do you feel when the foundation he himself touted is BS?

 

Totally agree with you, and that's speaking as someone with a Ph.D., which doesn't mean much beyond my obsessive nature and expertise in at least one totally narrow set of experiments.

I think the guy is disingenuous and more about his brand than even his beliefs. He knows exactly the niche he can fill in the media and the world of talking heads.

 

Completely agree.

He is essentially "pop".

I was a muslim, then christian... then muslim.... but then says islam isn't anymore "real" or "truthful" than christianity or any other faith. He has a christian wife and his kids are being raised as neither muslim or christian.

So really, is he a Muslim? Is he really anything?

 

Jacka$$?

 

Well here's some food for thought. There is so much attention on not tarring all Muslims with the same extremist brush(which I completely agree with) and yet recently some stupid Reverend makes a stupid comment on Social Media about those Starbucks Red Cups and suddenly it's "Christians are angry at Starbucks!!!" everywhere the eye can see.

Let's do a thought experiment. If the Westboro Baptist Church had say 10000X their current members, and say that they took a militant turn and instead of mostly tasteless and annoying protests they started staging violent attacks, how many people in this country would tar all Christians with that same brush?

 

Sorry for a double post, but this article explains how the media made the Starbuck red cups seems like some sort of mainstream Christian protest when it was just one dude making a video that only has 14M views despite the controversy

http://www.vox.com/2015/11/10/9707034/starbucks-red-cup-controversy

 

I would posit that child marriages might be the only way in which women's rights could be seen as worse in Bangladesh than in Saudi Arabia.

It seems like a high bar to try to compare Muslim majority countries to the US with regards to women's rights given that they are, with the possible exception of Turkey, largely third world nations. However, just in doing very basic research on Indonesia and Bangladesh, it certainly seems that equality has improved dramatically over the last few decades.

Actually, how several Muslim majority countries have had heads of state, but in the case of Bangladesh, it is the Prime Minister, Speaker of Parliament, Head of Opposition, and Foreign Minister who are all women. This certainly speaks to the fact that women are more equal in those countries than in Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan.

Fair enough, I have seen him on a number of different shows and got the distinct impression that he wants people to understand that he is arguing as a scholar, not a Muslim, and has to repeat that point over and over when the interviewer just doesn't seem to get it.

No, it is asinine to believe that every Muslim follows the text of the Quran, Hadith and the tafsir verbatim. In fact this idea is just as asinine as believing that every Christian believes and follows every word of the Bible, including the ridiculous garbage in Leviticus.

You mean he has a position and sticks to it, using the arguments he has developed over 20 years as a scholar of religion? What a crime.

I see much more emptiness in the rhetoric of those demonizing Islam. Unfounded assertions, baseless claims, and jingoism are nearly the entirety of the arguments proffered by those claiming that Islam is inherently violent.

 

Are you claiming he isn't a PhD and that his career has not been as a scholar of religion?

 

are the westboro people taking over swaths of the united states, canada, and mexico? making videos of beheading people. going into europe and killing random people that are at sporting events & concerts?

that's a pretty big stretch

 

Another beating up on a straw man. Stating that the text maters is not the same as stating that all Muslims interpret text the same way. I would know this first hand since my entire family is Muslim.

To flat out deny that violent rhetoric in the actual text of the dogma might increase tendencies for followers to be more prone to violence or carry misogynist views IS asinine.

I'm sorry, but after reading the Quran, researching the life of the prophet and practicing Islam for the first 19 years of my life, it's really easy to 'demonize Islam'. Maybe... JUST MAYBE that is the fault of the text of the Quran and Muhammad himself.

Maybe... Just maybe there might be some negative consequences when a core part of a faith is to mimic the life and 'sunnah' of a man who lived around 600AD who married and had sex with a 9 year old girl, had sex slaves, raided villages and executed Jewish poets because they made fun of him.

I'm sorry if you think it's morally reprehensible of me to call out a bad idea such as the core concept of Islam.

 

I find someone like Maajid Nawaz much more even-keeled and persuasive than someone like Reza Aslan. Reza Aslan has demonstrated that he is anything but a calm, polite debater of topics, at least in the media.

 

Maajid Nawaz unlike Resa is willing to speak harsh truths and genuinely wants to solve the problem of the radicalization of European Muslims probably because he was once radicalized himself and knows what it takes to climb your way out of that black hole.

 

He claims he is a PhD in history if religion. His actual topic was sociology. He claimed to be a prof of religion. Actually assist prof of creative writing. Thoughts?

 

How does one reform Islam given the word translation of the Koran and how the clerics and imams hold sway over large illiterate populations?

Or even how do you reform it with the confines of an educated secular society without the backdrop of women as second class citizens of whom are tolerated in some positions but can tacitly be punishedand abused should they step out of their bounds or "misbehave"?

I'm not a fan of the gender traditions inside a mosque and given the religions tightly woven social nature, which is problematic to say the least.

This seems like an incredibly huge deal breaker to me but as I'm traveling, I don't have proper time or means to read up on this

 

Completely agree. He is legitimate, not trying to become a media darling.

 

I know this is going to sound rather harsh and pessimistic but time is the solution. Just like Greek Mythology turned into mythology, Abrahamic faiths will one day turn into mythology also.

It's almost impossible to 'reform' Islam primarily because one of the core concepts of Islam is mimicking the life of Muhammad and unfortunately it's really difficult to change history.

A large myth that I keep on hearing that is often passed around is that Islam needs to reform like Christianity did with the protestant reformation. The reason Christianity had a great reformation was because your average human in Europe started having access to the actual text of the Bible in their own language and read the message for themselves rather than have a middle man(the Catholic Church) tell them what's in it. Unfortunately for Islam today, many of the fundamentalists speak Arabic as their first or second language and understand the tafsir of the Quran and hadith front to back.

 

That's what I am saying. If this hypothetical Westboro organization was doing all those things, atheists and non-Christians would have a field day painting all Christians in this light. Christians would have to be on the defensive all the time saying that Christ preached peace, etc.

I guess my point is that, to some extent, expecting people to take it easy on the religion of Islam in light of all the stuff going on is probably an unrealistic view of human nature. Substitute any major world religion into this sort of extremist/terrorist activity and the result is likely to be the same.