Is Bill Maher a Bigot?

Some students in Berkley have organized a campaign to prevent the comedian Bill Maher from giving a commencement speech in December. They’re upset because he insulted Islam.

In recent times, Bill Maher has been making a lot of anti-Muslim/anti-Islamic statements. I’ve been following some of his statements. Sometimes what he says is interesting and witty. But a lot of time, his opinions seem no different than other religious bigot despite him being areligious (he’s a staunched atheist).

So if you want smart and funny, with bit of smug and sexist for an added edge, Bill Maher is a perfect college speaker. His offense to a few sensitive Golden Bear souls is to note — in the sharp, exaggerated and blunt style that is the comedian’s stock in trade — that Islam is not all that tolerant.

Maher’s comments early this month drew on an exhaustive Pew Research Center survey last year of Muslim attitudes, based on 38,000 face-to-face interviews in 39 countries. The findings were fairly grim for fans of enlightenment. Most Muslims in at least six countries favored “executing those who leave Islam.” A majority also said homosexuality was morally wrong and that a wife should always obey her husband. Most troubling, the poll found high support in countries like Egypt and Iraq for “honor killings” — executing someone, usually a woman, for having sex out of wedlock.

Islam, said Maher on his HBO show, “is the only religion that acts like the Mafia” — killing heretics who say the wrong things or leave the faith. The forward-thinking social values that liberals favor are the very things that a majority of Muslims in some countries will not tolerate, he said.

Bill Maher said that based on some recent findings, Islam appears to be very intolerant, more so than any other faiths.

In my opinion, I think most of the religions of the world are intolerant in one way or the other. And this is simply because religions are not really designed to operate and work in the modern world with universal value system (equality without regards to faith, gender, age, sexual orientation etc). Islam is no more/less tolerant than Christianity or Hinduism or Judaism. Perhaps you’ll be able to find something good in any religion if you search for goodness hard enough.

Unfortunately, a lot of Muslim believes that Islam has already designed a perfect infallible system whereby if you follow all the stupid and silly rules documented in the supposedly historical literatures (that seems mostly doggy to me) then you are on path to a great life (here and hereafter).

I still think Bill Maher should be allowed to talk in the commencement. You can’t silence someone just because you disagree with what he/she has to say. All of us have opinions that are not always to the liking of everyone but we are still given a chance to express it.

Reference
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/opinion/berkeley-students-shouldnt-censor-bill-maher.html?_r=0