Dear Bill Maher,

I know you aren’t trying to condemn a whole particular religion. But you actually like condemning religion. You’ve done it before. So when you say it’s about “the ideas” rather than the people, I don’t buy it. The argument you made last week, and again this week, is based not on the ideas, but the people. That’s what Ben Affleck should have said to you on Friday. He almost got there.

In an earlier episode of your show, Real Time with Bill Maher you made a pretty compelling case for liberals acting like liberals and denouncing acts of abuse, violence, and prejudice in other parts of the world, rather than obsess about local political correctness. I really wanted to agree with you. In another interview with Charlie Rose on Rose’s own show, you argue that Islam is different from other religions. I can’t follow you there.

This, of course, is the argument you tried to make on Friday, isn’t it? You recruited a sympathetic voice to help; the noted atheist antagonizer, Sam Harris. I suppose, to make things interesting.

It certainly did.

I almost couldn’t watch as you and Harris try to control the conversation, having trouble with Affleck’s aggressive response to your blanket statements about Islam. You started to speak over Affleck every time he spoke. Then watching Affleck stew as he waited to break in. It was agonizing. And I think we just caught a glimpse of the brood he’s bringing to Batman.

The two of you make a fair argument about the current state of the world only if I am to believe that people have religious hats and political hats: that abuse by the state in the name of religion is different from abuse by the state in the name of anything else. That this religion (your point) is different from any other.

If the problem, however, is Islam’s “bad ideas,” then why aren’t we talking about the actual ideas? Would you truly be having this discussion if these bad ideas were not tied to religion? Such as the tyranny and government abuse by Amin, Stalin, and Lenin? Aren’t we supposed to be talking about those places in which leaders brutalize and devastate their own people? Isn’t that the actual problem? And no discussion is complete without a Hitler reference. Nazi gas chambers are a non-Muslim example of brutality done toward one’s own people. None of these are an example of Islam. Or Christianity. I know I just invoked Godwin’s Law, please forgive me, but I did it for a reason.

If you want liberals to act like liberals, then Mr. Maher, I expect the same of you. The problem isn’t Islam, it is fascism. It isn’t the religion, it is the abuse. It isn’t what the leader’s religion tells him/her, it is how leaders wield power.  You want liberals to name the abuse, then you name it, too. The abuse and the abuser. Name that the problem is the leadership of Saudi Arabia and what they do to their women. And that’s what you did last week, sort of, when you spoke about genital mutilation. Name the problem. Name the perpetrator. Then try to fix it.

I know you think you are doing it, because you think the problem is Islam. Or that some countries are theocracies. But that isn’t sticking to the problem any more than the liberals you are condemning are. You are drifting from the liberal values you defend and toward someplace else.

If we are to make the argument that this is about the beliefs themselves, then attack those expressions of belief, and who is making those expressions into laws. Islam is no more the Saudi royal family and Ali Khamenei than Christianity is Rick Warren and Joel Osteen. No more than liberalism is Bill Clinton and Barack Obama or conservatism is the Georges Bush. Religions, like ideologies aren’t people. Religious fundamentalism isn’t a problem in the abstract but in the very actions you decry!

Bill, this is why you are totally wrong about Islam. Because no religion is so directed as you claim. There is no singular teaching about Islam any more than there is for its cousins: Judaism and Christianity. I don’t expect you to understand this idea because most Americans don’t.

There isn’t one Islam. There isn’t one ruler. There are plenty that claim to own the truth. But that’s what makes it so much like Christianity and Judaism. There are many Islams and Judaisms and Christianities. The religion isn’t the problem, it’s the abuse.

This is also why I brought up fascism; with governments who centralize the power in individuals and subject the people to their whims and prejudices. And don’t forget superstition and ignorance. Don’t forget those places in which scientific evidence has been rejected for local rumor. And what about the global patriarchal problem? See, it isn’t the religions themselves, but the people who scapegoat religion for their own acts of evil. The Devil God made me do it! You can’t pin all of this on religion, absolving the people and the governments from responsibility, but you will try!

Religion isn’t responsible for ignorance, but bad religion preys on it.

If we want to talk about the problems, lets talk about the problems. Let’s talk about the violence and pure acts of evil.

If we want to talk about the solutions, lets talk about the solutions. Let’s talk about education, women’s empowerment, and eliminating global poverty.

Or, if you want to blame your favorite boogeyman of Islam, go ahead. Just don’t expect me to join you. Or respect your hypocrisy.

Ben Affleck should have called you a hypocrite. It isn’t about the religion. It’s about the abuse. It isn’t the tenants of a whole religion you named, but the tenants of a particular group. It wasn’t the actions of the whole Islamic community, but the actions of political actors. You conflate certain interpretations of scripture by certain leaders as true of all Muslims, which is false for any global religion. Mr. Affleck should have said

Bill, I do understand what you are trying to say, but you are wrong. It isn’t Islam that does this, it is a few strains of Islam. They are doing evil things. I am not saying that it is “a few bad apples,” but powerful leaders are exploiting and abusing their own people and their neighbors. Deal with the injustice, rather than creating more prejudice and hate, scapegoating an entire religion. You are spreading evil because at the heart of it all, you have trouble understanding religion.

Peace,

Drew

 

PS – Please let Sam Harris know that his concentric circle analogy about Islam makes about as much sense as concentric circles for guitar players.

Imagine that every guitar player who ever lived listens to Jimmy Hendrix, then in the next ring are Keith Richards and BB King who wait on baited breath to hear what the master plays, but they are unwilling to go that far. They will merely play this way. Oh, and then the next ring out has the guy from Nickleback who would totally shred like Hendrix, but he thinks you know, um…Hendrix is sort of dead? so he wants to play like Hendrix but he just can’t bring himself to. Then the next circle out has Eric Clapton and Joe Strummer who say what the hell? Nickelback is closer than I am? That’s total– and the next ring has guitarists from all over the world who have never heard a note played by him, but somehow just know that they need to play like him anyway, subscribing to a style by magic fairy dust, and so on until all guitar players around the world expect to die early and be called drug addicts, because: Hendrix!