often

conflates that to imply that Islam is violent. For example, on his show a while back Bill

Maher

implied that all Muslims hold “pernicious” beliefs. That was his word: “pernicious”.

Which means

“having a harmful effect”.

Ben Affleck, who agreed to be on the show for some reason, said that Maher’s statement

was

“gross” and “racist.” Because he thought Maher was implying that Muslims have a harmful

effect. That they are dangerous or evil. And he knows that there are over 1.6 billion Muslims

in

the world and that generalizing about a large group of people is “racist and gross.”

Which it is.

But Maher, who WAS implying most of that, didn’t back down from his argument because

there IS violence and evil in the Muslim world, and he DOES believe that organized religion

is

pernicious. He made a documentary about it. He also believes that Islam is more pernicious

than other religions. He argues somewhat reasonably that the Koran does say some very

outdated and potentially dangerous things about how people should be treated. Teachings

that are proven to have a harmful effect when interpreted by ISIS or Al Qaeda, who are Islamic

groups that, Maher would argue, share a lot of the same beliefs as everyday regular Muslims.

Therefore, all Muslims have a lot of the same beliefs as ISIS.

Which is true....and terribly misleading. Muslims and ISIS both teach from the same

Koran, but

to get some actual perspective on what that says about Islam, we should bring in the ideas

of a

real life expert on religion, Reza Aslan. He argues that both Ben Affleck and

Maher are wrong. ...Sort of.

Aslan argues that Muslims who distance themselves from the extremist elements of the Muslim

Community by claiming that those extremists are not “real Muslims” are denying that

religious

violence has a religious motive. And it obviously does. So, Maher is right: Islam is a part

of this.

But Maher is also wrong because, and I quote, “Islam doesn’t promote violence or peace.

Islam

is just a religion. And like every religion in the world, it depends on what you bring

to it.” End

quote.

So, if you find yourself talking about the pernicious effects of Islam, you should really

be talking about the pernicious effects of ISIS or Al Qaeda. Not Islam itself. Because

Muslims are a group of people largely defined by their following Islam, but they are also

many different groups and cultures. Saudi Arabian Muslims are different than Turkish

Muslims and Turkish Muslims are different than Indonesian Muslims and they’re all

different than Militant Jihadist Muslims. So, let's not talk about Muslims in general

terms;

let’s talk about them individually by the name of their exact group. ISIS oppresses

women. Turkey, in 1993, elected a woman as their prime minister. That sort of thing.

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