Anti-Muslim Bias Goes WAY Beyond Bill Maher & Sam Harris

In The Young Turks on YouTube by Hlarson12 Comments

 

“On September 17, 2001, President George W. Bush gave his “Islam is peace” speech from the Islamic Center of Washington DC, tucked into a leafy stretch of embassy row. He urged the country to embrace “fellow Americans” who are Muslim as well as Islam itself “with respect,” explaining to a country full of “anger and emotion” that the jihadists who’d struck a few days earlier were insane outliers and not representative of the religion.

Since then, there has been a tension in how Islam is discussed in American media, and especially in its most populist and popular form, television. Americans typically follow Bush’s advice, but sometimes they struggle, particularly when violent extremist groups are in the news. In recent weeks, that strain of Islamophobia in the US has risen along with media attention to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), reaching crisis levels —particularly on American TV news.

Because 38 percent of Americans say they personally know someone who is Muslim, most of us rely on the media to shape our opinions of Muslims and of Islam. And the media is badly failing in its responsibilities to portray Muslims carefully and accurately.”* The Young Turks hosts Cenk Uygur & John Iadarola break it down.

*Read more here from Max Fisher / Vox:
http://www.vox.com/2014/10/8/6918485/the-overt-islamophobia-on-american-tv-news-is-out-of-control

Comments

  1. Guys! Shut up and read what Harris is actually saying before you speak. Harris doesn’t blame all Islamic people for terrorism nor does he say that the people are the worst. He has ALWAYS been attacking the idea of Islam and when he does idiots like yourselves have been responding that he’s attacking the people! Then he calls out people who react JUST AS YOU ARE REACTING and you prove his point. Islam THE IDEA is stupid, you agree with this. As with all irrationality ISLAM IS DANGEROUS. To disconnect the bad idea from the bad behavior EVEN IF A SELECT FEW BY PERCENT ARE TERRORISTS is being dishonest.

    Either religion has an effect on behavior or it doesn’t. Harris claims that it does. Counter-examples of non-religious terrorism and non-terrorist religious people don”t debunk this claim because the claim isn’t all encompassing. You are straw-manning that it is. Harris also claims that.TODAY Islam has an especially powerful negative effect on behavior. Not that it has no good effects, not that it negatively effects all Muslims in an extreme way, but that today, where the effect is most extreme, we find MORE people who are pushing Islamic fundamentalism. Argue against that claim, not your misrepresentation of Harris’ position. Otherwise, you are proving his other claim that anyone who criticizes Islam is quickly labeled an Islamophobe.

  2. What about all moderate Muslims,? Why don’t more speak out? Why don’t more Muslim countries speak out against fundamentalism or ISIS? See there is the problem, they sit silently while the West and Atheists like me speak out against what they do. Oh wait I remember why they don’t speak out, because they will be killed or jailed. What a lovely religion, it is a lot like Bill said in that it is like the Mafia.

    1. you are not allowed to say that.
      it may be true. but there are people who decided for you that you are not allowed to say that.

  4. Pingback: A Question of Will | Blinktopia

    1. I think Cenk’s sarcasm and hostility at 1:44 toward TYT viewers who are trying to point out that he’s misunderstanding Bill Maher’s argument is unwarranted. Cenk reports that Ben Affleck asked Bill Maher whether he thought all one billion Muslims held extreme views and that Bill Maher replied, “Yes.” That’s just flatly incorrect. Here’s a transcript:

      —

      BEN AFFLECK: How about more than a billion people who aren’t fanatical, who don’t punch women, who just want to go to school, have some sandwiches, pray 5 times a day, and don’t do any of the things you’re saying of all Muslims. It’s stereotyping.

      SAM HARRIS, AUTHOR: I’m not saying all Muslims —

      AFFLECK: Some of them do bad things and you’re painting the whole religion with that broad brush.

      MAHER: Wait, let’s get down to who has the right answer here. A billion people, you say.

      AFFLECK: A billion five.

      MAHER: All these billion people don’t hold these pernicious beliefs?

      AFFLECK: They don’t.

      MAHER: That’s just not true, Ben. That’s just not true. You’re trying to say that these few people, that’s all the problem is, these few bad apples. The idea that someone should be killed if they leave the Islamic —

      AFFLECK: That’s horrible.

      MAHER: But you’re saying the idea that someone should be killed if they leave the Islamic religion is just a few bad apples?

      —

      You’ll note that the word “yes” does not appear in that exchange, so obviously no one is arguing that “yes means no” as Cenk suggests here. I can understand how the line “All these billion people don’t hold these pernicious beliefs?” could be misread the way Cenk is misreading it, but Maher is very plainly not asserting that all one billion Muslims DO hold extreme views, he’s questioning Affleck’s assertion that all one billion Muslims DO NOT hold extreme views. Affleck is making the argument that Muslims with extreme views are a tiny minority, and Maher is asserting that actually extreme views are held by a significant percentage of the population, given that a majority of Egyptians say they support the death penalty for apostasy. Cenk should focus on the actual substantive arguments that Maher and Harris are making here, rather than attacking them with straw man arguments.

      1. Hi guys. I just watched your YouTube clip “Is Sam Harris as Dangerous as Sarah Palin?” and I’ve decided to cancel my TYT membership. I’m strongly opposed to all forms of religion and I think we need every voice we can get speaking out against it. While there are many valid criticisms to be made of both Bill Maher and Sam Harris, your treatment of them the past few days has been grossly unfair. You’ve completely misrepresented their views and been pretty rude in response to being called on it, and I find I’ve just lost a lot of the trust and affection I’ve always held for TYT and don’t want to watch right now. Based on the YouTube comments it seems like a lot of viewers feel the same way. I hope you guys will consider treating figures such as Bill Maher and Sam Harris with more respect and fairness in the future, and will do a better job of researching their positions before you criticize them.

  5. I think the gist of Harris’ argument is, the moderates tacitly support the extremists because they don’t denounce them when pressed.

  6. Could someone provide a link to back up Cenk’s assertion that Sam Harris has stated that a “vast majority” of Muslims want to behead people? In his Bill Maher interview Sam Harris states that arguably 20% of Muslims are Islamists. You can dispute that figure, of course, but it seems to me that by extension Sam Harris is pretty clearly stating that 80% of Muslims are _not_ Islamists.

    1. There are hundreds of millions of muslims who are nominal muslims that don’t take the faith very seriously, who don’t want to kill apostates, who are horrified by Isis and we need to defend these people. -Sam Harris.

      1. Yup they just sit silently as others in their group ruin their name. Most normal Muslims are cowards and of those that are not they are attacked, killed and jailed for standing up to the likes of ISIS or the Taliban.

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