Let’s get this out of the way first: Bill Maher has a right to say what he wants about Islam, no matter how much it angers Muslims, or how offensive it may be. That is something built in to the structure of our system of laws. We have freedom of conscience (the five clauses of the First Amendment taken together).
Let’s get another thing out of the way: I disagree vehemently with Maher and find what he said to be reductive and juvenile. He used the views of some Muslims as a cudgel against all Muslims, which is no different than most of the attacks on religious, racial and ethnic groups across history. Take a single tenet, or a characteristic, or even a single person, and then have that tenet, characteristic or person stand in for the broader group. It is a fallacy of association (as when we assign guilt to one because of his or her association with someone or something else) or composition (which assumes that something is true of the whole because it is true of a part).
I raise this because Maher and his monologue last month — described by Jeffrey Taylor on Salon as a “‘Real Time’ monologue against liberals who treat Islam with excessive deference” and not as an attach on Islam — continues to rile people. There was the Internet petition that garnered 5,000 signatures, as Taylor writes, “demanding that the University of California, Berkeley — long a beacon in the history of the American free-speech movement — rescind the invitation to Maher to deliver the fall 2014 commencement ceremony address because of his ‘blatantly bigoted and racist’ comments about Islam.” And more recently, there was the Rula Jebreal, on Maher’s show, taking Maher to task.
The Jebreal appearance is the target of the Taylor essay, and he makes several good points about Jebreal’s argument — assuming that Jebreal’s argument was as simple as Taylor makes it out to be, that Jebreal was arguing that “critical speech about Islam cannot be tolerated in a public forum if it causes ‘offense.'”
He quotes her as saying that the students “feel offended, feel offended, that . . . your views of Islam . . . the generalizations [that you’re making] perpetuate bigotry . . . . I’m all for freedom of speech. I love debate, I hate monologues.” This, of course, makes it sound like she is only talking about offense — but what about those pesky little ellipses? Watch her complete remarks here, and you’ll notice that she offers a more nuanced take. Is her argument flawed? Yes. But she also makes the point that Maher has conflated all Muslims into one, unthinking and violent horde — which Maher, with his pithy responses (“Is there a gay bar in Gaza?”), seems find with.
But my point here is not to attack Maher — I’m no fan of his brand of atheistic certainty any more than I am a fan of religious fundamentalists — or to defend Jabreal. Her argument, while more nuanced than Taylor lets on, was badly flawed.
My issue is with Taylor’s argument, which conflates criticism of Maher’s take on Islam with efforts to censor speech. That is absurd. Maher’s critics are not trying to shut him up — even the Berkeley students asking that his commencement invitation be rescinded are still inviting him to debate his views on campus. (To be clear, I tend to be agnostic about commencement speakers because I find the entire commencement speech thing a racket. But if they are invited, let them speak, but also allow vibrant response and protest from the other side, even if it means disruption.) The critics aren’t asking Maher to shut up. They are criticizing him for the things he says — which, if I’m not mistaken, is exactly what free speech is supposed to be about.
I won’t comment on Taylor’s characterizing of the precepts of Islam — that one must proactively declare one’s faith in Islam,
the canonical texts of which inveigh against “unbelievers” and advocate violence and even warfare against them, with, at best, subservient dhimmi status and a special tax, the jizyah, imposed upon Jews and Christians
— because I just don’t have enough background to do so. I will say, however, that I have attended some Eastern Orthodox religious observances that still cite Jews as the killers of Christ, a belief that at an earlier date had been prominent among Christians.
But I will say that Taylor — at least in this piece — displays an uncomfortable certainty that does not allow for debate. Like Maher, he has crafted a narrative that immunizes him from criticism, that “Jebreal, Aslan and others” are “trying to stifle free speech about Islam,” and that anyone who disagrees with his version of the truth is an enemy of the enlightenment.
Nonbelievers should not sit idly by as those who attack the single greatest historical enemy of human progress, organized religion, are intimidated or barred from the debating table (or the commencement-address podium).
That said, Maher and Taylor are right about at least one thing. Organized religion (and not just Islam) has been responsible for more than its share of organized and grassroots violence across the centuries — though, as Karen Armstrong points out, much of the violence was actually perpetrated in the name of politics, wealth and power with those in control using religion as a weapon. But it also has been responsible for a lot of good — the Northern abolitionist movement, the Catholic workers movement, the civil rights movement, the sanctuary movements of the ’80s, and so on, were all influenced by religion. Religion and faith are complicated and contradictory and it is foolish of anyone to attempt to paint any religious faith with a single broad stroke. Doing so assumes that all members of a religious faith are no better than the worst members of those faiths, which is logically fallacious and counterproductive.
Religious belief and religious groups should not be immune to criticism, any more than political or commercial entities. But our criticisms need to be logically constructed and open to alternative points of view. The strand of atheism that Maher at least seems to represent, because of its unwillingness to admit any level of uncertainty on the issue of religion, is no better than the fundamentalist preacher who denounces Mormons and Jews.
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Hank Kalet 