Cenk Uyger has railed against Bill Maher and Sam Harris all this past week and has been fairly sloppy in doing so. I'm not going to address every piece he did. I felt it was important to attack and set straight some things with his initial video.
Cenk’s initial clip in response to Maher/Harris vs Ben Affleck, et al (what is being criticized in my writing)
https://www.youtube.com/...
Full video of Harris and Maher with follow-up article by Harris
http://www.samharris.org/...
Ex-Muslims of North America response to original Maher/Aslan controversy
http://www.patheos.com/...
Cenk shows a clip of Maher saying "it's (Islamophobia) is not a real thing when we do it". Cenk misreads this as Maher saying liberals can't think or do bad things but Maher was really saying that he and Harris do not hate all muslims as some right wing conservatives in the US may, they (Maher and Harris) just hate the ideas of Islam (and of Christianity as well but the topic of the debate was Islam so Christianity and other religions didn't come up as a central part of the talks).
In the same clip from above, Cenk shows Sam Harris saying “Islam at this point is the mother lode of bad ideas”.Cenk states that when you say “muslims are particularly bad - we’ll that’s a red flag”. Cenk is setting up a straw man argument here. Harris was speaking about Islam/an idea and Cenk misquoted him as saying muslims/people. Also, Harris says “at this point” implying that he thinks there were times in the past where he thinks Islam was not the mother lode of bad ideas or at least not the only one which means that he's not hell bent on demonizing Islam as the worst no matter what. Although the Christian and Islamic religions are relatively the same textually with respect to themselves as they were in the past - it’s the amount of expression of the fundamental aspects by the followers of each religion that vary throughout time.
Cenk made good points about Christian delusions and the real (bombings by western/Christian countries and a lack of desire for peace in the Middle East due to Revelations) or potential threat they pose (and Harris and Maher would agree) but Cenk at this point is just arguing a quality measure (how bad Islam is vs how bad Christianity is) and not refuting that Islam is actually a bad idea. The argument from Harris and Maher wasn't that Islam is the only bad idea the fact that another bad idea exists doesn't make Islam any better an idea.
Cenk did not speak on Affleck’s chide at Harris with the question “are you the person who understands the officially codified religion of Islam”? Under the assumed logic of Affleck, Affleck himself would be disqualified from defending Islam because he is not a person who understands the officially codified religion and therefore would not be qualified to intelligently argue his case. One does not need to be an imam or priest to read the black and white text of the holy books or the contextualization of the books/beliefs. Among those on the panel, Harris by far was the most well read regarding the Islamic religion.
Cenk showed a clip of Maher asking Affleck “all these billion people don’t hold any of” interruption “don’t hold these pernicious beliefs”. Cenk retorted this is the problem and stated Maher said “all of them hold those opinions”. This is not correct. Maher was on his way to ask Affleck if he thought that 'any' of the billions didn’t hold those beliefs and was interrupted mid sentence and upon resuming the question it had lost its original structure making it easy to misconstrue if you didn't listen to the words carefully.
Cenk claims Harris pulled the number of jihadists and Islamists being around 20% out of his ass and didn’t back it up but Cenk cut the clip before Harris gave an example of one of the polls citing 78% of British muslims think the Danish cartoonist should have been prosecuted. Cenk is completely dishonest in this segment as he pretends Harris has offered no polling data even if it was not enough data (though Cenk himself showed more data in favor of Harris' argument).
Cenk shows a graph from a pew research poll showing how many muslims support killing those who leave Islam. Cenk then again generalizes that Maher and Harris are saying all muslims (which is ironic because Harris never said anything close to all muslims in the interview but Cenk is generalizing his comments while saying Harris and Maher shouldn’t generalize muslims). Also, with that same pew research poll, if you total the estimated muslim populations in each of those countries polled for Asia and Africa, you get very roughly 45% of all of the muslims polled in Asia and Africa saying that killing someone for leaving Islam is ok and roughly 60% that say stoning to death for adultery is ok. These are not small numbers and cannot seriously be considered as fringe beliefs.
Cenk showed a clip of Maher saying “it’s the only religion that acts like the fucking mafia that will kill you if you say the wrong thing, paint the wrong picture, or write the wrong book”. Cenk again states that Maher is saying all muslims are like the mafia when Maher is making a more general point comparing blowback of criticism between the religions when looked at as a whole. Islam - taken as a whole - is the only religion that you can guarantee will act out to a point where followers (however small a percentage) will threaten or even follow through with murder (even those unrelated to the supposed offense) when you blaspheme their prophet/central religious figure vs Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, etc. To deny this fact is intellectually fraudulent especially since this (large violent muslim demonstrations) has played out several times in the past decade.
Cenk showed a clip of Maher saying “i can show you a poll of like 90% of egyptians believe apostates should be stoned to death”. Cenk corrects Maher and states the poll said over 60% of Egyptians instead of 90%. Maher clearly unintentionally misquoted going off of memory and hinted that it wasn’t going to be exact by saying “like 90%”. It’s good to get the correct number but a less of a majority is still a majority and doesn’t make Islam more favorable an idea nor detract from the argument.
Cenk then showed Maher saying “if filipinos were capturing teenagers and selling them into white slavery we would criticize that”. This is a bad example and was most likely the result of Maher trying to come up with a hypothetical example on the spot and I’m sure he would agree it was a bad example since he gave a more appropriate one just before it saying “it would be a big deal if 90% of brazilians thought killing someone was the appropriate response for leaving Catholicism”. The argument against Islam as a good idea was not built upon that random hypothetical example from Maher and does not diminish the arguments laid out elsewhere. I’m sure if Affleck could do it again, he would not say it’s “racist” to criticize Islam - we know what he was trying to get at and give him some slack because they are speaking off the cuff.
Cenk brought up Aslan’s point that fgm (female genital mutilation) happens outside of Islam. Yes, it happens in some Christian countries too and I’m not arguing it isn’t/wasn’t a cultural phenomenon but that speaks on the moral failure of Christianity and Islam as religions that following their religions doesn’t overtly imply respectful treatment of women. Women in both the religions (textually) are marital/sex objects and aren’t valued like they are in more humanistic philosophies/secular societies. The Hadith actually mentions fgm and not in a way that outwardly forbids it which would enable a follower of Islam to think it would be ok.
During the interview Harris said “there are hundreds of millions of muslims that don’t take the faith seriously, who don’t want to kill apostates, who are horrified by isis and we need to defend these people, prop them up and let them reform…(was cut off)” . No, Cenk didn’t show this clip - maybe because it didn’t fit his narrative. This wasn’t the only time in the exchange were Harris clarified he wasn’t saying all muslim people are bad. Harris also stated earlier on that “I’m not denying that certain groups of people are bigoted against muslims, and that’s a problem” “We have been sold this meme of Islamophobia where every criticism of the doctrine of Islam gets conflated with bigotry towards muslims as people, and that’s intellectually ridiculous” - Cenk did show this clip and gave Harris a little bit of credit then.
Now, Cenk wouldn’t be arguing against generalizing groups of people and then be generalizing groups of people himself would he? A quick search yielded a TYT youtube video titled “if you thought republicans were sexist hypocrites before, wait til you see this”. Hmmm, not some republicans or conservative republicans but a general statement about republicans. There are probably hundreds or thousands of examples of Cenk speaking in generalities about conservatives online - I would know, because I’ve been listening to his show for years now. I’m smart enough to know that Cenk doesn’t literally mean that every republican is this or that and that the disclaimer is implied and mentioned from time to time - why isn’t Cenk according the same respect?
The Abrahamic religions are dangerous because they enable and divinely encourage irrational and immoral thought and behavior in parts of their texts and these parts can always be used to justify bad thoughts & behaviors no matter what good parts of the text may exist outside of them, especially since the good parts do not explicitly say to stop following the bad parts. Liberal or “good” people of faith only help keep the bad ideas alive. It’s good to get behind the liberal religionists but it’s even better to eliminate the social acceptance of bad ideas altogether. I have Christian and Muslim immediate family members who I love dearly but that doesn’t make their respective religions untouchable or defensible, no matter how loosely they read it. Morality exists outside of religion, it’s proven by the liberal religionists who don’t partake in the cruel acts demanded in their texts in addition to the millions of people who live moral lives without religion altogether or exposure to the Abrahamic religions.