Did anyone see the verbal sparring between Bill Maher and Ben Affleck on Maher's program Real Time? Did anyone NOT see it after the Inter-webs got a hold of the whole controversy.
Maher has a bone to pick with Islam as a religion and does it regularly. He is vocal in his antipathy for all religions, but he seems to hold a special hatred for Islam. I will grant you that most Muslim countries seem decidedly less liberal than the U.S. But at the same time, the fundamentalist Christians in the U.S., while a minority, are at least as conservative and repressive in their values as the more restrictive Muslim countries.
I don't understand why Maher keeps arguing that we should oppose Islam any more than we should oppose ANY religion that tries to govern. The best thing Thomas Jefferson ever did was the 1st Amendment. Religion has NO place in government. Whether you are a Ultra-conservative Christian or a Sharia-law Imam.Your spiritual beliefs, no matter how devoutly held, do not entitle you to tell me what MY spiritual beliefs must be. Nor should they ever be used to oppress any portion of the populace. (In that Maher is right, we should all --liberals and conservatives alike-- be horrified at laws that allow a woman to be executed for adultery. Or forbidden to leave the house without a male relative to escort her.)
But Christians in this country have just successfully limited my right to control my own reproductive organs and he didn't seem all torn up about that. Frankly, if I had to choose between the Old White God-fearing Man laws that declare me a murderess if I use an IUD and wearing a headscarf but having control of my own womb, I'll take the headscarf.
So why we should be more upset about Islam when fundamentalists worshiping any of the traditional patriarchal Gods all want women silent and subservient?
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