Muslims Are No Different, or Why Bill Maher’s Blood Libel Is Bigotry

[Nina7777]

61. number are not high in opposition

So you think that people who support the death penalty for women who have abortions are 'morally consistent'?? Consistent with what? Morally? Is the death penalty moral? There is nothing moral about wanting the death penalty for women who have had abortions. There isn't even consistency for Right to Lifers, read that again 'Right to LIFE' demanding the DEATH penalty for anyone.

Personally, I'm not especially offended by the use of the death penalty against sadistic serial killers and the like. The idea of pro lifers who are against the death penalty is that the embryo is equal to a child, an innocent child at that, and it is therefore immoral to murder an innocent child. However, some pro lifers support the death penalty for the murderer of an innocent child (usually the abortion provider, not the woman). Right to life in abortion does not need to imply opposition to the death penalty. They just support the right to life for what is in their minds innocent children, but they do not support a right to life for what is in their minds, murderers.

I do not think embryos qualify as children, but if I did, then I would feel it just to severely punish people who "murdered" these innocent children.

'They aren't other people to me'. They live in other countries. Their business is their business. Since when is it our business to tell other countries how to run their affairs? Imperialism is largely responsible for the status of many third world countries, having robbed them of their resources, destroyed their cultures, not to mention killing untold numbers of them over the centuries.

That's your story, but I have citizenship in one of those countries because all of my ancestry is from there. "Their" business is my business.

Those are pretty high numbers in opposition to what you claimed they supported. I wonder if the same poll were done here, how we would fare? Listening to the rantings and ravings from the bigots on the Right here, I think we may have a larger number of people right here who would support the death penalty for anyone who is not a Christian.

The controversial comment at hand is that Bill Maher said more than half of Muslims support death for people who insult their prophet.

more than 90% of Lebanon is against executions for adultery, while 80% of Pakistan is for it. But lebanon has 4 million people while Pakistan has 175 million. Culturally, Afghanistan is very likely to have similar extremist attitudes prevalent as Pakistan (they are neighboring countries with somewhat similar forms of religiosity). the majority who opposes stoning for adultery in highly populous Indonesia is a narrow one- 55%. It's not impossible that more than 50% of Indonesians would support death for insulting the prophet. It's not guarenteed either.

Lebanon, Syria and Turkey are the most secular countries in the Middle East (people in Tehran were historically secular but their govt has done everything to crush that). Outside of that, the secular Muslim countries are central asian secular dictatorships (which are not populous) and a few European muslim countries (Albania etc).

But the masses of Muslims come from Bangladesh (poor and south asian), pakistan, indonesia, the middle east and north africa. Given the data from Jordan, Egypt and Pakistan, it is definitely possible that Bill Maher's statement is true, especially if we are not counting Uzbekistan and the like as Muslim countries (where Islam is practically illegal to practice). There are comparatively few Muslims in Lebanon and Turkey when compared to all the more culturally conservative states when you combine those countries (Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan etc). To say more than 50% of Muslims support death for those who insult the prophet is fairly consistent with other indicators of the prevalence of support for violent punishments for religious infractions in the middle east. To make Bill Maher's statement is conjecture, but not a de facto indication of bigotry because there is reason based in evidence to believe that the statement is plausible.