Liberal opinion of Bill Maher's views on Islam...

[CapoteMonster]

Bill Maher is a comedian so his beliefs on Islam shouldn't be taken that seriously. Sam Harris on the other hand thinks Middle Eastern terrorism is caused by Islam and literally said in The End of Faith that we shouldn't rule out nuclear trikes against the Middle East.

[CapoteMonster]

It's funny how common-sense rules of inductive inference are never followed when people debate about Islam. Here's what I'm thinking reading through this thread.

• Has anyone in this thread, regardless of how critical they are to Islam, cited one Quranic verse? There are multiple online English translations.
• How many people here have Muslim friends, or have any exposure to Muslims apart from "the college lecturer" or "the Sharia guy on cable news?"
• Why do we demand that "Muslims condemn these terrorists' actions?" I'm not going to demand my white, Christian friends to condemn Mormon polygamy, or give them glares until they write a blog post about the Westboro Baptist Church. This is a double standard, and the average Muslim blogger really advocates against this double standard they regularly experience.
• While I would never vote for a political Islamist party, the feasible set of policies they can demand varies from country to country. It would be illiberal to stone gays to death, but what's so illiberal about prohibiting the consumption of alcohol?
• How do we identify the effect of a fundamentalist religious institution on violence, independent of material causes?

While I do want to oppose the anti-Islam side, the discussion for me has turned into a greater question of what is socially acceptable for first-world white guys to say. "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence" and all that. This holds for my fellow critics as well if they lack the necessary evidence.