Fareed Zakaria tees off on Bill Maher:“You’re not persuading people. You’re getting applause lines"

[DonViejo]

"That's insulting," replies Maher in heated "Real Time" debate about Muslims, Islam and reform

SALON STAFF

Fareed Zakaria and Bill Maher hotly debated Islam and the Muslim world on Friday’s “Real Time.”

Perhaps the most interesting moment was when Zakaria went straight at Maher’s critique of Islam as an intolerant religion, which the host has developed more aggressively in recent months.

“My problem with the way you approach it,” Zakaria said, “is I don’t think you’re going to reform a religion by telling 1.6 billion people — most of whom are just devout people who get some inspiration from that religion and go about their daily lives — I don’t think you’re going to change religion by saying your religion is the motherlode of bad ideas, it’s a terrible thing.”

He continued: “Frankly, you’re going to make a lot of news for yourself and you’re going to get a lot of applause lines and joke lines.” But, he added, “push for reform with some sense of respect for the spiritual values.”

-snip-

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/11/fareed_zakaria_tees_off_on_bill_maher_youre_not_persuading_people_youre_getting_applause_lines_in_the_west/

[itsrobert]

1. Religion is based on lies

How can you get spiritual values based on lies?

[Bucky]

18. Among other things, true, but Maher's critique of religion is based on ignoring human diversity

Which is a nice way of saying "other lies"

I so prefer people who are willing to discuss nuance instead of slop on wide swaths of prejudiced generalizations.

[yallerdawg]

2. Do people not understand Maher's perspective?

Bill Maher absolutely condemns and disrespects any and all religion. Period. The only change or transformation he pushes for is universal understanding of what a joke it all is.

So, laughter and applause is exactly what he is after!

[iandhr]

13. Exactly

Couldn't have said it better.

[ladjf]

3. I believe it was Arnold Toynbee , historian,

who years ago made the point that the missionaries went into Africa and tried to wipe out tribal culture and replacing it with Christianity basically leaving the natives with nothing. Same thing in Hawaii.

Zakaria was right.

[Jim__]

4. Maher is insulted by Fareed saying he's throwing out applause lines.

Yet, he doesn't seem to get that his claiming that Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas is insulting to 1.6 billion Muslims.

[DonViejo]

5. Fareed is Muslim (and formerly a rightist that now calls himself a centrist)...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fareed_Zakaria

[Jim__]

12. So?

[Bucky]

19. so apparently labels are more important that the details of his argument

if you can't see that, you're basically condoning all religious violence

[Fred Sanders]

6. Maher continues to not get it at all about religious extremism in general and Islamic extremism. Let me help him.....

ISIS is to Islam as the KKK is to Christianity....get it, Bill? I think his Jewish background is still influencing him, whether he admits it or not.

And Bill could use a little help with his support of the death penalty.

[rurallib]

9. Maher background is Jewish?

it really shouldn't matter. I thought he was Irish catholic.

[Fred Sanders]

10. Catholic father, Jewish mother, raised a Catholic, he says. His very special hate of Islam is not an accident.

Zakaria spoke the truth Bill does not want to hear...one gets far more applause lines and popularity attacking all Muslims these days in America.


“While Maher isn’t just the loudest and most candid voice on the left in his bigotry toward Muslims, he is the ideological counterpart to Fox News that helps make hate bipartisan,” Max Fisher wrote at Vox.

[panfluteman]

7. I Believe That It All Boils Down to Spiritual Experience

Those who have had spiritual experiences, like I have, are those who most genuinely see the value in religion. Those who haven't tend to be those who are either ambiguous, hypocritical or superficial about religion, or those who flat out don't believe in religion, like Bill Maher. And if you think that all religion is a joke, then making a joke out of religion, as Bill Maher does, to get applause lines works just fine. But Fareed also has a great point in that you don't get people to reform their religion, or even to abandon it if you think it is religulous, simply by insulting it. That often has the opposite effect of further radicalizing those who you insult.

[Paladin]

8. Zakaria nailed Maher on this. Very gratifying, seeing Maher getting all huffy. (nt)

[WillTwain]

11. IMO, Bill thinks extremists exist in both religions,

but it is is a bit more pronounced in Islam. He rails both religions as backwards and violent. His point may be that Islam is behind even Christianity in evolving.

Fareed is right about applause lines to a degree, but Bill is a satirist. This is his job. Fareed is wrong to not look deeper into Bill's thinking.

Both use extremes, which is never good.

Overall, it was a draw.

[americannightmare]

14. Israel is a Jewish state, right?

Maher's support of Israel while telling us that all religion is bad is simply hypocritical. I'm sorry I spent my hard-earned money to see his movie "Religulous." It's no different than valuing American lives more than Iraqi lives.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

15. Bill Maher still doesn't get that Republicans treat every issue as an opportunity to attack Dems...

They exaggerate everything to pump up the fear and then claim the Dems don't take it seriously enough and will get us all killed.

It's like abortion. Republicans only use it to pump up the outrage and then claim Dems want to kill babies.

[PatrickforO]

16. I have to support Zakaria on this one.

I like Maher a lot, and 'get' his position on religion, which is that he thinks they ALL are a joke.

BUT, millions of other people don't feel like that, and Zakaria's point was that telling devout people their religion is the mother load of bad ideas and they better get their act together - well, that will, as Zakaria said, 'get their backs against a wall.'

There are a lot of religious nut jobs out there, to be sure, but millions of devout people are struggling to make ends meet just like anyone else. That's one thing I've always loved about the United States - until recently: we have both freedom of, and freedom from religion. Unfortunately, and there's those nut jobs again, we have a small group of Republican 'crazy base' trying to impose theocratic laws right and left.

It's NOT helping anyone.

[Brett Fitz]

17. Agreed, Fareed

Keep in mind that Maher is a huge Netanyahu fan.

[rainmaker21]

20. Good debate there.

Fareed is right, but even CNN shows a lot of ignorance lately too.

[Dumpster Macaine]

21. Missing The Point, Again

I generally enjoy Maher, but his twist on Islamic Terrorism, like many American's, misses the point completely.
1) The Boston Bomber, like almost all terrorists, from the Shoe Bomber to Bin Laden, have said the same thing: "Stop Killing Us, We'll Stop Killing You". Not a difficult concept to comprehend on planet earth, unless you, like Maher and most American's, have no clue of the Anglo-American military-political foot print in the Middle East the past 80 odd years. No clue whatsoever of history.
2) The West, since playing the Muslim Fundamentalist card against Nasser's pan Arab socialist movement in the 1950's, has been supporting either directly, or through it's allies Saudi Arabia and others, radical Muslim Fundamentalism for 60 years. If there's a cancer in Islam it's U.S. Imperialism, it's agenda, and it's Middle East vassel States.
3) At the same time the U.S. has smashed the only regimes standing up to Muslim Fundamentalist terror, Soviet backed Afghanistan, Saddam's Iraq, Gaddafi's Libya, and now Assad's Syria.

To sum up, we've been backing radical Islam for 60 years, Middle East dictatorships for 80, while destroying the only countries standing up to Sunni radical Islam. ...And it's Islam's fault?

Unfortunately Fareed failed to raise any of these points. Another indication of the shallowness and/or plain ignorance of main stream U.S. political discourse. Pathetic.

[TruthBeTold65]

22. Of course Fareed is correct...

...Maher is not persuading the masses of the religious people...it is too late for them. They are so caught up in their delusional religious bubble that nothing can get through.

Maher's comments are for the younger/older people who have an open mind and may not yet have been corrupted by their parents, church and community to believe in the make-believe.

The more he points out how ridiculous religion is the more people will think about how ridiculous religion is.

[Dumpster Macaine]

23. What's Ridiculous

It's not religion's that are ridiculous, it's American foreign policy. The radical Islam everyone's suddenly in an uproar about is a fringe element of Islam we (the U.S.) have funded and supported for almost 70 years to serve our geo-political agenda. As if that isn't bad enough, we've taken out the only regimes that stood up to these Sunni, radical fundamentalist's everyone hates: Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Syria, and in our cross hairs, Iran, are next.

It has nothing to do with religion, rather our ridiculous, self serving foreign policy. There are nuts every where. So what. They only become dangerous when a Henry Ford or Lord Deterding sit down and have lunch with them. As Einstein said, "don't fear dictators, rather those that put them in power". In the case of Islamo-Facsism that would be the U.S. State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon.

America is ridiculous.