When HBO comedian Bill Maher brought professional anti-theist commentator Sam Harris to bash Islam on his show last weekend, there was no Muslim on the show to make the case for Islam. But actor and director Ben Affleck came to the defense of Muslims, not because of any connection he has to the religion, but because he saw the racism and bigotry in the duo’s remarks.

The comedian argued that moderate Muslim voices are muted, not because they do not get media exposure, but because they are silenced by the religion they represent.

Maher claimed that Islam is “the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will f—ing kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture or write the wrong book.” Apparently he is not aware or deliberately chooses to ignore a long history of violence by extremist elements in almost all faiths.

He goes on to say that his views are “based on facts”, claiming that according to a Pew poll, “like 90 percent” of Egyptian Muslims see the death penalty as an appropriate punishment for leaving Islam. The truth is that the poll he refers to states that 64 percent of Egyptian Muslim responders hold that belief. Besides lying about the poll numbers, Maher fails to mention that the number drops to 13 percent in Lebanon and Indonesia, 2 percent in Turkey and Bosnia and 0 percent in Kazakhstan.

Harris, who described Islam on the show as the “mother lode of bad ideas”, said that liberals are not standing for women because they do not criticize Islam. 

It is true that women are suffering in many Middle Eastern, African and central Asian societies.

But former President Jimmy Carter revealed in a speech at a Muslim convention in Detroit last month that his nonprofit Carter Center is partnering with the Grand Imam of the Al Azhar Islamic University in Cairo to produce a document to show that nowhere in the Qur’an does it say women are inferior to men.

Patriarchy is an international problem. In the United States one in five college female students gets raped on campus and the academic institutions often try to cover up the assaults. American women make 77 cents for every dollar men earn for the same work. In American media, women are constantly objectified. Last month, a Fox News presenter wondered if a female Emirati pilot participating in bombing “Islamic State” terrorists in Syria could be considered “boobs on the ground.”

Misogynistic remarks have been made by Maher himself, who said last July, at a time when Palestinian women were being murdered by Israeli forces, that Hamas is like “a crazy woman trying to kill you. You can only hold her wrists for so long before you have to slap her.” 

Gender relations are subject to cultural relativism. Just as Maher thinks that women in the Muslim world are oppressed because they cover their hair, some Muslims might perceive Western women as oppressed because they are presented half-naked, like commodities, in commercials and music videos. 

The truth is that not all Muslim women have the same lifestyle and not all Western women share the same experiences. Generalizations are instrumental to demarcate people into groups labeled by culture or faith, but the human experience is not pigeonholed so easily. Generalizations oversimplify cultures to facilitate their mutual clashes. 

Maher is an atheist; he believes all religious texts are works of fiction, yet he believes that his own interpretation of Islam as violent and backward is the true one. He is basically saying that non-extremists Muslims are not properly practicing their religion. He is no better than the mentally unstable Muslim scholars who inspire terrorists.

Islam is not the only defining factor in the customs and traditions of Muslim societies. For example, female genital mutilation, which is practiced in Egypt, is often wrongly blamed on Islam. In fact, its roots originate in east African traditions. It is also practiced in Christian African nations like Eritrea and Ethiopia. This horrible tradition is not followed in any non-African Muslim country.

Christians and Muslims in the Middle East share similar social values. Hence, religion could not have been the sole source of those values.

Religions, especially Islam, are fluid schools of thoughts. There are dozens of Islamic sects that spread across the globe from America to Albania to Indonesia. Within each sect scholarly and individual interpretations of Islam differ. Unlike Catholicism, Islam does not have a single institution that dictates and interpret its doctrines. Muslim clergy do not have a well-defined hierarchy. Maher’s and Harris’s claim of knowing of Islam, when they paint it as a single school of belief, is absurd. 

Maher claims that his views on Islam are criticism of ideas, not people. But religion is an essential part of the lives of those who believe in it. When Maher depicts Islam as a savage, violent religion, he is encouraging bigotry and hatred against all Muslims.

Bottom line, Maher, who claims to stand for liberal principles, is in fact standing for the principles of anti-Muslim narrow-mindedness and xenophobia. He is no better than the right wing fanatics he attacks on other issues. We would not be surprised if he lands a gig on Fox News soon.