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Refuting Bill Maher's and Sam Harris's Demonization of Muslims

by John Spritzler

October 11, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/oct/17/islam-religion1

The article linked above refutes the claim, made by Bill Maher to an HBO "Real Time with Bill Maher" TV audience of who knows how many millions of Americans the other night, that Muslims kill anybody who leaves the Muslim faith. This article has a transcript of the heated debate between Bill Maher and professional atheist Sam Harris demonizing Muslims on the one hand against actor Ben Affleck and NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof defending Muslims against this demonization on the other hand.

Maher and Harris are leading the charge (on HBO TV at least) against Muslims, declaring the Muslim religion to be the main enemy in the world today and the main threat to what Maher calls "liberalism," by which he means all that is good and decent and reasonable.

The ruling class clearly wants Americans to fear and despise Muslims the way it wanted us to fear and despise Communists in the Cold War and "Japs" and "Huns" before that: Orwellian wars of social control need an enemy that is feared and despised.

Whether by design or not, Affleck and Kristof in my opinion lost the debate; they were not sufficiently well-prepared or knowledgeable. In contrast Maher and Harris were like well-oiled machines of bigotry, with well-rehearsed lies and with pithy and aggressive ways of expressing them.

I think most people try very hard to avoid adopting bigoted or racist beliefs. But in the face of extremely sophisticated propaganda like that of Bill Maher's and Sam Harris's, it's hard not to be influenced by lies if one has little or no personal knowledge about those being demonized and one never hears the lies refuted by those who do have such knowledge.

Here are some other good refutations of what Maher and Harris asserted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pjxPR36qFU (video, you need to wait for the ad to end)


http://www.pdrboston.org/#!preventing-youths-from-joining-isis/c21hq HOW TO PREVENT YOUTHS FROM JOINING ISIS (Hint: it's not by preaching "ISIS is bad; don't be a bad person.")

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/26/muslims-rally-against-extremism_n_5889962.html Muslims Around the World Rally Against Extremist Antics of Islamic State

Donald Trump recently accused G.W. Bush of having refused to take the warnings of an imminent 9/11 attack by Bin Laden seriously. The question is, why did he and his close circle refuse to take the warnings seriously? I think the answer can be gleaned from the behavior of Bush's Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, immediately after he whispered into G.W. Bush's ear that a second building had been struck by an airliner (this is on the famous video tape at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=0rO3F6mZUaE starting at time point 1:07.)

Note that immediately after whispering the message, Card walks away, without waiting to hear what Bush would say to him. Think about this! The Chief of Staff of the nation's Commander in Chief has just told the Commander in Chief that the nation is under attack, and the Chief of Staff does not wait to hear what instructions the Commander in Chief gives him to respond, and the Chief of Staff is the #1 person who communicates from the President to others in the Executive chain of command! What could possibly explain this strange behavior of Andrew Card?

The most obvious explanation is that the message Card whispered into G.W. Bush's ear was that things are going according to plan. If this were the message there would be no need for Card to wait to hear from Bush what he (Card) should do.

Likewise, if some of the 19 Muslims who are now accused of doing 9/11 (without, by the way, a single shred of evidence that would hold up in a court of law, as explained at http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/old/ Noevidence.pdf ) were being orchestrated by Bush et al as patsies to be blamed for 9/11, then Bush et al would not want these Muslims to be blocked or interfered with by zealous anti-terrorism employees of the government who were not "in the know," would they?

 

Some facts about women and the vote in Muslim nations:

Women can vote in Iran, which is a Muslim theocracy.

Women can vote in Indonesia, an overwhelmingly Muslim nation.

Women vote in Palestine (Gaza and West Bank).

Women vote in Iraq.

Pakistan had a female prime minister, and women are legally allowed to vote (although powerful conservative Muslim men try to make it hard for them to do so.)

Women in Switzerland could not vote in federal elections until 1971.

 

 

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