WHERE DOES BILL MAHER GO WRONG ABOUT ISLAM?

Bill Maher - comedian and intellectual

In the name of God, the beneficent, the merciful.

Peace be upon our Master Muhammad and his purified progeny.

Charlie Rose asks Bill Maher, "Have you ever had a debate with a moderate Muslim?"

Bill Maher responds, "Find me one."

So, in other words, if a Muslim believes in the punishments prescribed in Qur'an for different criminal activities, Bill Maher will call him radical, extremist and fundamentalist. That's not how you differentiate between a radical and a moderate Muslim. A radical Muslim believes that all non-Muslims must either convert to surrender to an Islamic government. A moderate Muslim believes that non-Muslims must be allowed to live peacefully in an Islamic state with none of their social, political or religious rights seized from them. A modest/moderate Muslim doesn't wish for the apostates to be put to death or cry "Go to hell!" to anyone who questions his faith. A moderate Muslim lets people make fun of Islam, ridicule Qur'an or criticize Prophet Muhammad because a moderate Muslim can refute all their arguments and disprove all their allegations. But a Muslim can believe in stoning for fornicators or amputation for thieves but still be moderate because he respects a Western country's rights not to implement the shari'ah version of hudud.

Bill Maher calls our beliefs illiberal because we simply refuse to agree with some aspects of the Western civilization; it is precisely the reason why the world is against United States of America. This is not just Bill Maher speaking. This is what the entire Western civilization preaches i.e. if you don't ascribe to our version of liberalism, you are not a liberal at all. They believe homosexuality is not a paraphilia rather a natural sexual orientation; they want us to abide. They believe eighteen should be the age of consent; they want us to abide. They believe that the death penalty is outdated; they want us to abide. We Muslims refuse to abide. We have our own interpretation of liberalism i.e. the Mohammedan liberalism. We refuse to legalize homosexuality but we also refuse to persecute a man because of his sexuality. We refuse to execute apostates but we also forbid him from publicly defaming Islam. We believe in setting the age of consent to eighteen but we also refuse to decriminalize extramarital coitus. We have our own civilization so we have our own liberalism.

How does Bill Maher know that all Muslims believe apostasy is a punishable crime or every single Muslim in the world wants to behead homosexuals? He can say that a vast majority does believe in these old-fashioned values. But there is a tiny minority among us that is rising against these inhumane ideas. I personally refuse to believe in the execution of apostates and homosexuals because I believe this is not how Islam works. Bill Maher can accuse Muslims of being barbarians but how can he testify that Islam is a barbaric religion when there are literally hundreds of versions of Islam available throughout history and many of them are against these inhumane penalties. There is strong evidence to support this theory that apostates were sentenced to death by Muhammad - peace and blessings be upon him and his purified progeny - because of their political treachery, not religious conversion. As for homosexuals, the crime of homosexuality was death because homosexuality was treated as pederasty.

Bill Maher's assertion that "vast number of Christians do not treat women as second-class citizens" implies that vast number of Muslims do consider women second-class citizens. I think Bill Maher has shown his utter ignorance to Islam and specially the Muslim culture by stating such obvious a lie. When Islam commands the segregation of sexes, the command is universal for both men and women. You can also misuse this command to state that Islam treats men as second-class citizens because they are instructed to stay away from women. 

Do Muslims find blasphemy offensive? Yes, they sure do. Do they get offended when someone draws caricatures of their Prophet? Yes, they do. Do they get violent while protesting against it? Yes. Why? Not because of Islam but because of their culture. Christians living in the past would act similarly if presented with disrespectful literature about Jesus Christ. Why do Christians tolerate blasphemy? Because their culture has advanced. But there still are many Muslims who don't make a fuss over blasphemy. Most of these tolerant Muslims live in the West. They are faithful observers of Islam. What changed then? Culture. Wait a second. Set culture aside. Does Islam actually teach to kill blasphemers or are these fanatical Muslims acting like brute animals on their own? A glimpse at Islam show us that Muhammad executed blasphemers for inciting terrorism against Muslims or betraying the State of Medina. He never killed a blasphemer for the mere act of insulting his personality.

Bill Maher accuses Islam of being more intolerant than other religions and cites the example of Mecca where non-Muslims cannot enter. Seriously? Don't you know anything about ancient Hindu temples where a member of the lower caste couldn't enter? All religions have shown such measures of intolerance. But still we have evidence to show that non-Muslims can enter Mecca because the Qur'an was specific about forbidding polytheists from entering it, not Jews and Christians. Why does Bill Maher focus on the violence that's happening right now and call Islam an intolerant faith but refuse to acknowledge that Christians have been the most intolerant of all religious communities in the human history? Why? Because it clearly shows to an atheist like Bill Maher - who's already well-known for his some personal grudge for Islam and Muslims - that religion's not the problem; culture is.

Bill Maher claims that Qur'an, on every page, has horrible stuff about how infidels should be treated. Have Mr. Maher ever studied the Old Testament, Talmud or Rig-Veda? Qur'an has stuff like that for those infidels who tortured Muslims.

In fact, what Bill Maher does is to mix two different things i.e. Islam and Muslims. Muslims are people. People do whatever they like. Most Muslims do not actually follow Islam. Islam is a faith. A faith has multiple versions. If Bill Maher accuses Islam of being violent or intolerant, I can show him many versions of Islam which are peaceful and tolerant. But the fact's that Bill Maher doesn't study Islam or wishes to learn about it. He hears bad stuff about Islam and Muslims and he readily believes in it.