Sam Harris, together with Bill Maher the anchor of HBO's "Real Time," had a debate with internationally famous Ben Affleck and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on Maher's previous comments about radical Islam.
Sam Harris argued, "Liberals have really failed on the topic of theocracy. They'll criticize white theocracy. They'll criticize Christians. They'll still get agitated over the abortion clinic bombing that happened in 1984, but when you want to talk about the treatment of women and homosexuals and free thinkers and public intellectuals in the Muslim world, I would argue that liberals have failed us."
Sam Harris then added, "The crucial point of confusion is that we have been sold this meme of Islamophobia where every criticism of the doctrine of Islam gets conflated with bigotry toward Muslims as people. That's intellectually ridiculous."
"Argo" director then jumped in and started to accuse Harris of denying the actual existence of Islamophobia and even accused Maher and Harris of being racist. He argued that their comments on Islam were the equivalent of calling someone a "shifty Jew."
Harris then countered this by answering that bad ideas should be criticized. He even said that "Islam, at the moment, is the mother load of bad ideas."
Kristof also argued that Maher and Sam Harris were somehow giving an "incomplete" picture of Islam and pointed out that there is also a huge number of Muslims who have always fought against extremism. Harris then answered by pointing to the polling data with regards to the beliefs of Western Muslims. He argued that many people have been "misled to think that the fundamentalists are the fringe."
Michael Steele, former RNC Chairman, then entered the debate and argued that moderate Muslims do not actually get the coverage they deserve. Maher responded to this by saying that the main reason why this is so is because Islam is the "only religion that acts like the Mafia that will f*cking kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book. There's a reason why Ayaan Hirsi Ali needs bodyguards 24/7."
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