Bill Maher: Western culture isn't just different, it's better.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

On "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart relatively soft-pedaled his defense of fellow Comedy Central employees, "South Park's" Matt Stone and Trey Parker, against a group of Muslim critics. Over at HBO this weekend, though, Bill Maher wasn't holding anything back. On his show "Real Time With Bill Maher," the show's every-incendiary host opined during his segment "New Rules:"

"When South Park got threatened last week by Islamists incensed at their depiction of Muhammad, it served -- or should serve -- as a reminder that our culture isn't just different than one that makes death threats to cartoonists. It's better." In his defense of the First Amendment and other Americal civil liberties, Maher -- who made the film "Religulous" -- continued: "The Western world needs to make it clear: Some things about our culture are not negotiable. And can't change. And one of them is freedom of speech, Separation of church and state is another."

Completely spot-on observation about real differences in cultures, one that will not play well with PC police. Bill Maher is certainly no friend of religious people; and gives grief equally to Christianity, Judaism, Scientology, and Mormons as you will see. But he specifically singles out Isalm with the recent actions in Afganistan and the Taliban's attack on an all girls school.

Comments

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

Which of these countries prevent women from driving, cut off people's hands for thievery, or would throw you in jail for passing out copies of the Koran?

BTW, I'm referring to the present day, in the past. There have been points in the past where the islamic world was more enlightened than Europe, this is completely irrelevant.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

United States Commission on International Religious Freedom would say underlankers is full of it. To wit: "ten Muslim countries were among the 13 designated by the USCIRF as Countries of Particular Concern (CPC): Eritrea, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Along with those, the worst violators of religious freedom around the world, six other Muslim countries were on the USCIRF's watch list: Afghanistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Somalia, Tajikistan and Turkey.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Iraq and Afghanistan are war zones where the missionaries are exploiting the chaos. In the case of Nigeria, it's as much Christian as it is Muslim. Saudi Arabia is our ally anyway so we obviously didn't mind that 19 of those hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi. Turkmenistan. Tajikstan and Uzbekistan are ex-Soviet bloc societies which like Russia are experiencing religious craziness from almost a century of repressing it.

Turkey is protesting to actually allow Islam to be practiced, Egypt's been killing Islamists since the movement began, Somalia's a tribal hellhole where Indonesia's one of the most relaxed Muslim countries on the face of the Earth. The Sudan is in the mdiddle of a civil war, Eritrea's at war with a Christian society which has plenty of atrocities of its own....

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

That's an impressive list of excuses for a bunch of authoritarian theocracies.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Yeah, totally.