Bill Maher represents widespread problem of generalizing Muslims

Bill Maher (left)

Creative Commons Photo

Milam's Musings, milambc@miamioh.edu

When talking about nearly two billion people, it's best not to use sweeping generalizations about what they think and believe. But such common sense seems to elude the likes of comedian Bill Maher, host of HBO's Real Time and neuroscientist and author Sam Harris when discussing Islam and Muslims.

Bill Maher's position, presented as nuanced and courageous, is that liberals are too silent on Islam, particularly its violence and oppression of women. On his Sept. 26 show's closing monologue, he said President Obama keeps insisting that ISIS is not Islamic.

"If vast numbers of Muslims across the world believe -- and they do -- that humans deserve to die for merely holding a different idea, or writing a book ... not only does the Muslim world have something in common with ISIS, it has too much in common with ISIS," he said.

Therein is the generalization presented as if its a factual claim that vast numbers of Muslims believe a human deserves to die for drawing a cartoon of Muhammad or similar blasphemies.

Pew Research did the most extensive polling ever done to gauge what Muslims from all over the world believe on a variety of issues. Before unpacking that data, it's important to understand where Muslims are even living.

After all, also according to Pew, a majority of Americans say they "do not know very much or know nothing at all about Islam."

Nearly 62 percent of Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region. As Pew noted, more Muslims live in India and Pakistan (344 million) than the entire Middle East-North Africa region (317 million). The country with the largest Muslim population is Indonesia and then India.

And not surprisingly, the near two billion Muslims spread out across the world hold differing views on Sharia law and other issues. In short, while many Muslims support Islamic law (Sharia) to be the official law of the land, they not only want it to apply just to the Muslim population, but they differ on its application and interpretation.

Marit Tolo Østebø, a University of Florida lecturer on human rights and other issues, argues an important point about Islam.

"Very often we tend to think that Islam is one thing -- that it's one homogenous religion, but if we just look at Christianity, there are so many different traditions and views on things. That is exactly the same in Islam," she said.

Maher will cite Egyptians, for instance, in saying they are not outliers in the faith, with 90 percent of them believing death is the appropriate response to leaving the religion or apostasy, as it is known.

While it is true that Egyptians whom specifically favor Sharia law support the death penalty for apostasy, to claim that view is not an outlier is empirically incorrect.

Among the 37 countries where the question regarding the death penalty for apostasy was asked, a median of 28 percent of Muslims say apostates should be subject to the death penalty, according to Pew.

Yes, 28 percent is still a troubling number, but it's important to understand that generalizations do not help us combat that number or in our relations with Muslims.

Sam Harris, on Maher's Oct. 3 show, sided with Maher against Ben Affleck in a heated exchange.

"Islam at the moment is the motherload of bad ideas," he said at one point in the exchange.

Again, that's a nasty generalization. He earlier said that there's a conflation between Islamophobia, which he said is wrong, and criticising Islam, but it's hard to see how the above statement qualifies as the latter and not the former.

I'm not religious, but I have no interest in demonizing an entire group of people, especially a group of people the United States has spent the last fifty years invading, bombing and killing. As Ben Affleck noted, we've killed far more Muslims than they've killed us.

Worse yet, we not only know little about the people we continue to bomb, but we demonize them, like Maher did, as being similar to ISIS.

Religious scholar Reza Aslan was on CNN to push back against Maher and like-minded people. The ridiculousness was already on display before the discussion began with a banner across the bottom asking, "Does Islam promote violence?"

"Female genital mutilation is not an Islamic problem, it's an African problem," Aslan said.

Maher had stated that 91 percent of Egyptian women and 98 percent of Somali women have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM).

"Eritrea has almost 90 percent female genital mutilation. It's a Christian country. Ethiopia has 75 percent female gnital mutilation. It's a Christian country," Aslan continued.

Politifact mostly backs up Aslan's claim. They cite a quote from Francesca Moneti, the UNICEF senior child protection specialist who co-authored a UNICEF report on FGM.

"It is extremely clear that in many countries that have a very high population of Muslims, female genital mutilation/cutting is not practiced," she said.

The short answer is that FGM derives largely from traditions that predate Islam (as well as Judaism and Christianity).

UNICEF wanted to clarify Aslan's claim about it being an African problem since it happens globally, but overall, his point that FGM is not strictly an Islamic problem is accurate.

I've used this space before to talk about how people apply a unique criminal pathology to black crime and assert that people aren't talking enough about black-on-black crime. Substitute what Maher and Harris are saying about Islam with blacks and it's the same arguments.

They argue that not enough Muslims speak out about the violence perpetrated by extremists.

They say there is something unique about Islam that promotes violence.

It's bigotry wrapped up in edgy pseudo-intellect and I'm glad Affleck called them out on it.

According to Pew, when asked about their dreams for the future, Muslims say they want better jobs and security, not conflict and violence.

Sounds familiar.

Muslims also say the most important thing Westerners can do to improve relations is "change their negative views toward Muslims and respect Islam."

Not bombing them would go a long way, too.

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