Ben Affleck Angrily Defends Islam Against Bill Maher/Sam Harris - TYT

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23. So are all the major religions.

Does that mean you think most Christians, Hindus and Jews have ideologies that are conservative, bigoted and regressive? See, it's one thing to say that all those religions are horrible (which they are), but when it veers into attacking most or all followers of those religions and broadbrushing them, then that's where it turns into bigotry, and those who do that are indeed conservative, bigoted and regressive...

If yr interested, here's an article about some of the things Maher got very wrong...

5 Things Bill Maher Got Wrong In Latest Islam Rant

As a liberal agnostic, I might better enjoy my time critiquing religion with fellow skeptics. But when skeptics single out a particular faith or group for unfair demonization, I do feel compelled to respond. It is, of course, old news that Bill Maher is one of the skeptics who, while feeling antipathy towards religion in general, holds exceptional hostility towards Islam. However, the segment on Islam (below) in last weekend's episode of 'Real Time' went beyond typical antipathy and included 5 points that were simply dead wrong:

1. "Not a Few Bad Apples"

Bill Maher insists that extremism and intolerance are problems that afflict Muslims at large, and not just "a few bad apples." Of course, if anyone compiled a list of violent acts by Muslim extremists, the list would undoubtedly be troublingly long. But the Muslim world is far too vast and diverse to collapse into Maher's narrow perception of it. It is a world of 1.6 billion Muslims, so even thousands of extremists would be a fraction, and would in no way justify an indictment against Muslims in general. To think along analogous lines, there are more than 10,000 murders and 80,000 rapes every year in the U.S. The Ugandan fanatical Christian LRA group is responsible for the kidnapping of some 66,000 children (a lot more than Boko Haram). In the West Bank, hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers live on stolen Palestinian land, and many carry out acts of vandalism and violence against Palestinians. But just as none of these facts justify broad indictments of "The Americans," "The Christians" or "The Jews" as being terrible people (that would be transparently bigoted), the same applies to Islam and Muslims. The acts of a relatively small group of extremists, even when they're more frequent than we'd like them to be, should never taint entire societies.

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5. Islamophobia

Bill Maher quoted Sam Harris mis-attributing to the late Christopher Hitchens the silly description of 'Islamophobia' as "a word created by fascists and used by cowards to manipulate morons." This turned out not to be a Hitchens quote, but a slogan created by a provocateur, and used by bigots to get cheap applause from idiots. You cannot be a sensible person and look at (a) the hike in anti-Muslim hate crimes after 9/11, (b) the hysteria that breaks out around the building of mosques in America, and (c) the use of anti-Muslim rhetoric in political campaigns and conclude that Islamophobia is manufactured. Islamophobia is real; it is destructive, and it should be confronted by all people of conscience.

Why All of This Matters

Ultimately, this isn't about scoring points against Maher or his panel; this is about making this world a better place. The Muslim world is incredibly diverse, and can by no means be reduced to a single cohesive unit. From Eastern Europe to the horn of Africa, and from Lebanon to Indonesia, we are talking about fundamentally different societies and cultures. Some of these societies are more socially progressive than others; but in all of these societies, there are Muslims who are fighting for women's rights and against extremism and violence, and they deserve our support against their reactionary opponents. To lump them all together under an ugly stereotype that's defined by the Muslim world's worst elements only alienates our progressive allies in Muslim societies and makes their causes all the more difficult to advance.

Bill Maher attempted to cite an Egypt poll, saying it showed that 80-90% of people in the country approved of death as a punishment for leaving Islam. The actual number is 64%, which is still horrifyingly high, and I am alarmed by it. An Israeli or a Palestinian may also be alarmed by the poll that found the majority of Israelis favor discrimination against their non-Jewish neighbors. But how we express these concerns also matters. If some random city in America had a high crime rate in the African American community, and one public official said "I'm concerned about this problem" and another public official said "the blacks are a problem," which of these two would we all (probably including Bill Maher) condemn as a racist? When concern for certain problems within societies turns into hostility towards inexcusably large groups of people who have little in common beyond some random demographic factor (in this case, religion), then that is a paradigmatic example of bigotry. And this type of bigotry puts entire communities under attack from the outside, thus distracting from their fight to advance and tackle problems within. If Bill Maher wants to take his progressivism seriously, he should really let go of reckless rhetoric and join the real fight to advance progressive causes within and without Muslim societies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/omar-baddar/5-things-bill-maher-got-w_b_5315893.html