Ben Affleck, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Chris Hayes and the Establishment versus Bill Maher, Sam Harris, et. all...
Or
What is Racism? What is Religion?
The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 1[5]
Religion and race are NOT the same thing!
Race is immutable. Of course, it's been proven that children are taught both their religion and language. Without active instruction on how to follow a religion, including threats and promises, children will not adopt one. The same is not true of race. Even children understand this distinction, but apparently Ben Affleck is less sophisticated than my preschool child in his understanding of the nature of religion. There is no "race" of Muslims.
In countries where Sharia is the law of the land, people fall behind in intellectual development. It's difficult to choose to question authority if the punishment for apostasy is death. A backward legal system stifles the dissemination of free thought and keeps these countries locked in the Bronze Age. It may seem that these particular countries are backward because of their racial makeup, but that's a fallacy. It's a result of their legal obstacles to liberal thought, not because of inherited traits.
Compassionate people have an obligation to offer people who are trapped by theocracy asylum & education, not to apologize for their offenses or excuse their ridiculous, criminal "Holy Book." We can assist the people, while thoroughly rejecting the religion!
Ben Affleck makes the same mistake Hitler made in conflating a race with a religion. "Ethnic Jews" (what is that? Arabic? Hasidic? North African? European? Racially, in terms of DNA, it's not actually a "thing," is it?) were made to wear armbands because that's the only way one could be sure one had it "right" when lynching an innocent man. ACTUAL racial differences are, more or less, easy to discern. Jews are the same race as Muslims and Christians. If Hitler had made a distinction by the beliefs people held, which are certainly plastic & subject to change, he couldn't have found 6 million people willing to die just to stubbornly retain a set of childish beliefs (the Torah) which weren't that different from his own.
Certainly, Sam Harris didn't suggest that we shouldn't have compassion for "moderate" Muslims. Those people are stuck in a family, legal system & society that will ostracize or even kill them if they reject Islam, so of course they pretend to go along with "the mother lode of bad ideas." Only a brave (and possibly foolish, if the object is survival) few will openly protest, or even protest in their conscious minds.
But it is a sad time, indeed, when Obama, Chris Hayes, and other prominent liberals are so afraid that Christianity will be openly mocked that they won't call out other religions for their brutality.
Admitting that even a "moderate" Muslim is supporting a horrific set of beliefs & practices would call into question all "revealed" religions, as they are all based on stories of atrocities performed by the very "God" they insist we worship. W began this pervasive and insidious practice of Islam Apology when the West began the "War on Terror." According to the quote above, this practice of "mutual indulgence" dates back to ancient civilization. If your perceive that authority depends upon religion, you may shy away from criticizing another major contemporary cult. Rejecting a "War on Islam" as racist-sounding, political and social leaders of the West deliberately shunned the idea that a set of religious texts followed by 1.2 billion people could be completely unacceptable in modern civilization.
Why shouldn't we have a "War on Islam?" Isn't it in the Koran that all apostasy is punishable by death? Doesn't that explain the planes in the buildings? Really, any "moderate" Muslim who DOESN'T fly planes into buildings is disobeying the orders of an omniscient God, which is WAY worse than disobeying any Earthly orders...
But if we follow that line of inquiry, we come inevitably to words, plainly & clearly written in black & white in the Christian & Jewish "revealed text," that insist we kill disobedient children and cheating wives. We don't do that. At least, not officially...as a society, anymore. Early Christians & Jews certainly did. Some still murder, saying God told them to, whether in The Bible or through personal revelation. The Bible legitimizes such revelation. Can we possibly prosecute them according to Earthly laws, if we wouldn't have prosecuted Abraham had he murdered his son? In modern society, shouldn't we all be teaching our children that the character Abraham was a deranged misogynist, not a hero? Why are we so quick to declare a war on terror against ONLY the religious people who take their infallible word of god seriously? Either all these major religions are wrong and unacceptable for civilized, modern people to follow, or what are we doing, exactly?
I am stunned by the fact that 54% of the world population still adhere to the rantings of madmen who lionized a would-be child-killer obeying voices in his head. If he weren't ancient, we'd call him insane and have him locked up for public safety.
9/11 should have been a wake-up call to all of mankind to finally dismiss these terrible books!
All Islamists are wrong and backwards in their fundamental philosophy of life. Of course they are no more wrong and backwards than Christians or Jews, but it seems that in this era, they tend to take their text more seriously than the rest of us. The Koran is a misogynistic, racist, genocidal, child-abusing tome. So is the Torah/Bible. If I were an outsider observing the Crusades or the Inquisition, I would be astonished at the vile acts inspired by the Bible, and would desperately beg that people treat it as the awful fiction it is. Even now, it is the basis for deadly homophobia, child abuse, even murder.
But Islamic Imams have taken the cake lately. Within its pages, the Koran's distinct message of jihad urges its followers to kill unbelievers without mercy, and Muslim leaders are using it as an excuse to order murder & mutilation in dramatic ways, openly, and on an institutional basis. Believing that they might be rewarded in another life by a vile & vengeful deity (having nothing but pain in this life and blaming the wrong people), some followers break the deeply ingrained moral demand not to murder innocents; only a nonsensical superstition or other mental illness could override that moral code.