{"id":6686,"date":"2014-10-05T00:20:10","date_gmt":"2014-10-05T00:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6686"},"modified":"2014-10-05T00:20:10","modified_gmt":"2014-10-05T00:20:10","slug":"affleck-vs-maher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6686","title":{"rendered":"Affleck vs. Maher on Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Almost never do I take anything that Bill Maher says seriously.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s a comedian who, for my taste, isn&#8217;t all that funny. He&#8217;s morphing into some sort of political commentator of late. Now he&#8217;s taking on Islam, calling it a &#8220;Mafia-like&#8221; organization.<\/p>\n<p>OK. So we&#8217;ve heard from him on that.<\/p>\n<p>Enter another entertainer. Ben Affleck, an actor of some acclaim, has challenged Maher&#8217;s assertion that Islam is what he says it is. I don&#8217;t usually listen to actors&#8217; views on politics and religion, either.<\/p>\n<p>However &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>In this case, Affleck makes the more salient point.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/world\/2014\/10\/04\/3576082\/batman-stands-up-for-muslims\/<\/p>\n<p>Affleck took part in a testy exchange on &#8220;Real Time&#8221; in which he tried to take down Maher&#8217;s assertion about Islam. Affleck\u00a0criticized Maher&#8217;s &#8220;gross&#8221; and &#8220;racist&#8221; portrayal of Islam. He said Islam should not be judged based on the conduct of sociopathic murderers, such as the Islamic State &#8212; which has hijacked the Islamic name, for crying out loud, while committing utterly unspeakable acts of barbarism. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof sided with Affleck, contending that Maher&#8217;s description of Islam and Muslims is &#8220;incomplete.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Maher used terms like &#8220;vast numbers of Muslims&#8221; wanting non-believers of their religion to die. Vast numbers? How many is that? And what percentage do those numbers comprise among the 1.5 <em>billion<\/em> or so practicing Muslims around the world?<\/p>\n<p>I simply am not going to condemn a religion on the basis of what crazed fanatics do in that religion&#8217;s name.<\/p>\n<p>Nor should a second-rate comedian such as Bill Maher.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Almost never do I take anything that Bill Maher says seriously. He&#8217;s a comedian who, for my taste, isn&#8217;t all that funny. He&#8217;s morphing into some sort of political commentator of late. Now he&#8217;s taking on Islam, calling it a &#8220;Mafia-like&#8221; organization. OK. So we&#8217;ve heard from him on that. Enter another entertainer. Ben Affleck, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6686\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Affleck vs. Maher on Islam<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,14],"tags":[584,638,2347,2349,3168,4569],"class_list":["post-6686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-ben-affleck","tag-bill-maher","tag-isil","tag-islam","tag-muslims","tag-terrorists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}