Historian Reza Aslan hits the nail on the head with his dismissal of Bill Maher's opinions on Islam. Maher is someone who seems to fancy himself an intellectual, but it appears he'd rather pick up a spliff and blow smoke out his ass than do the actual work of forming nuanced opinion. Maybe someday he'll surprise us! Via Raw Story:
On his show last Friday, Maher criticized President Barack Obama and liberals for insisting that Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria were not true Muslims. He accused liberals of overlooking human rights violations committed by Muslims, citing the high rate of female circumcision in Muslim countries.
But Aslan told CNN that Maher’s criticism was unfounded.“Well, I like Bill Maher,” he remarked. “I have been on his show a bunch of times. He’s a comedian.”
“But, you know, frankly, when it comes to the topic of religion, he’s not very sophisticated in the way that he thinks,” he continued. “I mean, the argument about the female genital mutilation being an Islamic problem is a perfect example of that. It’s not an Islamic problem. It’s an African problem.”
Aslan noted that predominately Christian nations, like Eritrea and Ethiopia, practiced female genital mutilation.
“But, again, this is the problem, is that you make these facile arguments that women are somehow mistreated in the Muslim world — well, that’s certainly true in many Muslim-majority countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Do you know that Muslims have elected seven women as their heads of state in those Muslim-majority countries? How many women do we have as states in the United States?”
