Religion
Related: About this forumBill Maher: Liberals Need to Understand Well Never Defeat Terrorism Unless We Reform Islam
by Josh Feldman | 10:39 pm, February 3rd, 2017
Bill Maher brought Sam Harris onto his show tonight to criticize liberals for not doing more to speak out against Islamic extremism.
They both agreed President Trumps travel ban was stupid and counterproductive, but Maher also said in talking about combating extremism, Were trying to find ways to disempower Donald Trump and the left is often not helping.
At one point Maher pointed to the burqa and said that while hes not in favor of banning them, liberals need to stop saying thats normal, thats not normal. If anything, he argued, the left should be outraged by a belief system that is blaming the women for the mens horniness.
He also said that liberals need to stop arguing that every culture is equally bad, which led to Harris saying there arent Scientologists and Mormons trying to kill people who insult their faiths.
Maher said the proper liberal response here needs to be understanding that well never defeat terrorism unless the Islamic faith is reformed.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/bill-maher-liberals-need-to-understand-well-never-defeat-terrorism-unless-we-reform-islam/
Sam Harris is the last person to lecture liberals on anything.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)Martin Luther Reformation (and stuff like the Calvinists and the Anglican Church) were only accepted because they came from within the church. There was authority behind this.
Similarly the hermetic reformation (which accidently lead to the birth of science as we know it, 200 years later): It was driven by artists and outsiders, but they were able to win over religious authorities to their point of view. Including Pope Alexander VI. And while the hermeticists were eventually reduced to a rabble of religious whackos, they left a cultural imprint that can still be found today, 500 years later.
Islam is structured differently: There is no accepted central authority that could lend power to any reform. A top-down-reformation is therefore impossible. The only thing that would work is changing the cultural mind-set of the Muslims to a more liberal one, changing the belief by changing the believer.
There is something obnoxious about Harris and Maher telling them what they need to do. It's just another form of cultural imperialism that Harris can place beside his advocacy of war on a Muslim country.
Igel
(35,320 posts)It protects those we don't want to criticize, but allows us to run roughshod over those we do.
I'd argue that fundie Xians and gang bangers are each in a culture different from my own. I don't see anybody screaming cultural imperialism when somebody says that either needs to reform. In fact, I regard such claims often as a way to say, "There are facts too offensive to be said, however true they are and however important it is to recognize them. Instead, we'll make up a story that not only denies the ability to state the facts, but instead says that somehow these are worthy, important cultures." Well, not the two I named. Others, no less virulent, are what I have in mind.
rug
(82,333 posts)http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/dec/1/20041201-090801-2582r/
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/articles/2863
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-end-of-liberalism
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/losing-our-spines-to-save_b_100132.html
There are others.
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/30/dawkins_harris_hitchens_new_atheists_flirt_with_islamophobia/
Gothmog
(145,321 posts)I really do not care what he has to say
Squinch
(50,955 posts)accepted in some places.
I'll fight to the death for the rights of women to wear hijab. (And by that I mean hijab. I don't mean, as is often described in DU, just popping on a headscarf and taking it off. Hijab is a way of life that includes a headscarf but also includes many other acts of "modesty" that are required of women but not men.) I think hijab is a misogynistic custom, but it is a religious practice.
Burqa is just institutionalized secular abuse whose purpose is to erase the public identity of the woman, and I think it should be banned in the US. When people whose traditions include cannibalism and slavery and trading of women come into the US, we don't say, "Well, it's their custom so we have to let them do it." The burqa is the same.
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)what reforms are needed.
More simplistic cultural imperialism from a country that loves to decide for others what is acceptable.