"Bigotry against Muslims is a real and pressing problem, but one can criticize the Islamic ideology without treating Muslims as themselves problematic or incapable of reform."

Too many people can't tell the difference between criticism and bigotry. We see actual bigotry from the right all the time ("all them muslin A-rabs are terrorists!&quot and it should always be challenged. But it's not bigotry to say "culture A is wrong to force women into unwanted marriages."

If Harris and Maher just said "culture A is wrong to force women into unwarranted marriages," then they would just have been criticizing Islam. They didn't just say that. Harris actually said "Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas." That is religious bigotry. It is a complete condemnation of Islam as a relgion/discourse that is inherently harmful and damaged by its concepts. This is not a criticism of one or more of it's bad ideas (as you say); it is an indictment of its ideas themselves. That is very dangerous to our American Muslims--who have suffered bigoted attacks--and feeds the Crusades mentality that fed that stupid Iraq war.

Christianity and Judaism also have many bad ideas, but Harris and Maher neglected to address those. Read up on Leviticus, Exodus, or Deutoronomy to find the most heinous, violent ones. Harris has also made terrible comments about the Palestinians, implying that Israel's excessive bombing of Gaza was the fault of the Palestinian's "character." He is an unbiased faulty critic at best, an anti-Muslim/Arab bigot at worst.

Do you think it is bigotry/unfair to quantify the ills produced by certain religions and compare them to other religions?

For example,

Is it wrong to say that Religion A is far more regressive than religion B? That religion A has far more bad ideas than B? That from a humanistic perspective that Religion A is objectively worse than religion B?

Do you feel that one can never condemn an entire religion? Even if its religious text promotes all sorts of bigotries itself? That there never comes a point that a religion becomes like the curate's egg and should be thrown out? Or do you feel that so long as there is as much as a single good sentence in its core doctrine, that it is worth preserving?

No, it is not bigotry/unfair to quantify the ills produced by certain religions and compare them to other religions. However, that is not what Maher and Harris did. To actually make such a successful comparison, one must make a careful, well-researched and analyzed presentation of the scriptures of the two religions; make a nuanced comparison of those scriptures, and present an accurate argument. Harris and Maher didn't come close.

I don't know of what religions you speak, but I can confidently say that the Bible is loaded with patriarchy, misogyny, death or damnation to non-believers or Gentiles, beating of children, and stonings. Christianity and Judaism cannot be those pure Religion B's you mention to contrast with Islam's Religion A. They're just not that good.

As to your second question, no again. Again, that's not what Harris and Maher did. Are you ok with calling a religion the "mother lode of bad" ideas, indicting American Muslims who follow them and a billion other Muslims with whom we seek peaceful cohabitation? I hope not. That wouldn't be a 'humanist" perspective as you say.

As to your final question, I'll answer (for a change) by asking you one. Do you think we should condemn Islam? Do you think it's like the "curate's egg" and should be "thrown out." If so, how so do you suggest we treat our thousands of Muslim citizens? Should we force them to convert or be exiled? How should we relate to the billions of Muslims in the world. Should we continually view them as adherents to a bad discourse, and to be trusted and not feared? I certainly hope not, although Harris and Maher probably would.

1. Motherload?
   
   I think that is fair only if you include X-anity and Judaism as well. All three religions advocate misogyny, homophobia, and violence. I think that is more Maher's position (though he thinks Christianity and Judiasm has mellowed out in the last couple hundred years). Harris, I get the impression really feels that Islam is significantly worse than the other two in any time period.
   
   Overall, I am not okay with Harris. The few articles I have read by him have all left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I get the impression that the muslims in palestine (or anywhere) can do no right in his eye.
   
   Maher is inching closer to Harris, but I feel he is not fully into the islamophobic area. In the time I have watched his show I have seen him show a willingness to change his mind on things and give people the benefit of a doubt. I also seen him come down hard on RW Christians. I think his comparison of modern islamic theonomies of parts of the middle east and Norther Africa to the Christian theocratic dictatorships in Europe of the Middle ages is an interesting one. I agree with him about us needing to advocate harder for liberal values outside the US.
   
   However, I wish he would not let Christianity off as being significantly more peaceful in the modern world when about 60-70years ago one Christian killed over 10million people. His blind spot seems to be ignoring the less moderate christian sects like the Branch Davidians and the more moderate modern muslims. I am also bothered by his nearly unconditional support of Israel. Ultimately, I feel he is more than willing to call out Christianity/Judaism just as much if a major act of violence is done in their name.


I dislike how Affleck was constantly cutting him off as from what I heard Maher was trying to explain that he was not saying that his condemnations applied to all muslims. Yes Maher was saying that he felt that a majority of Islam was conservative, but from my perspective Affleck was jumping to conclusions and making it out as if Maher was giving a blanket condemnation for all muslims.


2. Do I think we should condemn Islam?
   
   I think any religion that calls for the death of any person, who has not hurt another person, should be condemned. This goes for Islam as well as Christianity and Judaism. That alone makes it a curate egg to me. However, this is not a blanket condemnation. I give passes to sects that remove those doctrines from their particular version of the religion. I also realize the individual adherents do not necessarily believe or advocate every single thing that their religion says. I only condemn those individuals who act upon these dogma that call for the death of innocents.
   
   How do we deal with our thousand of Muslim citizens?
   
   We treat them as any other citizen. Humanely and with dignity. When they express bad ideas like RW Christians do, we call them on it. When they act upon these beliefs that call for physical violence and hurt others we punish them for their actions.
   
   How do we relate to the billions of Muslims in the world?
   
   Individually the same as above. When it comes to the individual countries/regions that mandate these violent beliefs by law (such as the countries that put homosexuals or nonbelievers to death) we should pressure them with sanctions and reward their fellow countries that don't act on these beliefs with better trade deals.
   
   Ultimately, I feel that information and advocating for secularism are the best weapons against bad religion.

*As for my example of the two religions, I was not basing either one on any particular belief. I was just trying to make two obviously contrasting examples. If I was going to compare to actual religions I would have picked the Mayan religion(human sacrifice) v. Philosophical Taoism (pacifism).

If we condemn a religion practiced by so many of our citizens, then we are telling them and those who will attack them that they practice a religion that is inherently wrong and they should leave it. Those who don't will inherently become outcasts in our society, who will feel great pressure to leave their religion they adore. if we do that, we will move towards becoming as discursively oppressive as those Islamic nations we criticize. We don't want to do that.

If we engage a foreign policy with Muslim nations after having condemned their religion, we will be telling them--and our own xenophobic hawks--that they are our ideological opponents and that they should abandon their beloved religion and ideals. As I said before, this is a Crusades mentality that encourages our hostile and martial engagement with those nations and those nations' views of us as opponents. I don't think you want that either.

And we are in complete agreement on the passive-aggressive Harris. He is also a pretty lousy scientific fact-based Atheist, as opposed to the brilliant physicist Sean Carroll, who has well debunked Harris' mystical, unfounded assertions that specific moral/ethical standards can be scientifically "proven" or validated.

It's great that so many Muslims have moved past the nasty bits of their holy text. Same with Christians and Jews. Thank goodness so many have been able to put those aside.

But the nasty bits are still there.

Right in the book that even the progressive members of those religions insist has a special meaning, and/or elements of the divine. By sanctioning that book, giving it a special place, insisting there is so much valuable truth to be found in it - truth that TRANSCENDS the knowledge and experience of humans - we are just continuing to ignore that 800 pound gorilla in the room.

And it's just beyond maddening that some people want to attack Bill Maher and Sam Harris more than they want to denounce the people who are fucking chopping the heads off of innocent human beings in the name of their religion.

When people are calling Sam Harris a "racist" for criticizing Islam, that's an attack. Islam isn't a race.

Look, I'm not comparing Islam to the other two Abrahamic religions to make Islam look worse. I think they ALL have problems. Islam just hasn't had as many years to mellow out. Wasn't but a few centuries ago that Christians were gleefully torturing and killing apostates too.

Finally, you still haven't addressed what we should do with the "gorilla in the room." How should we deal with it and all American an non-American Muslims.

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought that was a rhetorical question. The obvious solution, to me (and I thought from my previous post), is that we stop giving religion a pass. We stop pretending religion is "another way of knowing" that's on par with observation and reason. We acknowledge that "holy books" are wholly the product of human beings; that there's no divine information at all in them. They don't deserve any special consideration as compared to any other work of literature.

What's your plan?

What exactly are you on about? Sam Harris? The specific I/P situation? Or solving problems with all of the world's billion Muslims?

I answer one thing and you snip at me that I've changed the subject. And you're attempting it again with the red (no pun intended) herring of China.

Take a step back, I think you'll find we agree on more things than we disagree.

That's a tricky topic to negotiate.

By all biological measure, "race" isn't even a thing. It is a social construct, and concepts of race can vary wildly across cultures. But one thing is more or less constant: the qualities used to define race are always superficial, and very rarely give one any insight whatsoever into those displaying these qualities.

So, no, by the dictionary definition, "Islam" is not a race. But people here in the United States treat it like one, anyway. And this on both sides of the aisle. Republicans treat it like an inferior race, arguing for profiling, exclusion, and a laundry list of other civil rights violations. Democrats, as a result, treat Islam like they would any other suspect class.

If right-wingers weren't running around calling for us to "take their oil, kill their leaders, and convert the rest to Christianity", I don't think liberals would be as defensive as they are.