Bill Maher Blasts Muslims Again Over Orlando Shootings
Bill Maher is one of the most outspoken critics of Islam, which flies in the face of what most of his fellow liberals think of the religion.
He frequently takes aim at Muslims on his weekly HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher. Friday night’s (June 17) episode was no exception following the horrific Orlando shooting that took place on Sunday night from the city’s LGBT club Pulse.
The host welcomed actor Ravi Patel, retired Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, conservative pundit Emily Miller, and MSNBC contributor Josh Barro, to discuss the massacre and things quickly took a turn for the combative when Bill Maher again hammered Islam’s “religion of peace” standing.
Let’s @MeetThePatels! @ThisBar co-founder @ShowMeTheRavi is #LIVE on #RealTime with @BillMaher – only on #HBO. pic.twitter.com/KZLZYuM6lc
— Real Time (@RealTimers) June 18, 2016
During the 7-minute clip, Maher quoted British Prime Minister David Cameron, who criticized Britain for not taking a hard enough line on Muslim ideals that fall into conflict with British ideals.
Wilkerson was the first to jump in, reminding Maher that it’s “not just Muslims who kill people.” He then invoked Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.
That sent the discussion off the rails with Bill Maher asserting Wilkerson’s comparison was “a false equivalency.”
“How many Muslim-inspired terrorist attacks have there been in the last 30 years, and how many Christian-inspired?” Maher said.
To that, Wilkerson clarified that he wasn’t trying to say McVeigh was Christian, just that the issue of the Orlando shooting suspect being “a lone wolf killer” was more dangerous than any affiliation he might have had with ISIS.
Miller then reminded Wilkerson that the Orlando shooter was not a lone wolf attacker, but someone who had “pledged allegiance to ISIS,” been on FBI watch lists, and visited Saudi Arabia.
Patel, Wilkerson, and Barro argued that the shooter was using ISIS as “something to grab onto” in his mentally deranged state, and that he was in no way an agent of the Islamic State.
By that point, Bill Maher had had enough, reminding his panel that the peace-loving Muslims, who total around 3 million in the United States, are but a small part of the 1.6 billion globally, and that even in so-called “moderate” Muslim countries, a woman cannot serve in the military unless she has been subjected to a “two-finger test” to determine if she’s a virgin.
“And that’s the moderate example,” Maher scolded.
Bringing home his point as to why the U.S. should look more closely at the Muslim faith as a whole, Maher said that unlike other faiths, “They are trying to get a nuclear weapon, and I don’t see any Christian groups trying to get a nuclear weapon.”
Barro made one last-ditch attempt to draw attention away from Islamic patterns of violence, misappropriating the Planned Parenthood attack as an example of Christian terror.
As one Mediaite commenter noted, the Planned Parenthood attacker was not acting in the name of a religion.
Bill Maher didn’t need the extra backup, though, acknowledging that “of course bad things happen everywhere, but “you have to go where the preponderance of it is” and the U.S. is now at a point where they have to “stand up for liberal values” instead of being afraid to reassert separation of church and state without fear of offending Islam.
In another portion of Friday night’s show, Bill Maher also scolded his fellow liberals for not denouncing violent acts against the LGBT community in Muslim nations.
“Any time somebody shoots up a gay nightclub, the question is not, ‘Was religion involved,’ but ‘what religion was involved?'” Maher said, adding that the “God Hates F*gs people” are despicable and may show up with placards and signs, but “they’re not showing up with guns.”
“The answer is not to ban Muslims,” Maher said, “but to ask more of Muslims.”
@Nero Bill Maher says Liberals are in denial about Islam
FULL: https://t.co/zGLCImsiy7 pic.twitter.com/JvHceXX286
— SubjectPolitics (@SubjectPolitics) June 17, 2016
What do you think of the comments of Bill Maher? Is he right to hit Muslims for their attitude towards gays, or is this an example of bigotry? Sound off in the comments section.
[Photo by Frank Micelotta/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Images]
