Beat me by 8 minutes. Seems like a good reference link:

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/opinion-polls.htm

*controversy

Adding video to channels (Controversy) - requested by MrFisk.

It's not fringe when a good chunk of muslims around the world (not just the middle east) have extremist points of view:


Muslims in most countries surveyed say that a wife should always obey her husband." (including 93% in Indonesia and 65% in Turkey).

Only 32% of Muslims in Indonesia say a woman should have the right to divorce her husband (22% in Egypt, 26% in Pakistan and 60% in Russia)

1 in 3 Muslims in Austria say it is not possible to be a European and a Muslim. 22% oppose democracy

21% of Muslim-Americans say there is a fair to great amount of support for Islamic extremism in their community.

61% of British Muslims want homosexuality punished

Turkish Ministry of Education: 1 in 4 Turks Support Honor Killings

WZB Berlin Social Science Center: 65% of Muslims in Europe say Sharia is more important than the law of the country they live in.

Pew Research (2013): 81% of South Asian Muslims and 57% of Egyptians suport amputating limbs for theft.

Pew Research (2013): 72% of Indonesians want Sharia to be law of the land

Pew Research (2010): 82% of Egyptian Muslims favor stoning adulterers
70% of Jordanian Muslims favor stoning adulterers
42% of Indonesian Muslims favor stoning adulterers
82% of Pakistanis favor stoning adulterers
56% of Nigerian Muslims favor stoning adulterers

MacDonald Laurier Institute: 62% of Muslims want Sharia in Canada (15% say make it mandatory)

Pew Research (2013): 39% of Muslims in Malaysia say suicide bombings "justified" in defense of Islam (only 58% say 'never').

Pew Research (2013): 76% of South Asian Muslims and 56% of Egyptians advocate killing anyone who leaves the Islamic religion.

Pew Research (2010): 84% of Egyptian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
86% of Jordanian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
30% of Indonesian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
76% of Pakistanis support death the penalty for leaving Islam
51% of Nigerian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam

Pew Global: 68% of Palestinian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
43% of Nigerian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
38% of Lebanese Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
15% of Egyptian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
13% of Indonesian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
12% of Jordanian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
7% of Muslim Israelis say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.


CLEARLY, what we need is more Islam in the world. Such a force for good...

Keep in mind, I'm pretty sure Bill is coming at this from a viewpoint that all religion is bad. This one is just moreso.

There are moderates and radicals in every religion. You don't get to just white wash the radicals away with a "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

I think Ben Affleck makes an excellent point at the very end.

Bill keeps saying things like "If Brazillians.. ", "If Filipinos.. " etc. as if that would be justification for criticising everyone within that demographic.

You criticise the people who are doing it, not the demographic to which they belong.

I feel that Islam warrants criticism (as do all religions). Bill and Sam seem too focused on criticising Muslims.

On the other hand, there clearly is a cultural problem within the Muslim world, and it needs to be addressed.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

It's definitely an important nuance that Maher is anti-religious in general. Though I think he's got the wrong end of the stick on this issue. Better to rail against theocracy than Islam.

I think the two sides presented here were actually in more agreement than either felt they were.

Affleck's comment at the end was great -- but I don't think that Harris or Maher are really guilty of conflating Muslims with Islam. Maher said "if 90% of Brazilians..." not to suggest that we would/should be critical of Brazil or Brazilians at large in such a scenario, but to suggest that IF that was true, we'd need to take a good hard look at what is producing those trends. And particularly, we would need to be free to criticize and bring the root problems under scrutiny.

To me, that is pretty much exactly what the end of your comment is saying -- "there clearly is a cultural problem within the Muslim world, and it needs to be addressed." Maher and especially Harris (his books are largely on this topic, with regards to Christianity and religion in general) are saying exactly that -- if there are dangerously bad ideas / cultural trends in Islam, or Christianity, or any other group, we need to be free to point out those issues and bring them under scrutiny.

Islam frequently gets a pass because A) it is a religion, and we are taught that criticizing a religion is OFF LIMITS, and B) not only that, but it isn't OUR religion. In the American/Western media, we're getting a little more ready to accept criticism of Christianity, because that feels more like self-criticism (and therefore carries less of a stigma) to Westerners. But the moment the topic turns to Islam, the PC part of all of us gets a lot more uncomfortable.

Mohammad is the only prophet who drew a sword in name of his own religion. All other prophet were more about peace than violence, Moses ran away, Jesus was crucified. Mohammad led armies and was a general, all muslims know this historic fact.

What a surprise, the two Jewish panel members are anti-muslim.
Sam Harris pro-Israeli.
Bill Maher is racist. Pure and simple.
never heard him calling out Judaism for Israels genocide in Gaza.

I'll never watch his lame unfunny racist shit again.

Whoops, well, for all the objectivism displayed here, it still looks to me like one side of the coin. Aside from the comments from the folks I have ignored on the sift, I don't see any criticism of the USA or very much criticism of Christianity. I don't really want to be that guy, but just remember that especially in the last decade our international reputation among countries on the receiving end of bombs has gone down the crapper. All of these "opinion polls" are trying to link Islam with anti-US sentiments and methods (eg. terrorism), when it's only demonstrating the correlation. Obviously if we bomb a predominantly Muslim country and innocents die, how do you think poll results would lean among Muslims in that country? How would your religious demographic feel if Russia bombed Manhattan and killed a dozen random citizens? What about if we had no Army, Navy, or Air Force, and these bombings happened every week?

Meanwhile, citing statistics from a website which has a clear agenda of being a hit-piece on Islam is a fucking ridiculous idea. Come on, guys. If that website lists 300 polls which emphasize their point, do you think they will include a reference to even one poll which disputes it? If they sifted through thousands of polls just to find those 300, would you still have statistical confidence in their results? I admit that the multitude of sources they pulled polls from is initially impressive, but the #1 goal of statistics is to eliminate bias, and that website is pure uncut bias.

Ben looks like an uninformed idiot with white guilt in this.

I called out Sam Harris for being a racist in a video on the sift like a year or two ago. What he proposes as his arguments sound reasonable on paper, but if you watch enough of his video's you see that he uses the exact same argument over and over and over. Pretty much all his arguments for what is 'bad' involve something that a muslim does, or something in the 'muslim world' in his words. He wants muslims to be treated with suspicion just because something someone did is bad, and completely ignores pretty much the rest of the world.

Kristof essentially pointing out that they are being racist at the end is pretty humorous. Maher is a complete tool.

The website may be biased, but the polls listed are world recognized polls that are mostly above reproach. Christianity is not at the table on this, nobody is saying that there aren't wackos involved in any religion, but realistically how many christian holy war incidents can you list in the last 20 years? I mean real incidents, not just some random guy doing one thing to a doctor or clinic, but a group of holy christian fighters blowing up swathes of people or beheading them. It's not in the same ballpark, in fact it isn't the same league, or sport.

As far as US international policy goes, we do stupid shit a lot of the time. Other times we get dragged into shit because people complain if we don't. Personally I wish we would cut our defense budget in half and tell the rest of the world to go pound sand when they ask for help, but again it is not the issue of discussion we are looking at.

The issue is whether or not Islam, due to the nature of it's teachings, promotes certain things that lead to war and/or brutal acts. The fact is that it does, assuming you follow the tenets laid forth in the Koran and other works, such as the Sunnah and the anecdotes of the 12 Imams.

What other religion currently follows these tenets in it's religious laws?

- Leaving Islam is a sin and a religious crime. Once any man or woman is officially classified as Muslim, because of birth or religious conversion, he or she will be subject to the death penalty if he or she becomes an apostate, that is, abandons his or her faith in Islam in order to become an atheist, agnostic or to convert to another religion.
- If a person has never been a Muslim, he or she can live in an Islamic state by accepting to be a dhimmi and pay a Jizyah tax. They cannot practice their religions openly and they also do not have the same rights and legal protections as Muslims.
- Death penalty for Homosexuals
- Numerous women's rights violations and restrictions
- Child marriage
- Jihad is an important religious duty for Muslims. It is only very recently that it has started to be redefined by a small amount of Muslims as being possible to be non-violent in nature.

As it stands, Islam is not a religion of peace but of strife. Unless you are a casual follower, you will be trying to promote tenets of this religion either through non-violent or violent ways. As we can see around the world and even through the events of the Arab Spring, the violent ways are far more likely.

wow. pot calling kettle black much?

@Mordhaus - got it, so lets brand all those who live in regions that practice Islam as being the same.

By the way, did you think about what you just wrote before you wrote it?

"promotes certain things that lead to war and/or brutal acts"

Try going to this wiki page, reading it, and then think carefully about who is the biggest player in terms of the promotion of "war" and "brutal acts"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations#2010.E2.80.93present

All just a bit of fun and games, right?

Shows pretty well how two person can't talk about muslims without one of them accusing other to be a racist. It happens on anti-racist rallies too, you put 10 people who are all opposed to racism in to the same room and 10 minutes in someone is already labeled.

Weirdly, this infact made me respect Ben Affleck. He is on the good side of the battle, misinformed but i can recognize that fury that comes when i suspect someone starting to veer the discussion to topics like "why all muslims yada yada yada". I go fucking ballistic, i see blood of the innocents in the gutter and i wanna kill that nazi before it happens again.. It is the same fury that rises on me when people link Israel and Judeism to the same category. But both Israel and muslim world require criticism in order to progress. It is just very hard for people on the "same side" to talk about those two subjects without responses like we see in this video. Racists know this very well and it is because of bigotry we can't criticize nations and cultures objectively, we need to spend most of our time to explain why criticizing is not bigotry, how questioning catholic church and their views and islam and their views is EXACTLY the same thing. The less we talk about the actual subject and more about why we aren't talking about the actual subject, guess who wins?

And it IS frustrating since we can't get anything done. Fucking racists and yes, i can identify racism towards racists in my on views and i have to think about that too (how racists are just humanbeings yada yada but that's my problem..). So maybe i should just say fucking quilt over actions and views hold by few is preventing us from honest discussion.

I also have an opinion.

I think you probably haven't watched Bill Maher before, or you may have seen him 'call out' Israel for their terrible treatment of Palestinians.
I feel this is kind of like me saying "I'll never watch Bill O'Reilly again"...as if I watched him before his latest insane statement. I, admittedly, have only watched clips that make O'Reilly look ridiculous (I'm not sure there's another kind), so while technically correct, that statement would be implying a falsehood.
Oh....and Muslim is not a race, people, it's a religion comprised of people from EVERY race...so being anti-Muslim is NOT being racist any more than being anti-bad cop is.

What is Islam? Who or what are Muslims?

It seems every single debate over whether Islam is a religion of peace or of violence comes down to this same argument over who or what defines those terms and there is never an agreement. Indeed, much of the conflict in the middle east is due to followers of Islam arguing over who's particular interpretation is correct. Meanwhile in the western world religion is something that, as the late Hitchens put it, we take "a la carte". It seems you can no more describe a person by revealing their particular faith than you could describe what food you had last night by giving somebody the whole menu to the restaurant. You might ascertain that it was perhaps Thai food... but little else.

Still though, when we go the texts we do find quite unequivocally immoral preachings. I think the religious really have to find an answer for this. We aren't buying the alternate interpretations or the lost in translation theories. When you describe yourself as a Muslim or as a Christian, or as any other faith, it seems to me you don't really have much of a right to get upset when we call you on the evil shit in your holy books. You might protest that you are not that "kind" of Christian, but the speed at which you dismiss any given passage is only matched by the speed at which you declare divine truth for another. We understand the vast plurality of beliefs, which is why it baffles us that you subscribe to a particularly narrow set of ideals whilst simultaneously admonishing us for tarring you all with the same brush.

He's explained several times why he tends to focus on Muslim fundamentalist failings when arguing about good and bad with westerners. That's because if he were to bring up an example of a perhaps damaging dogma from Catholicism, there would be an argument if it were really bad, and that isn't the argument he wants to have. Instead, he talks about something absurd like the death penalty for apostasy, which we can usually accept as 'bad' and move on to the meat of his discussion.

If you consider him a racist, you're likely part of the left's overly active auto-immune disorder regarding racism, or you really haven't listened to or understood him. Criticising a world view is not exactly the same as racism. Especially if that world view is shared by several different races!

His whole point at the end about how you should criticize the Filipinos doing the kidnapping needed to be rebutted with the following: "Ok, but if 70% of Filipinos agreed that the kidnapping of white children for slavery was acceptable, then you would have to admit that the issue was systemic and the Philippines should be condemned as a country."

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All I see is Affleck almost instantly demonstrating what Harris is talking about. Dismissive, sneering, disgusted that the topic is even brought up, and determined not to hear it, only responding with sarcastic nonsense. Liberal PC police in overdrive, using his own broad brush after claiming its use by the other side.

Affleck had been hyper\manic throughout the episode already.

I never said that we should brand people living in Islamic regions as the same. Stop putting words in my mouth. I said that if you seriously follow the tenets of the Islamic religion, not casually but seriously follow what the religion says, then you will be doing whatever you can to further the spread of Islam and Sharia law.

This is somewhat of a problem in all religions, but IT IS PREDOMINANT in Islam because Islam has never stepped away from these rules and tenets. In a very sad way, Islam is still in the state Christianity was during the damn inquisition and crusades. Now you will have people that refuse to devote themselves fully to Islam and those people will not act in a fashion like I illustrated. They are truly casual worshipers that have found a way to morally work around the tenets of the religion. I have no problem with those folks. Sadly, a huge amount of evidence points towards the information that they are a minority of the religion.

As far as US involvement, I said that we do stick our nose where it doesn't belong and that we should cut the rest of the world off when it comes to requests for military aid. But lets look at the link you posted. I see about half or more of the incidents are the US providing help at the request of other countries or joining coalitions of other countries. You can't have it both ways, either ask us to back out of the world scene completely or get over it when we do get involved at your request. Do you think we just popped up and sent troops/missiles to Turkey because we wanted to? Or did we invade Jordan while sending troops to help prevent the Syrian Civil War from spilling over into their country? They ASKED us to come and help. Are drone strikes against terrorists stupid? Absolutely and they help the terrorists find new recruits, but does that make Islam any less of a violence promoting religion?

The answer is no, it does not. Nor does your attempt to veer the spotlight off of the failings of Islam and back onto something else. You can misdirect all you like, but until you can provide hard facts you are simply equivocating.

Islam promotes Sharia law. Tell me truthfully if you can, that a religion that supports the execution of a woman who left the faith to marry a man her family didn't receive a dowry from is a religion of peace. Tell me that a religion that supports the execution of Homosexuals is a religion of peace. Tell me that a religion that still promotes honor killing is a religion of peace.

Because if that is the case, by your own definition the US is the greatest supporter of peace since the Romans.

Nothing confusing here...
Affleck didn't get the concept being presented and was arguing a completely different point.

Same Harris' response to the whole affair: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/can-liberalism-be-saved-from-itself

I do think that it's important while pointing out these things, one also needs to point out that here in the US at least, over half the Christians claim to be pro-life while supporting the death penalty, encouraging war, and being against programs that help the needy and the poor, or at least that's how they vote. And here perhaps Maher and Harris fail...I think it's fairly obvious all religion is bad. Christianity spread by the sword, forcing Europe to convert from their Pagan ways, eventually offering to integrate aspects of Pagan holidays into Christian ones to make it more enticing. Convert or die may not be practiced in Christianity much now, but public shaming if you leave Christianity and bigotry to those of other religions or lack of faith is very real. Several polls have shown that most Christians would prefer to elect a Muslim over an Atheist even if they are otherwise the same. And many still seem to believe in that religion should be pushed, not just something tolerated and allowed... of course I admit I'm a bit colored and biased by the fact I'm surrounded by the Tea Party/Fox News type Christians pretty much everywhere I go, home, a bit at work... Were I to escape being around them so much, I'd probably soften my view a bit.

Maher makes a good point. Liberals won't hesitate to shit all over Christianity but if you dare criticize Islam, you might as well be a Nazi, even though Islam is objectively more conservative than Christianity.

But then, hypocrisy is common amongst most liberals. They call for an end to the War on Drugs because of its lack of efficacy but then call for a War on Guns because apparently that would somehow be more effective..? Drugs, alcohol and tobacco cause far more death and suffering than guns but you'd be hard-pressed to find any liberal who would support banning them.

right... so you just admitted that we shouldn't be branding all those who live in Islamic state as the same. Our discussion is over right there because that's the point.

The point I was originally making, which apparently you seem to have missed completely in your haste to say I was making a completely different point, is that the religion Islam is not a religion of peace.

This is the same point that they are arguing about in this video. One side is describing intelligently why Islam, the religion, not everyone who lives in a country who practices it, is a religion that promotes violence and strife. The other side is blindly throwing out incorrect terms and trying to claim bias, racism, or is generally just frothing at the mouth.

You seem to be following the second group's methods for whatever reason. I am not sure why, but I will ask you once more to answer a simple question.

Do you or do you not feel that a religion that promotes killing people who leave it/don't follow it, killing homosexuals, performing acts of terror in the name of jihad, and oppresses women to be a religion of peace?

Again, please note that in no way, shape, or form am I saying that everyone who professes to follow the religion, independent of their location in the world, believes these ideals or acts them out. All I am saying is that the religion itself specifically calls for people who would be 'true' Muslims to perform these acts and that evidence shows that the Muslims who do not feel this way are actually the minority of those following Islam.

Sam Harris's most excellent response:

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/can-liberalism-be-saved-from-itself