Saturday, January 10, 2015

No Equivalency Here

After all his trash-talking of Christianity over the years, it’s unusual to see Bill Maher have a moment or two of unexpected lucidity on the Charlie Rose show:

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Bill Maher: There are illiberal beliefs that are held by vast numbers of Muslim people.

Charlie Rose: A vast number of Christians too.

BM: No, no. That’s not true. Not true. Vast numbers of Christians do not believe that if you leave the Christian religion you should be killed for it. Vast numbers of Christians do not treat women as second-class citizens. Vast numbers of Christians do not believe that if you draw a picture of Jesus Christ, you should get killed for it.

CR: I agree with that part …

BM: So yeah, does ISIS do Khmer Rouge activities where they just kill people indiscriminately who aren’t just like them? Yes. And would most Muslim people in the world do that or condone that? No. But most Muslim people in the world do condone violence just for what you think.

CR: How do you know that?

BM: First of all, they say it. They shout it from the …

CR: Vast majorities of Muslims do that?

BM: Absolutely. There was a poll done in Egypt a few years ago: 82%, I think it was, said that stoning is the appropriate punishment for adultery. Over 80% thought death was the appropriate punishment for leaving the Muslim religion. I’m sure you know these things.

CR: I know … well …

BM: To claim that Islam is like other religions is just naïve and plain wrong. It is not like other religions. The New York Times pointed out in an op-ed a couple of weeks ago that in Saudia Arabia, just since August 4th, I think it was, they have beheaded 19 people, most for non-violent crimes, including homosexuality. Okay, so we’re upset that ISIS is beheading people, which we should be upset about, but Saudi Arabia does it and they’re our good friends because they have oil …

CR: Right.

BM: But they do it too … Now if they were beheading people in Vatican City, which is the equivalent of Mecca, don’t you think there’d be a bigger outcry about it? So this is the soft bigotry of low expectations that we have with Muslim people. When they do crazy things and believe crazy things, somehow it’s just not talked about nearly as much.

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The Left has been trying portray Islam and Christianity as morally equivalent for years, no matter how obviously ridiculous that sounds to anyone who has ever met actual Christians rather than our media caricatures. The very point Bill Maher makes about "vast numbers of Christians" has been made by ... vast numbers of Christians. But of course nobody was listening then, because the approved narrative was already established. Even in this interview, Charlie Rose tries at first to exhume that very trope until Maher shouts him down. It’s interesting to see that perhaps for the first time in a long time among at least some progressives, Christians increasingly register a sort of remotely positive testimony. If only by comparison.

But who has the bigger God, I wonder? Is it really the religion that requires Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers against defenseless middle-aged French men? Does the God of the Christian need his followers pointing weapons at a child in order to get his will accomplished? I think not.

Charlie Hebdo published as many nasty things about Christians as it ever did about Islam, but Thursday night I listened to three different Christian men pray fervently for the comfort and salvation of the families of the murdered cartoonists.

No equivalency here, folks. Even Bill Maher can see that.

1 comment :

  1. Well, I've said this already on my 9/11 post, but the liberal left will do almost anything to preserve one of their most cherished myths, a pillar of the plausibility of their worldview.

    It goes, "All religions are equal, and all teach peace, love and goodness."

    But a second goes, "Never deny that a person who claims to practice a religion is really practicing it, because religion is whatever the individual wants it to be."

    You can see that in cases like this, their first myth is undermined by their second: if the perps are Muslims, then Muslims are not being full of peace and goodness. But we can't say the perps are not Muslims, because that would be rude and discriminatory.

    And liberals pride themselves on *never* discriminating: in any meaning of that word. But these situations call for discernment, discrimination between good and evil. As Evan Sayet has pointed out, they just can't let themselves do that, so they inevitably side with evil.

    It's pathetic and predictable. And after this latest horror in France, watch for the liberal left to shortly convert over to their distractor strategy, which is to ignore tragedy itself and to deflect attention to "Don't hurt our Muslims...who are good," as if there were some sort of impending threat to peaceful immigrants in the Developed World. But don't expect any insight or useful advice from the secular left; wisdom is just not in them.

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