Tags for this video have been changed from 'real, time, april, 2015, Tsarnaev, Bill, Maher, Fareed, Zakaria' to 'real time, april, 2015, Tsarnaev, Bill Maher, Fareed Zakaria, islam, terrorism' - edited by xxovercastxx

I have to agree with Bill that Islam DOES instruct it's followers to spread the religion with the sword....but I must also say he has recently ignored that ALL religions do the same. The difference with Islam these days is the fundamentalists have taken control in many Islamic countries...but a fundamentalist Christian just introduced a bill in America to allow people to shoot homosexuals based on the bible, so lets not pretend hate and murder is just an Islamic thing.
Xenophobia is a religious thing, not just an Islamic thing. I wish Bill would remember that, it might have kept the PC police from starting their latest campaign against him.

That girl went to my high school!

I think the problem is ultimately a political one.

There are absolutely social issues in Islam (similar to every religion, but marginally more repressive), but the terrorist angle is there because of geography. Most of the adherents to Islam live in the third world and yeah, they absolutely have genuine, legitimate grievances with the west. Not because we're secular godless infidels, but because of the way we've exploited people.

And these people are exploited by their religious leaders.

Look at Northern Ireland. You had Catholics on one side and Protestants on the other, but because both were Christians, it was framed as a political struggle. If the republicans had been druids or something, then it would be recast as a religious issue.

If most Christians were living in the third world, we'd be looking at the exact same problem. The only reason Christianity is any less problematic than Islam is because it has had to live in an affluent education demographic who increasingly won't put up with it's original treatment of women, homosexuals, etc.

In poorer areas, (southern US, South America, parts of Africa) Christianity is indistinguishable from the Taliban.

@newtboy @ChaosEngine --

I think there are a LOT of political/geographical influences that exacerbate underlying problems, like ChaosEngine is saying. But, a lot of the underlying problems can be traced to the religions themselves too. And while extremists / fundamentalists in Christianity and Islam are both very very bad, I don't necessarily think that both religions are "indistinguishable" in terms of generating those extremists.

Bill thinks that Islam is worse about generating those people than Christianity and other religions. That's where the "motherlode of bad ideas" thing comes from. I tend to think he's at least partially right -- but social/political/economic/geographic issues are certainly a very big influence that he doesn't usually touch on. And in the video Fareed makes a very good point about many Muslim countries NOT having high rates of extremist incidents that tends to support the importance of those other factors that aren't directly tied to religion.

Bill might come across as anti-Islam more frequently (especially of late), but I think he's really quite equal opportunity anti-religion in general. But one of the ways that he perceives Islam being worse than Christianity is that if you make fun of the pope, or suggest that he's a pedophile or something, you're a lot less likely to end up dead than if you say something critical about Mohammed.

As shitty as Christianity is / may be, in the west we've progressed far enough that at least we can criticize its faults without (too much) fear of being killed for pointing them out. And THAT has been very helpful in the rapid diminishing of Christianity in Europe and the UK, even though we haven't caught up in the US yet. I think that is where Bill makes a fair point, and something that potentially counters Fareed's seemingly more rational / steady Eddie take on the issue.

I suppose it's a bit of a chicken and egg question. I'd say that the reason you can make fun of the pope without repercussions is because of the relative prosperity and subsequent education levels in the west. It certainly wasn't always the case (the Inquisition, etc).

I tend to think that Islam would follow a similar course if it's adherents had a better standard of living. Education and comfort are kryptonite to religion

My point was that all religions, when read honestly and fully, tell their followers to kill infidels/non-believers/improper worshipers. The bible is quite clear about it. I'm less certain about the Tora, but since it's allegedly the basis for the old testament, it certainly seems so.
That's where my fundamentalist argument comes in, there are more fundamentalists in power, or feeling powerful, in the Muslim culture today than other religions, but that's just today. Given enough time and influence, any other religion could or has been as bad or worse when taken completely literally, like fundamentalists do.

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

Not much love lost between these two. I think they are both right for the most part, and they do agree that "Islam has a cancer" so there's that.

What often doesn't come across in Maher's anti-islamic rants is that he dislikes all religions, though perhaps not equally.

To a certain extent, but when you look at the most radicalised Arab/Muslim countries, they share a common factor.

Destabilisation due to western, and to a lesser extent USSR, influence prior to radicalisation. Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine etc. Most of the Middle East has been a proxy battleground between the US and USSR, a target for "stabilisation" to ensure the oil can flow, or an incidental and unwilling participant in the establishment of Israel post the British ownership of Palestine stemming from WW1...

I'm not religious but the old adage "reap what you sow" comes to mind. You burn someones house to the ground with his wife and kids inside, how dafuq does he not become radicalised?? Religion offers the only succour in what is a horrible situation, it offers vengeance and the idea that you'll see your loved ones again in paradise. With nothing else to lose accept a painful life of loss, are we surprised that they strap on bombs and are willing to die?

Muslims killed 5k+ odd people in 911 and we haven't heard the end of it for over a decade. It was the trigger that caused at least 2 pointless and expensive wars, killed/displaced/destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people including American and other countries armed forces personnel, led the US down the path of openly torturing people and breaking even more humane laws that it claims separates it from the terrorists. But they aren't allowed to be angry in return?

Their standard of living is a direct result of Western intervention. Western intervention is kryptonite to the high standards of living that would allow education and comfort, but it's the perfect fertiliser for radical religious types and discontent. I am not religious in the slightest, and deplore what mobs like ISIS are doing, but I can understand why these people have landed where they are.

You have to boil out a lot of impurities to arrive at 24K gold.