In the spirit of fostering a global debate, Kevin Steyer challenges an article we recently posted entitled ‘Are ‘Liberalism’ and ‘Islam’ mutually exclusive?’. Is Bill Maher’s stance on religion – more specifically, Islam – justified?

US TV Host and comedian Bill Maher graduated from Cornell University, one of America’s most prestigious universities, with a double major in English and History. Author Sam Harris earned his Ph.D in cognitive neuroscience from UCLA. Whether one agrees with their views on Islam or not, do accept that they are much more educated than the large majority of the population of the USA and, since this discussion on Islam is also relevant to the UK, the large majority of the population here. With this fact in mind, begin first by listening and learning, not passing judgment. Surely, if Sam Harris is not the one who interprets the “codified doctrine of Islam,” and he certainly is not, still remember that his education gives his arguments much more gravitas than most students today, myself included.

There are plenty of people and groups today who entertain bad ideas. On November 14th of this year, feminist group Femen decided that they would send a message regarding the Pope going to visit the EU Parliament, by using crosses to simulate anal sex in front of the Vatican. This was a poorly judged protest. Some Republicans in the Bush era believed that cutting taxes while starting a war was a solid economic move. This was also a bad idea. Other examples of “bad ideas” include yelling the words “You lie!” to President Obama during his State of the Union in 2009, or diverting money from the state owned Brazilian oil company Petrobras to aid President Dilma in her reelection bid. However, to expand on the first two examples, the Feminists described above earned media attention and perhaps a few followers, but nothing more. The Republicans in Congress succeeded in their plan, and now the USA is in a mountain of debt, however – and this is key – economic problems can be fixed.

There exist fundamental differences between these examples and the bad ideas emanating from the Islamic doctrine: by directly impacting over 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, any bad idea that resurfaces is multiplied and magnified worldwide. Examples of outdated Islamic ideas include the acceptability of mistreating women, the belief that it is acceptable to kill a “deserter” of the faith, that homosexuals should be punished, and, most notoriously of all, that committing suicide while killing several infidels is worthy of praise. These flawed ideologies may take generations to fix. And, yes, I am referring to them as “flawed” and in need of fixing: believing that murder is the proper way to deal with deserters of the faith, to cite just one of many popular Islamic notions, is wrong and unacceptable.

Undoubtedly, the beliefs and actions of ISIS are not representative of the majority of the Muslim community but take, for example, how ISIS has established a pricing scheme under which fighters can buy kidnapped Christian and Yazidi girls. In any case, as Harris has emphasised, Islam is the “mother lode of bad ideas” today. And yes, tolerant people should be intolerant of Islamic intolerance: there is no contradiction therein.

Sure, Christians fought Holy Wars in the past and invaded areas of the Muslim world under orders to kill everyone. But, and again this is key, there are differences. For starters, the vast majority of Christians alive today, if not all of them, now understand that such behaviour was not acceptable; it is not condoned. Secondly, Christians have advanced past the Middle Ages and have ceased to launch such Holy Wars glorifying murder. So, at the risk of sounding racist and intolerant, I will unequivocally say that modern Christian ideology is better than modern extremist
Islamic ideology. It is not merely different, it is better.

I can already sense that conflict and misunderstandings will brew as a result of the previous sentence, so let me make one thing clear: The above paragraph does not imply that I or anyone who thinks like me will mistreat or in any way treat a Muslim differently than a non-Muslim. The beauty of tolerance is that regardless of how much one may disagree with a particular ideology, it shall not get in the way of treating every man and woman as an equal. To the vast majority of Muslims today who are indeed peaceful and disagree with extremist Islamic ideologies and the actions of groups like ISIS, do your part and continue to let the world know that not all Muslims are fanatical jihadists. The future depends on those who speak up against bad ideas.