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Writers Articles And Opinions |
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30 May 2010 By Nima Shirazi
Bill Maher makes no
secret of his contempt for religion. Via his comedy
routines, his political commentary, his film
Religulous, and his duties as host of
Politically Incorrect and now HBO's Real Time,
Maher has long warned of the dangers and exploitation
of organized religion and how incompatible dogma and
doctrine are with the scientific enlightenment of
modern society.
Inadvertently and less eloquently paraphrasing
Voltaire, who once wrote that "Those who can make you
believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities"
and that religious fanatics "are sick men in delirium
who want to chastise their doctors," Maher has said
that the belief in religion, which he calls "a
neurological disorder," in our society "stops people
from thinking" and "justifies crazies." In a 2008
interview with Larry King, Maher stated that religion
is "the ultimate hustle."
Maher's critique (or outright bashing) of religious
doctrine, dogma, and zealotry is admirable - or would
be, if only he weren't such an arrogant hypocrite.
While Maher himself claims to be "an equal opportunity
offender" who thinks that "all religion is stupid and
dangerous," he clearly believes that some faiths are
more equal than others. Even though his condemnation
of Christianity, notably Catholicism, has won him the
animus of bible-thumping bigots like Catholic
League head William Donahue and he has excoriated
the intolerance of Pat Robertson and reveled in the
death of Jerry Falwell, Maher has consistently saved
his most virulent attacks for Islam and its followers.
While, in Maher's estimation, Jews are somewhat quaint
and silly and Christian dogma relies on outrageously
absurd fairy tales, Muslims - as a rule - are all
brainwashed and violent. Whereas other religions are
sometimes co-opted by a minority of extremist elements
that represent misguided fundamentalism, Islam,
according to Maher, is inherently radical and
terroristic. For example, during a February 2007
broadcast of Real Time, Maher stated,
"[Religions] are not all alike! [Islam] was extremist
to begin with. Mohammad was a warrior. The big lie is
that all religions are basically alike. They all
preach the same thing. Well, of course the Bible is
full of a lot of violence. I mean, God in the Old
Testament is a psychopath - he just kills, kills,
kills, for no reason, good reasons, bad reasons, he's
jealous, he just wants to kill...But he doesn't seem
to aim it so much at outsiders. He wipes out the Jews
except for Noah because they were bad to him or
whatever. But he doesn't keep saying...it seems to me
that in the Qur'an, God keeps saying, if you're not
one of us, you're an infidel, and burning would be too
good for you."
With
this unusual statement, Maher clearly demonstrates a
striking level of ignorance about both the Qur'an and
Judeo-Christian scripture, particularly the Old
Testament, especially for someone who talks about
religion all the time and then made a movie about it.
The Old Testament manifestly overflows with
divinely-mandated genocide and the deliberate ethnic
cleansing of non-believers in the so-called Holy Land.
Take the mythology of Exodus, which sees Yahweh
deliver his people from Egypt and promise them
a land "flowing with milk and honey." (Exodus 3.7-8)
What is commonly left out of this uplifting tale of
deliverance, freedom, and chosen-ness is the rest of
Verse 8, which states plainly that this promised land
was already "the country of the Canaanites, the
Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites,
and the Jebusites." As such, due to the inconvenient
presence of a large and diverse indigenous population
of non-Hebrew peoples, Yahweh declared to Moses and
his followers:
"When
my angel goes in front of you, and brings you to the
Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the
Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I blot
them out, you shall not bow down to their gods, or
worship them, or follow their practices, but you shall
utterly demolish them and break their pillars in
pieces." (Exodus 23.23-24)
Unfortunately, for the native inhabitants of historic
Palestine (or their modern counterparts, for that
matter), things didn't get any better. When the
kingdom of Heshbon was conquered, the Bible states,
the Israelites "completely destroyed every inhabited
city, and we killed all men, women and children; we
left no survivor; we left no one alive. Only the
livestock we took as spoil for ourselves, with the
plunder of the cities that we captured." (Deuteronomy
2:31-35) The kingdom of Bashan fared no better, as
Moses' army devastated 60 walled towns, "totally
destroying every inhabited city, and we killed all
men, women and children. But all the cattle, all the
livestock and the plunder from their cities we carried
off for ourselves." (Deuteronomy 3:3-7) As usual,
Yahweh's instructions were clear:
"When
Yahweh your God brings you into the land that you are
about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many
nations before you — the Hittites, the Girgashites,
the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the
Hivites...and when Yahweh your God gives them over to
you...you must utterly destroy them...Show them no
mercy...For you are a people holy to Yahweh your God;
Yahweh your God has chosen you out of all the peoples
on earth to be his people, his treasured
possession."(Deuteronomy 7.1-11)
Moses
certainly took God's orders to heart, as he later told
his followers:
"But
as for the towns of these peoples that Yahweh your God
is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let
anything that breathes remain alive. You shall
annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the
Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the
Jebusites—just as Yahweh your God has commanded, so
that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent
things that they do for their gods, and you thus sin
against Yahweh, your God." (Deuteronomy 20.16-18)
Furthermore, the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead,
including "the women and the infants" were slaughtered
by a 12,000-strong army of marauding Hebrews (Judges
21:10) and, as revenge for waylaying the Israelites as
they returned from Egypt, Yahweh ordered his people to
"go and strike the Amalekites and totally destroy
everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them,
but kill men and women, children, infants and
suckling, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." (1
Samuel 15:2-3) Needless to say, there are many more
examples of Hebrew aggression throughout the Bible
(read about the exploits of Joshua, Aaron, David,
Elijah, and Samson, for example), all of them
commanded by the Lord Almighty, and all of them
against non-Jews. So much for Maher's contention that
the Hebrew god "doesn't seem to aim [his murderous
wrath] so much at outsiders."
(Incidentally, Maher also appears to be ignorant of
certain Muslim rules of engagement, found within the
Qur'an, Hadith, and Sunnah, that expressly prohibit
the killing of women, children, and the elderly, the
cutting or burning of trees or orchards, the slaughter
of livestock except for food, and the pillaging,
plundering, or destruction of residential areas.
Clearly, Yahweh's own battle conventions were far less
strict and more closely resemble the tactics of the
Israeli military.)
Perhaps Maher's decision to turn a blind eye to the
atrocities committed by the biblical Hebrews upon the
indigenous people of the Levant, in favor of
demonizing Islam and its adherents, should not be
surprising considering his outspoken support for
Zionism and the fact that he is a self-avowed "big
supporter of Israel," who believes not only that
"Israel is a democracy in a part of the world that has
none" but also that American blood and treasure should
be spent in order to ensure the continued existence of
Israel as a Jewish state.
Almost a decade ago, in the midst of the Second
Intifada in late 2001, Maher hosted a panel to discuss
Israel and Palestine on his round table talk-show
Politically Incorrect. Rather than act as
moderator, though, Maher wholly represented the
Zionist perspective, complete with revisionist history
and the constant invocation of Zionist mythology.
After attempting to contextualize his first question
by claiming that 4.5 million Jewish Israelis, armed
with superior weaponry and a nuclear arsenal, are
surrounded by a sea of 280 million hostile,
bloodthirsty Arabs, Maher asked, "What if for one
hour...the Arabs had the ability to annihilate the
Jewish state? Do you think things would be different?
Do you think they would show the restraint that Israel
has for over 50 years?" One can only wonder what kind
of "restraint" Maher was referring to considering
Israel's history of asymmetric aggression,
apartheid-style oppression, disdain for international
law and human rights, and settler-garrison
ethnonationalist policy.
The rest of the show consisted mostly of Maher talking
over his guests - the Arab ones anyway - and claiming
that there really is no Israeli occupation of
Palestine, that Palestinian rejectionism is to blame
for statelessness, that Zionism is not a racist
ideology, that Palestinians are better off under
Israeli authority than under Arab rule, and that the
forcible displacement and systematic ethnic cleansing
of the Palestinian people by Zionist colonialism and
military expansion shouldn't be a big deal considering
that, in his view, there are plenty of other places
for the indigenous people to resettle. "Here is
Israel, this little bit of land," Maher said, pointing
to a map of the region. He continued,
"Here's Syria. Here's Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt,
Sudan, Libya. Look at all this. Now, the Arabs purport
to be brothers, that's what we always hear. It's one
Arab nation divided into falsely drawn countries by
the colonial powers. If this whole bit of land are all
brothers, how come at the time of the partition when
they refused to share the land with Israel, and there
was only 600,000 Palestinian refugees, how come they
couldn't find any home in this whole area?"
Later,
when confronted by one of the panelists, a Palestinian
student at Georgetown University whose family was
forced out of its home and into a refugee camp in
1948, who asks how such displacement and aggression
can be justified by Israeli apologists, Maher stepped
in to explain, "Because your people were offered half
the land, and you said no and chose to try to
annihilate them, instead."
Aside from Maher's awkward understanding of
international law, the rights of refugees, and
complete disregard for the illegality and immorality
of both the annexation of land by conquest and the
forcible transfer or deportation of populations, he
demonstrates a distinct lack of historical knowledge
and perspective required to speak on this matter with
authority. He seems to either forget or simply not
care that Israel was established in 1948 on land that
was already inhabited by an indigenous population. In
1947, despite representing no more than 30% of the
total population of Palestine - a percentage reached
only after decades of illegal mass immigration to the
region - Jews were to be given 56% of the land for
their own state as part of the UN Partition Plan,
which was accepted only as a non-binding
recommendation with a vote of 33 to 13 (and 10
abstentions) after much international bullying by both
the US and Russia. As part of the Plan, the "Jewish"
state was to be granted control of much of the best
land, notably the fertile coastal plain and the hilly
northeastern Galilee and Jerusalem was to be an
internationally-administered city populated by an
equal number of Jews and Palestinians.
While Maher is correct that the Jewish leadership at
the time accepted the UN proposal (albeit
reluctantly), the Zionist intention was never to live
side-by-side an independent Palestinian state. As
Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote, "large sections
of Israeli society...were opposed to or extremely
unhappy with partition and from early on viewed the
[brewing 1948] war as an ideal opportunity to expand
the new state's borders beyond the UN-earmarked
partition boundaries and at the expense of the
Palestinians." (Tikkun, March/April 1998.)
Zionist pioneers and Israel's founding fathers were
actually quite explicit in their goals. In 1937,
before the horrors of Kristallnacht, Jewish
pogroms and ghettos, and The Final Solution of
Nazi-occupied Europe, Ben Gurion stated, "the
boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of
the Jewish people and no external factor will be able
to limit them," and elaborated elsewhere that, "if we
have to use force to guarantee our own right to settle
in those places...then we have force at our disposal."
The next year, Ben-Gurion, who would soon become
Israel's first Prime Minister, stated that "after we
become a strong force, as a result of the creation of
a state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the
whole of Palestine... The state will only be a stage
in the realization of Zionism and its task is to
prepare the ground for our expansion into the whole of
Palestine."
A decade later, Ben-Gurion told Yoseph Weitz, director
of the Land and Afforestation Department of the Jewish
National Fund and head of the official Transfer
Committee of 1948, "The war will give us land. The
concept of 'ours' and 'not ours' are peace concepts,
only, in war they lose their whole meaning." This is
the same Yosef Weitz who, in 1940, wrote in his diary,
"It should be clear to us that there is no room in
Palestine for these two peoples. No 'development' will
bring us to our goal of independent nationhood in this
small country. Without the Arabs, the land will become
wide and spacious for us; with the Arabs, the land
will remain sparse and cramped."
In 1948, after Jewish authorities had agreed to the UN
Partition Plan (which was never internationally
accepted or legally implemented) and Israel had
declared "independence" with total disregard for
international law and the self-determination of
Palestine's native population, leader of the Zionist
terrorist group Irgun and later Israel's sixth Prime
Minister, Menachem Begin chimed in, declaring, "The
partition of the Homeland is illegal. It will never be
recognized. The signature of institutions and
individuals of the partition agreement is invalid. It
will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and
will forever be our capital. Eretz Israel [the Land of
Israel] will be restored to the people of Israel. All
of it. And forever."
Maher expunges from his own truncated history lesson
the fact that Israel achieved "legitimacy" with the
backing of Western world powers and gained
"independence" as a colonial state through violent
transfer of the native inhabitants, systematic ethnic
cleansing, and the massacres and intimidation of
paramilitary death squads. Immediately after declaring
its creation, Israeli militias fought a war of
expansion and annexed an additional 22% of Arab land
as its own.
Maher also declines to mention, probably due to his
historical ignorance, that immediately following
Israel's unilateral declaration of independence in May
1948, the United Nations reassessed its approach to
the partition of Palestine and appointed a mediator,
Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte, to come up with new
proposal while taking into account "the aspirations of
the Jews, the political difficulties and differences
of opinion of the Arab leaders, the strategic
interests of Great Britain, the financial commitment
of the United States and the Soviet Union, the outcome
of the war, and finally the authority and prestige of
the United Nations." While Bernadotte's second
proposal was produced in consultation with British and
American emissaries, then-President Harry Truman
undermined its progress in the UN due to pre-election
Zionist influence in the United States. On September
17, 1948, the day after the second proposal was
presented to the UN, Bernadotte was assassinated in
West Jerusalem by members of the Zionist terrorist
organization Lehi (also known as The Stern Gang).
For the next 17 years, Palestinians in Israel were
subject to martial law. In 1967, Israel launched a
unilateral, unprovoked, preemptive strike on its Arab
neighbors and militarily conquered the remaining 22%
of Palestine. It has brutally occupied the entirety of
historic Palestine ever since.
Later in the program, Maher stated his support for
continued Israeli occupation and Jewish colonization
of the West Bank due to his incorrect impression that
area conquered in warfare becomes property of the
victor. When asked about what Israel's
responsibilities actually are under international law,
Maher quickly changed the subject and blamed the
Palestinians for their own victimization.
Before signing off for the evening, Maher also made
sure to claim that the Palestinian use of suicide
bombing had more to do with religious dogma than
desperate resistance to illegal Israeli occupation
maintained by American money, weapons, and equipment.
"There is a big difference in the religions [Judaism
and Islam], come on, between this life and the other
life," he declared. "Muslims are a little more like
the Catholics, 'It's gonna happen after you die.' The
Jews are more like, 'Let's make the deal now.'"
Little has changed for Maher over the years.
Anti-Muslim sentiment is a staple on Maher's HBO show
Real Time, as is easily evinced by looking at a
list of his guests, which includes notables such as
Ann Coulter, David Frum, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Jonah
Goldberg, and Benjamin Netanyahu. Even though Maher's
Real Time panels include "liberal" and
"progressive" guests to off-set the right-wing
commentators, anti-Muslim rhetoric is rarely
challenged, and is more often reinforced, especially
when Maher's guests include such notables as the
Lebanese-born neoconservative Condoleezza Rice and
Paul Wolfowitz crony and Council of Foreign
Relations board member Fouad Ajami, literary
blowhard and ridiculous fatwa-victim Salman Rushdie,
"Muslim refusenik" and author of "The Trouble with
Islam Today" Irshad Manji, and Muslim-turned-atheist
and fellow at the war-mongering, imperialist think
tank the American Enterprise Institute Ayaan Hirsi
Ali.
In early 2007, when Maher hosted Hirsi Ali, whom he
introduced as his "hero," he asked her the extremely
leading question, "Is Islam a religion of peace? You
are one of the brave people who say it's not really a
religion of peace." Hirsi Ali eagerly responded, "It's
not a religion of peace. Immediately after 9/11, they
should have said, 'it's not a religion of peace, we're
up against Islam.'"
Strangely enough, less than three months later, Maher
was seen advocating the words of his "new hero,"
Congressman Ron Paul, who had impressed Maher during
the recent Republican presidential debates. Maher
praised Paul, saying, that he "spoke real truth about
the war on terror, about 9/11, about Iraq. He said, 'y'know
what? They hate us because we're over there.
They don't hate because of our freedom or any of those
stupid slogans the Bush people put out." Regarding
Paul's analysis of 9/11, Maher continued, during a
satellite interview with Senator Chris Dodd,
"He
[Ron Paul] wasn't saying 'We were asking for it.' He
was saying was 'Maybe we should listen to our enemies.
And maybe the reason they're mad at us is because we
have been meddling in the Middle East. We were in
Saudi Arabia, that's what Bin Laden was mad at us for.
Now we're in Iraq, and we're screwing up that country.
Maybe if we listen to them instead of just saying
'We're always the good people,' we would actually make
ourselves safer."
Later
in the same show, Maher repeated his agreement with
the assessment that "They hate us 'cause we're over
there, we're meddling in their affairs."
Later that same year, however, Maher seemed to step
back from this view during a conversation with the
former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit, Michael
Scheuer, who suggested,
"America is fighting a war that doesn’t exist. We’re
fighting because our leaders tell us that the Muslims
hate freedom and hate liberty and hate women in the
workplace, and that’s got nothing to do with it. It
has everything to do with what we do in the Islamic
world, what our policies are, and what our impact is
there..."
Whereas Maher replied by saying, "I believe what you
say and I think it’s more about our policy than our
way of life," he continued,
"but,
would you grant me this, as long as there is an Israel
in the world, and I’m a big supporter of
Israel, as long as America backs it, the kind of
Muslims that take their religion that seriously that
they would strap on a suicide belt are always gonna be
out for us and always gonna be trying to kill us?"
When
Scheuer stated that he didn't think Israel was "worth
an American life or an American dollar," Maher was
flummoxed and almost speechless at the prospect.
Unable to fathom how anyone could not support Israel,
he just barely managed to respond by repeating
Scheuer's proposal in the form of a question, "You
don’t think the existence of Israel in the world is
worth an American life or an American dollar?"
Scheuer's analysis was hardly radical. In fact,
he was merely agreeing with an unclassified study
published by the Pentagon-appointed U.S. Defense
Science Board on Sept. 23, 2004, which found,
"Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,' but rather, they
hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice
their objections to what they see as one-sided support
in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and
the longstanding, even increasing support for what
Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf
States.
"Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about
bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen
as no more than self-serving hypocrisy."
Nevertheless, Maher has long advocated the perspective
that Judeo-Christian culture is superior to Islamic
and Arabic culture and that Israel is a necessary
"rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of
civilization as opposed to barbarism." As such, any
violations of human rights, war crimes, or crimes
against humanity committed by "Western" countries
against Muslims are not only justified, but also
encouraged.
In 2003, during his comedy special "Victory Begins at
Home," Maher unabashedly supported the treatment that
Middle Eastern abductees were suffering at the hands
of the US government in the gulag of Guantanamo Bay.
"I don't feel bad for those 300 killers we've got down
in Guantanamo Bay, always crabbing about how we don't
respect their religious practices," Maher declared, as
he strutted around the stage. "Y'know what? You
lost, eat what we eat! Here's a cheese-filled
snausage, enjoy!"
Maher seemed not to care that the overwhelming
majority of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay were not,
in fact, "killers," had absolutely no connection to
the Taliban, let alone al Qaeda, all were being held
as combatants in the Bush-manufactured "war on
terror," and some were subject to, not only torture,
but murder at the hands of their American captors.
In case Maher's central thesis was lost on his
audience, he stated plainly, "You have to understand,
you have to embrace the values of Western
civilization. They're not just different, they are
better."
More recently, in the wake of the much-hyped
controversy over an episode of Comedy Central's
cartoon South Park which depicted the prophet
Mohammad in a bear costume (sort of) and resulted in
the show's creators receiving veiled death threats
posted on the internet by a group called Revolution
Muslim, Maher felt the need to restate his case. As
part of the "New Rules" segment that closed his April
30th show, Maher stated that the South Park
controversy "served, or should serve, as a reminder to
all of us that our culture isn’t just different than
one that makes death threats to cartoonists, it’s
better."
What followed was a vitriolic and humorless tirade
against all Muslims, not just so-called "extremists,"
wherein Maher suggested that as bad as some elements
of Western culture may be, nothing compares to the
myopia and violence inherent in Islam. When he was
finished, Zionist Congressman Anthony Weiner, who was
a Real Time guest that evening, leaned over to
Maher with a broad grin and could be seen saying,
"That was great. That was great."
Maher began by stating that, in reference to the
threats levied at South Park, the developing
world's "religious wackos are a lot more wacko than
ours." What Maher failed to point out is that the
group on whose website "Islamists" made the threats is
based in Brooklyn, New York, that the threats were
made by 20-year-old Virginia-native Zachary Adam
Chesser (a recent covert to Islam who now goes by the
name Abu Talhah al-Amrikee), and that the group itself
was founded by "American-born Jew formerly known as
Joseph Cohen who converted to Islam after attending an
Orthodox rabbinical school." According to journalist
Maidhc Ó Cathail, in 1998, Cohen moved with his wife
and family from Brooklyn to the ultra-Orthodox Israeli
development town of Netivot where he was a supporter
of the ultra-racist Shas political party of Mizrahi
Haredi Jews. After he became "disillusioned with
Israeli secularism," Cohen apparently embarked on a
two year "theological dialogue" in a Jewish internet
chatroom with a persuasive sheikh from the United Arab
Emirates and was duly transformed from being a staunch
Zionist to a "sudden admirer of al-Qaeda and Hamas"
and changed his name to Yousef al-Khattab. Perhaps
Maher didn't feel this information was relevant.
Maher continued by urging his audience to "think about
the craziest religious wackos we have here in
America...take the worst, the worst is the Christians
who bring their 'God Hates Fags' signs to soldiers'
funerals. Can't get worse than that. Now multiply that
by infinity and give it an army, that's the Taliban."
Here, Maher's comparison is spurious at best. While he
rightfully condemns the recent suspected actions of
the Taliban involving the poisoning of schoolgirls in
Afghanistan, he claims that it's closest Western
analogy is some ignorant bigot holding an offensive
sign?
Maher chose not to mention that there have numerous
instances of Jewish settlers poisoning water supplies
and grazing grounds of Palestinian towns, resulting in
the deaths of livestock and illnesses such as liver
infections in children. While Maher warns of the
tactics of the Taliban, which at its height of power
in 2001 boasted a strength of about 45,000 troops,
including the elderly and children (a level which has
been cut in half in the past decade), there are
currently over 400,000 heavily-armed Jewish settlers,
subsidized by the Israeli government (and therefore US
tax dollars) living in illegal fortified colonies and
garrison-outposts all over Palestinian land in the
West Bank. These messianic settlers have repeatedly
been known to burn Palestinian crops and mosques,
throw rocks at Palestinian children on their way to
school, and murder Palestinians in cold blood (and
sometimes have monuments erected in their honor).
Incidentally, the number 400,000 is applicable
elsewhere. The new Quadrennial Defense Review
published by the US Department of Defense in February
2010 states, "Including operations in Afghanistan and
Iraq, approximately 400,000 U.S. military personnel
are forward-stationed or rotationally deployed around
the world."
Furthermore, Maher's claim that Christian
fundamentalism only goes as far as waving stupid
banners and pales in comparison to Islamic extremism
is absurd. Perhaps his team of writers should have
reminded Maher of Jim D. Adkisson who, on July 27,
2008, walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian
Universalist Church with 76 rounds of buckshot and a
shotgun in a guitar case, opened fire on the 200
member congregation as they watched a child
performance of Annie, killing two. His stated
motive was that "he hated the liberal movement" which,
along with Democrats, African Americans and
homosexuals, was destroying American
institutions.Maybe Maher's mention of anti-abortion,
right-wing Christian Scott Roeder, who murdered doctor
George Tiller in the lobby of the Reformation Lutheran
Church in Wichita, Kansas on May 31, 2009 because he
felt "preborn children's lives were in imminent
danger" (and whose actions elicited praise from other
American fundamentalists) was cut from his script due
to time constrictions. Doubtful.
Additionally, Maher failed to address the fact that
George W. Bush was a born-again Christian who often
claimed his imperial foreign policy agenda was
divinely inspired. Five days after the September 11
attacks, as plans to invade and occupy both
Afghanistan and Iraq had already been drawn up, Bush
declared that "This crusade, this war on terrorism is
going to take a while." Five months later, as he
addressed American soldiers in Alaska, he spoke again
of "this incredibly important crusade to defend
freedom."
In 2003, Bush even declared to then-Palestinian
foreign minister Nabil Shaath, "I am driven with a
mission from God. God would tell me, 'George go and
fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And
then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny
in Iraq'. And I did."
And what about the reports that Bush's top-secret
daily briefings, the Pentagon's Worldwide
Intelligence Update, prepared by US General Glen
Shaffer, and delivered by hand by Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld, routinely had images of American military
might and warfare juxtaposed with inspirational verses
from the Bible?
But Maher was just warming up. He continued,
"Now,
I've been known to make fun of Christians, but I have
the perspective to know that they're a lot more
evolved than people who target girls for going to
school...And that's because Muslims still take their
religion too seriously."
It can
only be assumed that Maher didn't mean the
"enlightened" Christians who subscribe to "biblical
discipline," a form of corporal punishment intended to
"train" children to be more obedient to their parents
and God, which recently resulted in a Montana couple
beating their adoptive children to death. Obviously,
Maher also meant to exclude "enlightened" Mormon
fundamentalists like brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty who
committed double murder or Brian David Mitchell and
Wanda Ileen Barzee who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart, all
in the name of God.
Naturally, Maher also didn't feel like telling his
audience about the more than 280 kindergartens,
schools, and universities that the "enlightened"
Israeli military deliberately destroyed during the
22-day assault on Gaza or about Palestinian children
like Abir Aramin who are murdered by "enlightened"
Israeli soldiers on their way to school.
Maher also makes sure to clarify that he wholly
endorses painting all 1.2 billion Muslims, one quarter
of the world's population, with the same brush, by
declaring, "It should, in fairness, be noted that in
speaking of Muslims, we realize that, of course, the
vast majority are law-abiding, loving people who just
want to be left alone to subjugate their women in
peace." With this statement, Maher reveals his true
agenda. He is not simply talking about a
fundamentalist approach or extreme interpretation of a
religion; he is stating, quite plainly, that all those
who practice that religion are themselves
fundamentalist and extreme. (Perhaps Maher would think
it fair to claim that all Catholics are child
molesters or all Jews are Ariel Sharon?)
This narrow-minded approach to Islam and its followers
proves Maher's bigotry. Apparently, in Maher's view,
all Muslims are misogynistic men and a poor,
brainwashed, and beaten women. To Maher, all Muslim
majority countries are oppressive dictatorships and
Muslim culture is a monolithic entity that remains
identical across thousands of miles, different
geography, countries, ethnic backgrounds, races, and
traditions.
He seems to think that all Muslim women are forced
against their will to wear burqas and veils by their
domineering and repressive husbands and fathers.
Disproving this assumption hardly seems worth the
time; nowhere in the Qur'an does it say that women
must cover their hair or wear a veil, only that women
(and men, for that matter) should be modest in their
dress and actions. Incidentally, both Judaism and
Christianity preach the same. Some Orthodox Jewish
women shave their hair and wear wigs. Depictions of
the Virgin Mary invariably show her in hijab. Does
Maher feel that Catholic nuns are unjustly subjugated?
Muslim women from Albania to Morocco to Indonesia to
Palestine to Tunisia to Pakistan to Egypt to Jordan
choose whether or not they want to wear hijab. Well
over 50% of college students in Iran are female (women
make up 70% of Azad University's Applied Physics
Department graduates) and women hold high level jobs
in all kinds of professions; they are business owners,
university professors, filmmakers, artists, writers,
and Cabinet ministers.
Unfortunately, Maher's image of Islam seems to stop
short at the Wahhabi Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Sayyid
Qutb-inspired fundamentalism of Al Qaeda, and the
Taliban's Afghanistan. It's apparently irrelevant to
him that many Muslim countries, from Azerbaijan to
Bangladesh to Niger to Lebanon to Gambia to Turkey,
are secular presidential republics and parliamentary
democracies or that women in Muslim Kyrgyzstan were
granted voting rights two years before women in the
United States. Obviously, no mention need be made
about the eighteen female MPs elected to the Turkish
Parliament in 1935, at a time when women in a
significant number of other European countries had no
voting rights whatsoever, or that women in Switzerland
(a country so enlightened it banned minarets) couldn't
vote until 1971, or that Benazir Bhutto was twice
elected Prime Minister in the Islamic state of
Pakistan while the United States has never had a
female president or vice president.
Maher rightly insists that separation of church
(or mosque) and state is integral for a free and
democratic society to flourish, yet seems to promote
the idea of legally banning Islamic dress in Western
societies, as is the case in France and, soon,
Belgium. Oh, the irony.
But Maher still wasn't finished. "I've got to tell
you," he said. "Civilized people don't threaten each
other...Threatening, that's some old-school desert
shit."
By "civilized," Maher clearly meant "American" or, at
least, "Western" people, as opposed to the backwards,
savagery of the Islamic world. One can only assume he
was referring our civilized overthrow, both overt and
covert, of dozens of sovereign nations by the United
States in the past century. Maybe Maher meant our
civilized practice of "enhanced interrogation,"
waterboarding, and torture. Or our civilized
indefinite detention, extraordinary rendition,
extrajudicial assassination, black sites and secret
prisons, and inhumane SAMS detention practices.
If Maher is so worried about threats, perhaps he
should have mentioned the harassment US Congressman
Bart Stupak has received lately by anti-choice nutjobs
disappointed in his support for the new health care
bill (which, incidentally, offers absolutely no
federal funding for abortions). "In the past few
weeks," Stupak recently wrote in Newsweek, "I've
received so many death threats that I was advised to
get a security escort around Washington. My wife,
Laurie, has had to unplug our home phone to avoid
drunken messages from people screaming, swearing, and
generally acting profane...One day I got 1,500 faxes,
all hate mail." Maher could have talked about the
cancellation of a Texas college production of the
Terrence McNally play "Corpus Christi" (which features
a homosexual Jesus character) after the school was
inundated with "threatening calls and e-mail
messages." Glenn Greenwald reminds us that this is
"same play that was scheduled and then canceled (and
then re-scheduled) by the Manhattan Theater Club back
in 1998 as a result of "anonymous telephone threats to
burn down the theater, kill the staff, and
'exterminate' McNally."
He also could have discussed the medieval Hebrew
curses hurled by Rabbi Mordechai Aderet at a household
of Iranian Jews in Great Neck, Long Island, the
invective spewed by those offended by Danish artists
Surrend who recently posted maps of the Levant all
over Berlin with the name "Ramallah" replacing
"Israel" and a title reading "The Final Solution" at
the top, the desecration of the graves of Muslim WWII
soldiers in a French cemetary, or the death threats,
hate mail, and defacing of the home of outspoken
Israel-critic Rabbi Michael Lerner by right-wing
Zionists who disagree with his vocal anti-occupation
stance. Maybe Maher should warn his viewers of the
dangers of Israeli Rabbis like Yitzhak Shapira and
Yossi Elitzur of Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in Yitzhar near
Nablus, who last year published a 230-page guide to
Biblical laws governing the killing of non-Jews. Maher
could point out that the yeshiva itself is funded by
tax-deductible donations from America. He could also
throw in some information about the Israeli Jewish
Rabbinate which, during the 2008-9 Gaza massacre,
indoctrinated young Israeli troops with pamphlets
claiming that they were holy warriors fighting to
expel the "murderers" (all Palestinians) who are
"interfering with our conquest of this holy land." The
rabbis preached that showing mercy was "terribly
immoral."
One
might think Maher would mention the ecstatic Jews in
New York City, who danced in the street in support of
the Israeli military's slaughter of over 1,400
Palestinians in Gaza. Or the signs posted around the
wealthy Riverdale section of the The Bronx which
advertise "Camp Jabotinsky," a self-described "Jewish
Survival Camp" in Upstate New York where "Jewish youth
learn how to shoot," in addition to learning "karate,
legal and proper weapons training, street fighting and
how to be a proud Jew who can defend the Jewish
people," boasting that "the Nazi Scum better watch
out." It's not a joke.
Neither is the fact that Maher's beloved "only
democracy in the Middle East" isn't actually a
democracy at all and that a recent Tel Aviv poll
revealed that the democracy-loving Jewish Israelis
(remember, the ones serving as a civilized vanguard
against the barbarous Muslims of the Orient?) don't
care much for Maher's much-touted Western values. The
survey found that over 57% of the respondents agreed
that human rights organizations that expose immoral
conduct by Israel should not be allowed to operate
freely, the majority felt that "there is too much
freedom of expression" in Israel, 43% said "the media
should not report information confirmed by Palestinian
sources that could reflect poorly on the Israeli
army," 58% "opposed harsh criticism of the country,"
65% thought "the Israeli media should be barred from
publishing news that defense officials think could
endanger state security, even if the news was reported
abroad," and 82% said they "back stiff penalties for
people who leak illegally obtained information
exposing immoral conduct by the defense
establishment."
The poll also found that "most of the respondents
favor punishing Israeli citizens who support
sanctioning or boycotting the country, and support
punishing journalists who report news that reflects
badly on the actions of the defense establishment."
Additiontally, of those polled who said they were
right-wing, 76% said "human rights groups should not
have the right to freely publicize immoral conduct on
Israel’s part." How "civilized."
It's true that the "civilized" people Maher praises
sometimes don't issue threats, as he claimed Muslims
do. More often, they just drop bombs and shot bullets
at the viciously brutal Muslims. For example, it may
be difficult for Maher to pick out the most civilized
massacre committed by US troops in Iraq when given a
choice of so many, from the 1991 Amiriyah shelter
massacre to the more recent massacres in Haditha (24
killed, ages 1 to 76 years old), Fallujah (over 600
killed), Ishaqi (11 killed, ages 6 months to 75 years
old), and Nisour Square (17 dead), not to mention the
rape/murder of a 14-year-old girl and the murders of
her family in Mahmudiyah by US Army soldiers and the
bombing and shooting of a wedding party in Mukaradeeb
that killed 42 civilians. And that's not all.
Maybe Maher was speaking of the "civilized" - dare
someone say "righteous? - invasion and occupation of
Afghanistan, where the enlightened US troops just
can't seem to stop murdering hundreds of civilians and
then trying to cover it up.
Maybe the "civilized" thing to do is to murder
hundreds of Muslims via remote-controlled Predator
drones. Perhaps though, like US General Tommy Franks,
Bill Maher doesn't "do body counts." Or maybe, like
George H.W. Bush, Maher should just declare, "I will
never apologize for the United States of America,
ever. I don't care what the facts are!" Moral
superiority in the face of genocide has been a staple
for Western civilization for a while.
How else could all those "civilized" American soldiers
bear to call their supposed adversaries japs,
nips, gooks, ragheads, camel jockeys,
sand niggers, and hajjis, or simply
scum while they were busy killing journalists,
women and children and using gruesome chemical
weaponry like depleted uranium and white phosphorus
against civilian populations? If the troops weren't so
"civilized," how else would they be able to rape all
those women in Afghanistan, Iraq, Japan, and within
their own ranks? Is it any wonder that, in our
"civilized" nation, the unemployment rate for military
veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan has reached 14.7%
(nearly 50% higher than the national rate), on any
given night well over 100,000 veterans are homeless,
and the chilling reality is 18 veterans commit suicide
every day.
Maher must be aware that the "civilized" United States
will have a military budget of over $767 billion next
year, a staggering total that, if allocated elsewhere
could single-handedly eradicate world hunger for our
planet's 1.02 billion undernourished and starving
population for almost four years. But that obviously
won't happen since "civilized" people believe that
murdering half a million children under five, that
committing "genocide," that "destroying a entire
society," through economic sanctions is the price some
have to pay for the rest of us to remain "civilized."
As one of the leaders of "civilized" America declared
on behalf of the Western world, "We think the price
was worth it."
In 2006, when the first free democratic elections in
the Arab world brought Hamas to power in Gaza,
democracy stalwarts Israel and the United States
decided that they didn't like the results and would
place heavy economic sanctions on the 1.5 million
Palestinians living in the already besieged Strip to
punish them for their brazen self-determination. The
Israeli prime minister's advisor reportedly joked to a
team of government and military officials, "It's like
an appointment with a dietitian. The Palestinians will
get a lot thinner, but won't die." The crowd rolled
with laughter. As a result, 95% of businesses have
been shuttered, unemployment is over 60%, and more
than 80% of Gaza's residents are dependent on food aid
when they're not being murdered by Israeli soldiers
with American weapons in their own homes. Is this the
Western civility of which Maher speaks so fondly?
Perhaps Maher forgets that Fascism, Nazism, and
Zionism are all Western - not Muslim - ideologies. Or
that Muslims didn't drop two atomic bombs on innocent
Japanese civilians. Nope, superior American values did
that.
Yes, Bill Maher is a comedian. He makes that clear
whenever he derides Catholics, Mormons, and Jews, by
quickly following up his jab by saying, "I kid, I
kid!" But he doesn't ever do that with Muslims. Why?
Because he's not kidding. Unfortunately, as a
comedian, Maher should have more perspective and less
invective.
It seems that Bill Maher's major problem with Muslims
is not so much that "they" are more inherently
dangerous and violent based on their chosen religious
affiliation, but rather that he is more scared of
them. As a result, rather than being the clear-headed,
out-spoken realist that he's conjured himself to be,
Maher winds up being more of a holographic torchbearer
of truth, a peon of moral relativism rather than a
champion of moral obligation.
As such, Maher is not the "equal opportunity offender"
he claims to be since he clearly discriminates against
one group of people and holds other groups of people -
groups he belongs to - as superior. In this way, he is
no better than the zealots that so offend him. Just
last Friday, in response to the bogus justification
for aggressive imperialism, We're fighting them
over there, so we don't have to fight them here,
Maher made sure to remark, "There’s already millions
of Muslims in America. The problem is in their head."
American literary critic and political theorist
Fredric Jameson wrote in his Postmodernism, or, The
Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, "This whole
global, yet American, postmodern culture is the
internal and superstructural expression of a whole new
wave of American military and economic domination
throughout the world: in this sense, as throughout
class history, the underside of culture is blood,
torture, death and horror."
It is with this in mind that Maher's insistence,
addressing an audience on premium cable from a Los
Angeles television studio, that "our system is better"
rings hollow and shameful.
John Lennon once said, "If everyone demanded peace
instead of another television set, then there'd be
peace." As usual, John is right. Especially if that TV
is tuned into Real Time.
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