Bill Maher Destroys The Liberal Utopian Vision of Islam

[Boges]

It's hypocritical and smacks of thinly veiled bigotry. Muslims this and Muslims that.

What about Sharia Law this, and Sharia Law that?

You may not be able to group people of a world religion together but you can group people within that religion that believe people should be governed by a defined legal system derived from that religion as a gauge on who have views that are in contradiction to traditional western values.

Edited October 7, 2014 by Boges

[Mighty AC]

And yet the point still stands. If the majority of Muslims were extremists, then they would have wiped out the rest of us by now. You're just afraid that Muslims will start doing what Christians in the South have done. That is pass legislation to have their religious dogma taught in public schools. I'm more concerned about that right now, since Christians are the majority, have had these laws passed, and there doesn't appear to be any sign of our country or the US passing Sharia Law rules any time soon.

It seems that you are trying to narrow the focus to justify your statements. First of all, nobody is saying the majority of Muslims are extremists though polls have shown that significant portions of the population sympathize with extreme actions.

Second, why are you limiting the actions that you consider extreme to "wiping us out"? Wouldn't killing for blasphemy or treating women as property also qualify as extreme? There are many nations using Sharia Law to enforce extreme Islamic views. For example the following countries kill, or impose lengthy prison sentences, for blasphemy: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran, Mauritania, Oman, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi, Arabia, Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Morocco, Somalia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates.

Finally, why are you shifting the goal posts to just North America? Christians fighting to oppress homosexuals and insert their delusional beliefs into science classes are certainly a problem, and one that I regularly denounce. However, it doesn't compare to the extreme oppression faced in the many Islamic states around the world.

[Argus]

Do you think people will give answers to pollsters that don't necessarily reflect their real views? Maybe as a protest... or because they don't like polls...?

I would expect, if they were going to lie, to actually lie on the safe side, which it to say, to downplay their religious fanaticism, especially in places where the government is mightily suspicious of such things. That does not appear to be the case here, or if it is things are even worse than the research shows. This was no a telephone poll taken of a few hundred people but was done through face to face interviews with tens of thousands of respondents.

[Argus]

Because you're looking for statistics to prove a preconceived conclusion.

Why do you believe my conclusions are based on other than the evidence before me? What do you think, I just one day decided that Islam is associated with violence based on nothing whatsoever?

[Argus]

I agree, that's what happened.

But to extrapolate that election to "51% of Egypt wants people beheaded for blasphemy" is a huge stretch. And this is what you were getting at by saying Egypt elected the MB.

It's not so black and white...

It's black and white that 64% of Egyptians support the death penalty for apostasy. Why would you be surprised that many would support the death penalty for blasphemy?

[Argus]

Why should I pay attention to your Pew Research cite when you've completely ignored the countless examples that make your incessant bloviating about Muslims look foolish?

Because the research isn't based on ignorance and wishful thinking like almost everything you say on the subject.

Countless examples? What the hell does that even mean? If you find a dozen Muslims quoted as opposing something it doesn't matter if 90% of the population backs it?

Edited October 7, 2014 by Argus

[Argus]

1/3 of the world's population is Islamic. If Islam was as big of a problem as they're making it out to be, the rest of us would have been wiped out several times over.

I will stand by what I said earlier. The Muslim world has, from its inception, spread Islam by violence anywhere they had the ability to do so. In the early days it meant conquering non-Muslim neighbours and giving everyone a choice of conversion or death. But as other nations became more organized and sophisticated, particularly in terms of science and technology, their ability to conquer faded away and they were in turn conquered instead.

Not that their conquerors ever ordered them to convert or die, of course.

As ISIS has shown the mentality is still there. If Islam and its proponents had the military might to conquer non-Muslim countries they would do so. They certainly tried enough with Israel. Spreading the word and trying to convert non-believers is a requirement of Islam and the duty of every Muslim. Virtually all Muslims agree on that.

[cybercoma]

What about Sharia Law this, and Sharia Law that?

You may not be able to group people of a world religion together but you can group people within that religion that believe people should be governed by a defined legal system derived from that religion as a gauge on who have views that are in contradiction to traditional western values.

What about the laws in the Bible? There are Christian sects that believe in ridiculous laws that could be considered abusive as well. I don't see Sharia Law itself as so much of a problem as the people who interpret it to mean that you can brutally murder a woman by caving her head in with stones because she was raped by a stranger while married. I take issue with those people's interpretation of Sharia Law. I take issue with those culture who support that. And I take issue with states that sanction those ludicrous things. The fact is they don't do these things in all Muslim states and there's hundreds of millions of Muslims who believe these are false interpretations of their religion. I take issue with the issues themselves. With the violence, abuse, and oppression. I'm not so intellectually lazy as to sit here and just rant ad nauseum about all these barbaric Muslims, ignoring the fact that there are 1.6 Billion Muslims around the world, the vast majority of whom are peaceful.

[cybercoma]

Wouldn't killing for blasphemy or treating women as property also qualify as extreme? ... why are you shifting the goal posts to just North America?

Let's look at this. I've pointed out, as Reza Aslan mentioned in the video I posted that Muslim states, namely Turkey and Indonesia, have had female heads of state. When you say "Muslims treat women badly," you completely ignore the fact that Turkey and Indonesia are more progressive than even the United States, who has never in its history had a female president, nor even a female candidate for the presidency from the two primary parties. I'm not shifting the focus to North America. What I'm trying to say is that any notion of a "Muslim World" or "Muslims" as some homogeneous group are intellectually flawed.

In the comment you replied to, I was underscoring Shady's hypocrisy, where he pretends to care about particular issues, but only cares about them when it means he can bash Muslims for them. He doesn't care about those issues when it's not in the context of Islam. That's what I mean by thinly veiled bigotry. When people only give a shit about those issues when Muslims do it, but turn a blind eye to it when anyone else does it, that's a pretty lame attempt at hiding where their real issue lies.

Islam is not the cause of any of these things any more than Christianity is the cause of Female Genital Mutilation in Ethiopia where the vast majority of the population is Christian, while nearly 75% of women go through FGM. It's not just Muslim women who go through this abuse, but the majority of Christian women as well. This is a Central African issue, but it's easy for some people to sit here and blame Islam and call it the cause of these things.

Michael Hardner has repeatedly tried to get people to address the issues themselves whenever these topics come up. He presses them to define violence, then show that these things are unique to Islam. Their arguments completely fall apart because these things are not Islamic things. These are cultural things and these are political things.

There are more difference within Islam than between Islam and other religions. And that in a nutshell is where the problem lies with these discussions. People come on these forums and want to rant and rave about the evil Muslims coming to destroy humanity, but when you press people on the issues that are particular to Islam, their arguments completely collapse on themselves. None of the things they're supposed concerned about are particular to Islam at all. Which leaves what? Nothing more than thinly veiled bigotry and a faux sense of outrage about issues that don't even register when they're not in the context of Islam. What I'm trying to say is that we should be concerned about these issues themselves and stop blaming this make-believe bogeyman that's a product of people's false sense of cultural, ethnic, and religious superiority.

[Guest]

Let's look at this. I've pointed out, as Reza Aslan mentioned in the video I posted that Muslim states, namely Turkey and Indonesia, have had female heads of state. When you say "Muslims treat women badly," you completely ignore the fact that Turkey and Indonesia are more progressive than even the United States, who has never in its history had a female president, nor even a female candidate for the presidency from the two primary parties. I'm not shifting the focus to North America. What I'm trying to say is that any notion of a "Muslim World" or "Muslims" as some homogeneous group are intellectually flawed.

In the comment you replied to, I was underscoring Shady's hypocrisy, where he pretends to care about particular issues, but only cares about them when it means he can bash Muslims for them. He doesn't care about those issues when it's not in the context of Islam. That's what I mean by thinly veiled bigotry. When people only give a shit about those issues when Muslims do it, but turn a blind eye to it when anyone else does it, that's a pretty lame attempt at hiding where their real issue lies.

Islam is not the cause of any of these things any more than Christianity is the cause of Female Genital Mutilation in Ethiopia where the vast majority of the population is Christian, while nearly 75% of women go through FGM. It's not just Muslim women who go through this abuse, but the majority of Christian women as well. This is a Central African issue, but it's easy for some people to sit here and blame Islam and call it the cause of these things.

Michael Hardner has repeatedly tried to get people to address the issues themselves whenever these topics come up. He presses them to define violence, then show that these things are unique to Islam. Their arguments completely fall apart because these things are not Islamic things. These are cultural things and these are political things.

There are more difference within Islam than between Islam and other religions. And that in a nutshell is where the problem lies with these discussions. People come on these forums and want to rant and rave about the evil Muslims coming to destroy humanity, but when you press people on the issues that are particular to Islam, their arguments completely collapse on themselves. None of the things they're supposed concerned about are particular to Islam at all. Which leaves what? Nothing more than thinly veiled bigotry and a faux sense of outrage about issues that don't even register when they're not in the context of Islam. What I'm trying to say is that we should be concerned about these issues themselves and stop blaming this make-believe bogeyman that's a product of people's false sense of cultural, ethnic, and religious superiority.

Given this statement from a poster in this thread:

For example the following countries kill, or impose lengthy prison sentences, for blasphemy: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran, Mauritania, Oman, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi, Arabia, Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Morocco, Somalia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates.

How does one express the justified disgust without mentioning the religion involved?

How is that disgust "thinly veiled bigotry"?

[-1=e^ipi]

Let's look at this. I've pointed out, as Reza Aslan mentioned in the video I posted that Muslim states, namely Turkey and Indonesia, have had female heads of state. When you say "Muslims treat women badly," you completely ignore the fact that Turkey and Indonesia are more progressive than even the United States

That is the best measure of how 'progressive' a country is? The number of female heads of state a country has had?

Let's see, Indonesia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Indonesia

1. You are only allowed religious freedom if your religion is one of the 6 officially recognized religions: Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. If you are a Sikh or are Jewish, you don't have freedom of religion.

2. The government doesn't not allow for not believing in God. Government employees must swear allegiance to the Pancasilia ideology, which requires the belief in a single god. So if you are an atheist or a pagan, you cannot work for the government.

3. The province of Aceh implements Sharia law.

4. The country has laws against blasphemy.

As for Turkey, Turkey hasn't had a female prime minister in nearly 20 years, and you are horribly uninformed if you don't understand the significant change to Islamic conservatism in the past decade. The AKP has held power for nearly a decade and Erdogan is very sympathetic to the cause of Islamists groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS. Let alone all the restrictions on freedom of speech that has been imposed the last few years to silence the opposition to Erdogan and those that insult Islam. The internet is highly regulated, and social networking sites as well as video sharing sites like twitter and youtube are often blocked.

But yes, in comparison to Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Turkey are liberal utopias!

There are more difference within Islam than between Islam and other religions.

Lol, what? I don't even know where to start with this except maybe ask you to justify this absurd claim. All types of Islam have many things in common that they do not have in common with other religions such as: Belief that there is no God but Allah and that Mohammed is the last and final messenger of Allah, belief that the Quran contains the direct commands of God through the prophet Mohammed that were revealed to him by the angel Gabriel, belief that God directly created Adam and Eve from dirt/mud and that these were the first people, belief that those who do not believe in Allah will go to hell, while righteous Muslims will go to jannah/heaven, belief that humans should pray 5 times a day towards Mecca, belief that Muslims should try to make a pilgrimage to Mecca to see the Kabba at least once in their life, belief that Muslims should fast between sunrise and sunset during the Lunar Month of Ramadan and belief that Muslims should annually pay the Zakat (a 2.5% tax on wealth above the nisab/poverty level that should help the cause of Islam; it can be used in a charitable way to help poorer Muslims, or it can also be used to fund warriors that are fighting for Islam).

Edited October 8, 2014 by -1=e^ipi

[Mighty AC]

In the comment you replied to, I was underscoring Shady's hypocrisy, where he pretends to care about particular issues, but only cares about them when it means he can bash Muslims for them. ... What I'm trying to say is that any notion of a "Muslim World" or "Muslims" as some homogeneous group are intellectually flawed.

There certainly are bigots who deride anything Muslim, but that's not what I, nor Sam Harris or Bill Maher are doing. Acknowledging the fact that Islam is currently being used as the justification for more extreme acts, more frequently does not equate to condoning the bigotry of others.

Let's look at this. I've pointed out, as Reza Aslan mentioned in the video I posted that Muslim states, namely Turkey and Indonesia, have had female heads of state. When you say "Muslims treat women badly," you completely ignore the fact that Turkey and Indonesia are more progressive than even the United States, who has never in its history had a female president, nor even a female candidate for the presidency from the two primary parties.

...

Islam is not the cause of any of these things any more than Christianity is the cause of Female Genital Mutilation in Ethiopia

It's great that Turkey has had some prominent females but they still ranked 120th on the gender equality index whereas Canada and the US come in at 20th and 23rd respectively. http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/oct/25/world-gender-gap-index-2013-countries-compare-iceland-uk

Many majority Muslim nations use Sharia as the basis for laws; particularly family law. Under Islamic, Sharia law, interpretations of the Quran are used to form laws and punishments. The extreme nature of these laws, including the severe oppression of women, has been well documented but, even if you choose to argue over the validity of the interpretations, it is impossible to deny the role of Islam.

There are more difference within Islam than between Islam and other religions. And that in a nutshell is where the problem lies with these discussions. People come on these forums and want to rant and rave about the evil Muslims coming to destroy humanity, but when you press people on the issues that are particular to Islam, their arguments completely collapse on themselves.

Interpretations of the Quran form the basis of some of the most extreme and oppressive laws on the planet. I'm not saying justifying hate and violence is unique to Islam, but I am saying that it is currently worse than other religions in this regard. By refusing to acknowledge this, progressives seriously weaken their credibility. Taking this position does not paint all Muslims with the same brush, nor does it excuse other religious misdeeds; though it does allow you to maintain a little intellectual honesty, along with the moral high ground.

[cybercoma]

Given this statement from a poster in this thread:

For example the following countries kill, or impose lengthy prison sentences, for blasphemy: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran, Mauritania, Oman, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi, Arabia, Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Morocco, Somalia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates.

How does one express the justified disgust without mentioning the religion involved?

How is that disgust "thinly veiled bigotry"?

Ive answered these questions already.

[cybercoma]

That is the best measure of how 'progressive' a country is? The number of female heads of state a country has had?

Let's see, Indonesia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Indonesia

1. You are only allowed religious freedom if your religion is one of the 6 officially recognized religions: Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. If you are a Sikh or are Jewish, you don't have freedom of religion.

2. The government doesn't not allow for not believing in God. Government employees must swear allegiance to the Pancasilia ideology, which requires the belief in a single god. So if you are an atheist or a pagan, you cannot work for the government.

3. The province of Aceh implements Sharia law.

4. The country has laws against blasphemy.

As for Turkey, Turkey hasn't had a female prime minister in nearly 20 years, and you are horribly uninformed if you don't understand the significant change to Islamic conservatism in the past decade. The AKP has held power for nearly a decade and Erdogan is very sympathetic to the cause of Islamists groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS. Let alone all the restrictions on freedom of speech that has been imposed the last few years to silence the opposition to Erdogan and those that insult Islam. The internet is highly regulated, and social networking sites as well as video sharing sites like twitter and youtube are often blocked.

But yes, in comparison to Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Turkey are liberal utopias!

Lol, what? I don't even know where to start with this except maybe ask you to justify this absurd claim. All types of Islam have many things in common that they do not have in common with other religions such as: Belief that there is no God but Allah and that Mohammed is the last and final messenger of Allah, belief that the Quran contains the direct commands of God through the prophet Mohammed that were revealed to him by the angel Gabriel, belief that God directly created Adam and Eve from dirt/mud and that these were the first people, belief that those who do not believe in Allah will go to hell, while righteous Muslims will go to jannah/heaven, belief that humans should pray 5 times a day towards Mecca, belief that Muslims should try to make a pilgrimage to Mecca to see the Kabba at least once in their life, belief that Muslims should fast between sunrise and sunset during the Lunar Month of Ramadan and belief that Muslims should annually pay the Zakat (a 2.5% tax on wealth above the nisab/poverty level that should help the cause of Islam; it can be used in a charitable way to help poorer Muslims, or it can also be used to fund warriors that are fighting for Islam).

Where did I say it was the "best measure of how progressive a country is? For someone so keen to use the word strawman in other threads, you might want to figure out how your own post is a strawman.

And did you really miss the point about within groups and between groups so much that you're going to ramble on pointlessly about religious rituals, as if that has anything whatsoever to do with my arguments? Go back and read my post again and maybe try to understand what I'm saying, instead if missing the point and making fallacious arguments against things I didn't even say.

[cybercoma]

There certainly are bigots who deride anything Muslim, but that's not what I, nor Sam Harris or Bill Maher are doing. Acknowledging the fact that Islam is currently being used as the justification for more extreme acts, more frequently does not equate to condoning the bigotry of others. It's great that Turkey has had some prominent females but they still ranked 120th on the gender equality index whereas Canada and the US come in at 20th and 23rd respectively. http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/oct/25/world-gender-gap-index-2013-countries-compare-iceland-ukMany majority Muslim nations use Sharia as the basis for laws; particularly family law. Under Islamic, Sharia law, interpretations of the Quran are used to form laws and punishments. The extreme nature of these laws, including the severe oppression of women, has been well documented but, even if you choose to argue over the validity of the interpretations, it is impossible to deny the role of Islam. Interpretations of the Quran form the basis of some of the most extreme and oppressive laws on the planet. I'm not saying justifying hate and violence is unique to Islam, but I am saying that it is currently worse than other religions in this regard. By refusing to acknowledge this, progressives seriously weaken their credibility. Taking this position does not paint all Muslims with the same brush, nor does it excuse other religious misdeeds; though it does allow you to maintain a little intellectual honesty, along with the moral high ground.

Think about this for a minute. Afghanistan was Muslim before the Taliban took over, yet it was far less oppressive and violent. What was the role of Islam in oppressing the Afghanis?

[-1=e^ipi]

Where did I say it was the "best measure of how progressive a country is? For someone so keen to use the word strawman in other threads, you might want to figure out how your own post is a strawman.

I wrote "That is the best measure of how 'progressive' a country is? The number of female heads of state a country has had?". Do you not see the question marks? How am I claiming that you have a position that you do not have?

And did you really miss the point about within groups and between groups so much that you're going to ramble on pointlessly about religious rituals, as if that has anything whatsoever to do with my arguments?

You claimed that there is more variation within Islam than between Islam. I asked you to justify that claim. How are you even measuring variation? And why do you think that beliefs and rituals do not matter when determining the variation between religions?

Edited October 8, 2014 by -1=e^ipi

[Guest]

Ive answered these questions already.

Well, I must have missed it. Sometimes I don't get to reading all the posts.

It's a shame, because I like puzzles.

[Michael Hardner]

Why do you believe my conclusions are based on other than the evidence before me? What do you think, I just one day decided that Islam is associated with violence based on nothing whatsoever?

I think you may have felt this way from a long time ago, which would mean that you're just using statistics to validate an already-held belief. There are stats that have positive things to say about Muslims too, what do you think about those ?

[Michael Hardner]

It's black and white that 64% of Egyptians support the death penalty for apostasy.

The responses swing more than 10 times, though, by country so why do you think that religion is the most influential factor here ?

[Michael Hardner]

How is that disgust "thinly veiled bigotry"?

It's bigotry if you're trying to say one people is better than another.

For example, we can more easily tie crime and so-called bad behaviors to race than to religion for many examples - and yet people recoil at linking those things. Why is that ?

Haiti is Catholic and in terrible shape, yet people will explain that by saying they were a conquered people, and that that is the reason. Why not so with Muslim countries ? Instead we have people comparing other colonized peoples to Canada, saying that Canada was successful as a colony so why not them ?

Another example: There's widespread belief in witchcraft in Africa, but that isn't brought up as evidence of a broken culture on MLW.

If you go to another country and live there, you will hear people say things about YOUR culture and you'll understand better how this phenomenon works. They talk about the decadence of our western culture there, about the unhealthy lifestyles, about pornography and degradation of women. As with religious violence, you can't argue that it doesn't happen. There is truth in it.

But the motivation behind the discussion and examination of statistics isn't to understand what's happening, it's to shut out and to deprecate another culture. Maybe it's to feel better about our own culture. Nobody is starting out with an objective definition of violence, then looking at all cultures. They start out with a desire to shut out and downgrade a culture, then they look for statistics that provides for that deprecation.

[waldo]

But the motivation behind the discussion and examination of statistics isn't to understand what's happening, it's to shut out and to deprecate another culture. Maybe it's to feel better about our own culture. Nobody is starting out with an objective definition of violence, then looking at all cultures. They start out with a desire to shut out and downgrade a culture, then they look for statistics that provides for that deprecation.

one particular MLW member here has been quite liberally sprinking his posts across an assortment of threads with a reference to that Pew Poll... a poll that has signficant scrutiny towards it given it's methodology, sampling variations/limitations, it's presumptive reliance on the false premise that 'sharia law' means the same thing across all Muslim countries, that it didn't screen to ensure all participants were, with certainty, in fact Muslim, etc.. Apparently, for example, notwithstanding all the critical review of methodology, polling 1800 Indonesians and labeling that one-off as a definitive assessment of 200 millions Indonesians... and then having that become the internet's defacto summary assessment on Muslim Indonesians, that doesnt' raise any questioning/uncertainty by some around here.

[-1=e^ipi]

It's bigotry if you're trying to say one people is better than another.

I think that people that do not murder other people are better than people that do murder other people. Is that bigotry? Am I bigoted against murderous thugs?

For example, we can more easily tie crime and so-called bad behaviors to race than to religion for many examples - and yet people recoil at linking those things. Why is that ?

Correlation does not imply causation. Just because you may find a stronger correlation between race and crime than between religion and crime, doesn't mean that more crime is due to race than due to religion. Race isn't a belief system + ideology that influences behaviour, religion is. People don't choose their race, people choose their religion.

Haiti is Catholic and in terrible shape, yet people will explain that by saying they were a conquered people, and that that is the reason. Why not so with Muslim countries ? Instead we have people comparing other colonized peoples to Canada, saying that Canada was successful as a colony so why not them ?

I don't attribute such a simply explanation to the lack of performance of Haiti. Furthermore, trying to claim that Muslim countries are formally colonized countries is an untrue generalization and overlooks most of the past 1400 years. Islam was primarily a colonizer, not one to be colonized for most of its history.

They talk about the decadence of our western culture there, about the unhealthy lifestyles, about pornography and degradation of women. As with religious violence, you can't argue that it doesn't happen. There is truth in it.

You are seriously equating religious violence with pornography? With killing of apostates or homosexuals with a consenting adult selling pictures of themselves to another consenting adult?

But the motivation behind the discussion and examination of statistics isn't to understand what's happening, it's to shut out and to deprecate another culture. Maybe it's to feel better about our own culture. Nobody is starting out with an objective definition of violence, then looking at all cultures. They start out with a desire to shut out and downgrade a culture, then they look for statistics that provides for that deprecation.

Blah, Blah. Same cultural relativist BS.

A culture that has freedom of expression is superior to a culture that kills apostates and bans blasphemy. A culture that does not criminalize actions between two consenting adults that do not harm anyone is superior to a culture that kills homosexuals. A liberal democracy is FAR superior to a country that follows sharia law.

[Boges]

It's bigotry if you're trying to say one people is better than another.

I don't think anyone is saying "people" are better than others. We're saying a system of government and roles religion plays in how a nation is governed is better than the other.

Haiti is Catholic and in terrible shape, yet people will explain that by saying they were a conquered people, and that that is the reason. Why not so with Muslim countries ? Instead we have people comparing other colonized peoples to Canada, saying that Canada was successful as a colony so why not them ?

Another example: There's widespread belief in witchcraft in Africa, but that isn't brought up as evidence of a broken culture on MLW.

Isn't Haiti also a place where witchcraft is a big thing? There's a country that shared the island with Haiti that is 3rd world, but doing much better. Many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are very religious. Some countries have lots of crime but none, that I know of, enforce religion on their citizens.

Also the main problem in these nations are poverty. The Arab world has some of the most wealth we see on this planet. None of the 911 terrorist did what they did because of desperation and poverty.

[Mighty AC]

Think about this for a minute. Afghanistan was Muslim before the Taliban took over, yet it was far less oppressive and violent. What was the role of Islam in oppressing the Afghanis?

Think about this for a minute. Homophobic atheists have written pieces that even lend support to some of Bryan Fischer's anti-gay ideas, what role does religion play in oppressing homosexuals in North America? You seem to be able to acknowledge the discriminatory role Christianity plays, despite the fact that some major denominations defend equal rights for all sexual orientations. Why do you treat Islamic issues differently?

Twelve years after ousting the Taliban, Afghan women still face criminal charges for being raped or fleeing their home when being abused. Last year there was an attempt to pass the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) law through parliament. Unfortunately, the law faced incredible opposition from conservative politicians and even students of Sharia law. The claim simply is the law is not Islamic.

“This law is just a government project, it is against Sharia… we need to discuss more about this and remove articles that are against Islam,” Abdul Sattar Khawasi, a conservative MP http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/05/21/afghanistan-surge-women-jailed-moral-crimes http://goo.gl/Mw399w

What was the role of Islam in oppressing the Afghanis? Very similar to the role of Christianity in oppressing homosexuals; interpretations of the mythology are used as justification for moral (or immoral) positions. The fact that we grant religious ideas an elevated level of importance, makes them very hard to change.

Edited October 8, 2014 by Mighty AC

[Mighty AC]

Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Ben Affleck and a couple others discuss why we must recognize the fact that some religions are, currently, worse than others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XduMMteTEbc

This issue drew some attention on social media leading to two main responses. 1) Ben Affleck schools racists Maher and Harris. 2) Dumb actor out of his depth. Of course, both responses badly miss the mark. For those interested in this exchange Sam Harris wrote a blog entry discussing his experience on the show. It's worth the read, IMO. Can Liberalism Be Saved From Itself?

Edited October 8, 2014 by Mighty AC