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Ben Aflac is a moron
Topic Started: Oct 6 2014, 07:04 PM (2,450 Views)
Tallica
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Snapcat
Oct 7 2014, 02:10 PM
I think Ben had a beef with the author before the show and his argument started. He mentioned the author's past work and career of playing off a lot of Muslim hate. So, I think he was trying to shut the guy up before he could capitalize anymore on fear-mongering.

The point that Ben should have made is that Christianity could have taken a similar path if virtually unchecked, as religion is in the Middle East. Think of what Christianity might have been like if the KKK was allowed to lynch people they thought were counter to their interpretation of Christianity.
But then he'd just be making the same argument as the people he's arguing against. When actually allowed to talk, Harris mentioned empowering the moderate members of Islam who want to take the religion in the direction of peace. While Maher and Harris would gladly eliminate all religion, they aren't naive enough to think it could happen in their lifetimes or perhaps anyone's.

The point they are trying to make is that blind acceptance is only ever accepted when it comes to matters of faith and religion. Anything that fits under that header gets a pass and is not held to the same standards of decency as other issues, particularly religions that aren't "christian". The problem is when a religion of 1.5 billion people promotes discrimination and violence to innocent people, it's still getting the same "off limits" status, and that's not good.

Asking liberals, or anyone for that matter, to take off blinders when it comes to matters of faith in order to object to principals and ideology that is harmful to any society is not a bad thing.

You make the very same point about Christianity that they are trying to make about Islam. If you want to use the KKK = ISIS/Al Queda/extremist group of the month, I can buy that. Now, what you have to also acknowledge, as Harris eventually states, is as you get further from the minorities in extremist groups, and examine the ideology of the "typical" follower of the Muslim faith, they still largely hold oppressive views towards women, gays, non muslims, etc. I wouldn't even call them bad people, but there is a large group (data suggests possibly a majority) of muslims that believe death and persecution for leaving the faith is appropriate. Same for drawing Mohammed or making a cartoon, etc, etc.
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19nate79

Comparing isis to the kkk? Fine but when was the last time they were a threat? They are a joke today. How long before isis becomes a laughing stock?
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Darc Requiem
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19nate79
Oct 7 2014, 09:42 PM
Comparing isis to the kkk? Fine but when was the last time they were a threat? They are a joke today. How long before isis becomes a laughing stock?
Too long unfortunately
Edited by Darc Requiem, Oct 7 2014, 10:15 PM.
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cheeto101
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While I partially agree with both Maher and the Aflac duck here (I think Islam and all religion's teachings should be open for criticism, but I also disagree with making sweeping generalizations about large groups of people), I will say that Maher has made some really stupid comments on Islam in the past that really hurt his credibility on the whole subject.



Edited by cheeto101, Oct 8 2014, 12:40 PM.
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cheeto101
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Oh and if Fox News is praising you for pretty much anything, you know you've strayed a little too far off the liberal train.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/foxs-the-five-credits-maher-for-being-tougher-on-radical-islam-than-obama/
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Strongo
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best80smovierad
Oct 7 2014, 12:46 PM
i'm from new york, I only know one pun

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i didn't know tallica was Mexican.
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Tallica
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Strongo
Oct 8 2014, 02:30 PM
best80smovierad
Oct 7 2014, 12:46 PM
i'm from new york, I only know one pun

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i didn't know tallica was Mexican.
Reported for abuse
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Strongo
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bahahaha.
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split decision
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I think Fareed Zakaria is right on the mark here, as usual. He doesn't deny the warts but also keeps things in context while dispelling the myth that Islam has always been associated with malicious behavior.


Fareed Zakaria: Let’s be honest, Islam has a problem right now

When television host Bill Maher declares on his weekly show that “the Muslim
world... has too much in common with ISIS ” and guest Sam Harris says that Islam is “the mother lode of bad ideas,” I understand why people are upset. Maher and Harris, an author, made crude simplifications and exaggerations. And yet, they were also talking about something real.

I know the arguments against speaking of Islam as violent and reactionary. It has a following of 1.6 billion people. Places such as Indonesia and India have hundreds of millions of Muslims who don’t fit these caricatures. That’s why Maher and Harris are guilty of gross generalizations. But let’s be honest. Islam has a problem today. The places that have trouble accommodating themselves to the modern world are disproportionately Muslim.

In 2013, of the top 10 groups that perpetrated terrorist attacks, seven were Muslim. Of the top 10 countries where terrorist attacks took place, seven were Muslim-majority. The Pew Research Center rates countries on the level of restrictions that governments impose on the free exercise of religion. Of the 24 most restrictive countries, 19 are Muslim-majority. Of the 21 countries that have laws against apostasy, all have Muslim majorities.

There is a cancer of extremism within Islam today. A small minority of Muslims celebrates violence and intolerance and harbors deeply reactionary attitudes toward women and minorities. While some confront these extremists, not enough do so, and the protests are not loud enough. How many mass rallies have been held against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in the Arab world today?

The caveat, “Islam today,” is important. The central problem with Maher’s and Harris’s analyses are that they take a reality — extremism in Islam — and describe it in ways that suggest it is inherent in Islam. Maher says Islam is “the only religion that acts like the Mafia, that will [expletive] kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture or write the wrong book.” He’s right about the viciousness but wrong to link it to “Islam” — instead of “some Muslims.”

Harris prides himself on being highly analytical — with a PhD, no less. I learned in graduate school that you can never explain a variable phenomenon with a fixed cause. So, if you are asserting that Islam is inherently violent and intolerant — “the mother lode of bad ideas” — then, since Islam has been around for 14 centuries, we should have seen 14 centuries of this behavior.

Harris should read Zachary Karabell’s book “Peace Be Upon You: Fourteen Centuries of Muslim, Christian and Jewish Conflict and Cooperation.” What he would discover is that there have been wars but also many centuries of peace. Islam has at times been at the cutting edge of modernity, but like today, it has also been the great laggard. As Karabell explained to me, “If you exclude the last 70 years or so, in general the Islamic world was more tolerant of minorities than the Christian world. That’s why there were more than a million Jews living in the Arab world until the early 1950s — nearly 200,000 in Iraq alone.”

If there were periods when the Islamic world was open, modern, tolerant and peaceful, this suggests that the problem is not in the religion’s essence and that things can change once more. So why is Maher making these comments? I understand that as a public intellectual he feels the need to speak what he sees as the unvarnished truth (though his “truth” is simplified and exaggerated). But surely there is another task for public intellectuals as well — to try to change the world for good.

Does he really think that comparing Islam to the Mafia will do this? Harris says that he wants to encourage “nominal Muslims who don’t take the faith seriously” to reform the religion. So, the strategy to reform Islam is to tell 1.6 billion Muslims, most of whom are pious and devout, that their religion is evil and they should stop taking it seriously?

That is not how Christianity moved from its centuries-long embrace of violence, crusades, inquisitions, witch-burning and intolerance to its modern state. On the contrary, intellectuals and theologians celebrated the elements of the religion that were tolerant, liberal and modern, and emphasized them, while giving devout Christians reasons to take pride in their faith. A similar approach — reform coupled with respect — will work with Islam over time.

The stakes are high in this debate. You can try to make news or you can make a difference. I hope Maher starts doing the latter.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-islam-has-a-problem-right-now-but-heres-why-bill-maher-is-wrong/2014/10/09/b6302a14-4fe6-11e4-aa5e-7153e466a02d_story.html
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19nate79

http://m.huffpost.com/us/news/fareed-zakaria-plagiarism/

Fareed is a faraud
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split decision
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19nate79
Oct 10 2014, 03:49 AM
Nope. Not gonna let that go unrefuted.

We live in a society that simply loves to tear apart great achievers, sadly, in addition to fame/celebrity whores.

Fareed Zakaria is an intellectual who has gained success because of his broad knowledge and level-headed perspective.

He has spent the better part of 15 years writing astute commentary for Newsweek, The Washington Post, the New York Times and numerous other respected publications.

As his profile has grown, demands on his time have also grown. He admitted to one instance of failing to attribute something in a gun violence column. He took full responsibility for it and apologized (also refreshing in this day and age). He was suspended by Time and CNN for one week and then reinstated.

Other accusations of plagiarism followed by most of them were the "gotcha" style attacks of people with different political leanings.

This isn't a man who has fabricated quotes or sources. He lifted a passage in a column and didn't cite the source. His bad. It does not negate his volumes of work over the years.

Anyway, whether you respect him or not, you didn't dissect his column I just posted. It's too easy to attempt to write someone off as a fraud. Let's hear the counterpoints to his stance on Islam.
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Tallica
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I haven't read the entire column you posted, Split, but I read the bolded part assuming that is the main thesis. The problem is that it's false and dishonest on more than one level.

The snippets of text he selects to use from Maher and Harris are completely taken out of context and represented in a way that is disingenuous. He accuses them of making very broad generalities, but they actually aren't if you watch their interview. They clearly state that they aren't referring to all muslims, but there is a very real and very large percentage that DO hold values that are in direct conflict with those who hold liberal and progressive values. The Muslim family that lives near you may be very nice and wonderful people who never harm anyone while simultaneously holding the real belief that women are subordinate beings, homosexuality should be punishable by death, leaving Islam should be punishable by death, etc, etc. This isn't even counting the foreign states that live under Islamic law and actually stone/behead people for non violent crimes.
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split decision
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I encourage you to read the full article.

What sometimes happens, as in the case of Sam Harris, is he makes a statement that not all Muslims are bad but then he contradicts himself by saying Islam is "the mother lode of bad ideas." It's pretty hard to take that out of context.

By the way, here's another line from Harris:

"We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it."

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/in-defense-of-profiling


Maher -- who I usually like but I think he's got it wrong on Muslims in some respects -- isn't much different. Consider these statements:

Quote:
 
Funny man Bill Maher, on his show Real Time with Bill Maher, said he's scared of a hot new trend in Britain: naming babies Mohammed. That's the most popular name for a baby boy there now, and Maher is "alarmed."

"Am I a racist to feel alarmed by that?" Maher asks his guests. "Because I am. And it's not because of the race, it's because of the religion. I don't have to apologize, do I, for not wanting the Western world to be taken over by Islam in 300 years?"


http://gawker.com/5677293/bill-maher-is-totally-spooked-by-babies-named-mohammed


From an interview with Charlie Rose:

ROSE: Would you come to the table and debate this with a moderate Muslim?

MAHER: Find one, yes. Find one.


What's the implication there? That moderate Muslims are few and far between, right?


Maher has also condemned Islam for female genital mutilation. That's not a Muslim thing, that is something endorsed by ISIS and a practice of some African nations where Muslim it practised.

Maher has been critical of Islam for not allowing women to drive. There is one Muslim nation that doesn't allow women to drive -- Saudi Arabia. That's it. It's not a Muslim thing.

He sometimes makes generalizations that mislead to strengthen his case.


Yes, we all know about the crazy shit that happens in the name of Islam. But many of those heinous acts are carried out by groups like the Islamic State that represent only a tiny fraction of Muslims and they are not representative of the religion as a whole.

For the larger number of Muslims (still not all, but there are many) who believe in Sharia law and the stoning of women, I welcome a clash of values. That sort of behavior should not be condoned.

As for my neighbors, I can't tell you the dinner conversation that takes place at the Muslim residence next door. But I can tell you that the wife and mother outwardly has a firm grip on that household. She can be heard yelling at her husband and teenaged sons at various times throughout the day. I've never seen her bearing any scars or bruises for having the audacity to assert herself (I actually wish she'd take a chill pill sometimes).

I know several others. I fear none of them. I used to work with a woman, originally from Germany, who converted to Islam when she married a man from Pakistan. They were both respected members of the business community.

I believe Dwarf of Doom here on this forum has mentioned before that he's Muslim. I've never found him repugnant. Have any of you? Yet there are some others here who may be Christian, may be agnostic or atheist who espouse very narrow-minded views.

As we re-engage this debate, I'll again make it clear that I'm not an adherent of any faith. I think the world would generally be just as well off without any religion. But if people want to practice some form of it, I respect that. Just don't do harm to others.

And I acknowledge that many religious folks do good deeds (that's great, just drop the "in the name of God part").

Before I wind up this post, let me say that I expect at least one TL;DR response. But I don't care. If you want to treat this stuff lightly and continue to make sweeping generalizations, then do so.
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split decision
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More informative reading here, Tallica. I hope you take the time:


Quote:
 
There is a fundamental misunderstanding among these critics of religion in that they believe, first and foremost, that people get their values, their morals from their scripture, when in reality the exact opposite is true. You bring your morals and your values to the scriptures; you don’t extract them from them. You learn that on day one of the study of religion — day one, that’s the first thing that you learn!

And to a larger extent it indicates a real fallacy in the New Atheist movement, that is part and parcel of the lack of a religious education among these critics of religion, which is that they tend to read the scriptures more literally than any literalist I know. And when confronted by some particularly savage line in the scriptures, their conception forces an understanding [that says], “If you do not follow that little bit of savagery, then you’re not really a Muslim, you’re not really a Christian, you’re not really a Jew.”

You know who else makes that argument? Fundamentalists. And that’s why this notion that what these guys represent is a new kind of fundamentalism, an atheist fundamentalism, is so real. Because that’s precisely what’s being exhibited here in their utter sense of certainty; in their literalist, simplistic, exoteric, absolutist interpretation of religion; in their inability to recognize the diverse ways in which religion is lived rather than what we would refer to as top-down religiosity.


http://www.salon.com/2014/10/10/exclusive_reza_aslan_on_bill_mahers_anti_islam_crusade_frank_bigotry/


And here:
Quote:
 

Islam is not a monoculture. Sunni and Shia look very different, both have generated schools of thought that take starkly contrasting approaches towards issues of gender, the relationship between church and state, and the role of Jihad. Both have evolved within cultural contexts that have helped to shape their outlook; their impact upon those societies has waxed and waned. Take a trip to urban centres in the Islamic world in the 1970s and you’d be struck by the degree of freedom enjoyed by women, secularisation and the relatively limited role played by Islam.

I’ve just finished reading Rodric Braithwaite’s account of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Afghantsy, and he notes how the explosion of rural fundamentalism took urban dwellers by surprise – after all, women in the 1960s enjoyed access to primary school education, university attendance and the declining use of the hijab. Likewise, Michael Axworthy’s Revolutionary Iran points out that even after the Islamic revolution had taken place the country’s new leadership would not dare to take away women’s right to vote. Politicised Shia, argues Axworthy, did not run away from modernity but instead tried to find some synergy with the needs of Islam. Educational opportunities for women actually expanded.

The point is that political Islam is a recent invention – a reaction to the failure of post-war Arab nationalism and socialism – and not the definitive form of historical Islam. Indeed, it breaks down the wall of separation traditionally found in Muslim societies between church and state and reflects the rural conservatism and near-feudalism of a vanguard that felt dispossessed by globalisation, American intervention and liberalism. It is a particular historical experience of Islam in the same way that the Spanish Inquisition was for Catholicism or the Defenestrations of Prague were for Protestantism.

Isil’s extremism is not the norm across the Islamic world. Maher cited a Egyptian Pew poll in his interview that, he impled, showed global Muslims are militant and radical. I’m not familiar with that poll, but a 2013 Pew poll of the entire Islamic world found massive variation in attitudes. Plenty of support for democracy in South Asia but little in Pakistan; 89 per cent said women should not be compelled to wear the hijab in Tunisia compared to just 30 per cent in Afghanistan. All Muslim societies contain majorities who say that people should not be compelled to follow Islam and that suicide bombing is wrong. Only in two areas is there something closer to conservative unanimity. First, Muslims want access to Sharia courts – which is entirely reasonable given that a) it’s their cultural norm and b) in some countries those courts might be regarded as less corrupt and less prone to political manipulation than the state’s alternative. Second, Muslims retain conservative opinions on women and homosexuality. That’s sad, but it’s not just a Muslim thing. Russia and Africa are also deeply homophobic. That unpalatable views can be found in all societies is reflected in poll numbers that finds 16 per cent of the French feeling sympathy towards Isil (that’s 27 per cent among those aged 18-24). Only 5 to 10 per cent of France is Muslim, which suggests that sympathy for the devil is found among many non-Muslims, too.

Does all of this mean that we can safely say, as the President did, that Isil has “nothing to do with Islam”? That, too, would be naïve. Historically, Christianity has the capacity to and has produced movements just as horrific as Isil – but what matters is that this contemporary threat has emerged from an Islamic society and, therefore, is something that we obviously have to address as an Islamic problem. But British intelligence also indicates that many Jihadis have a surprisingly slightly understanding of their chosen fundamentalism, and it may well be that violence and chauvinism are the real motivators for something to which Islam merely provides the language of expression.


http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100286184/bill-maher-is-wrong-we-cant-blame-isil-on-islam/

And here's a link to an article on the poll referenced in the article above:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100214861/poll-of-global-muslims-finds-love-of-sharia-mixed-views-on-suicide-bombings-and-fear-of-islamism/
Edited by split decision, Oct 10 2014, 02:04 PM.
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Tallica
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Pretty swamped at the office right now, but I'll definitely give it the full read. I find this topic fascinating, so I look forward to the read
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