Credit: Creative Commons/Steve Anderson
On Friday evening, Bill Maher and Sam Harris did what white men in America have been doing for the last twenty-five years: they shielded their racism and anti-Muslim bigotry under the umbrella of liberal values.
Maher demonstrated this in full view when, after ticking off all of the liberal values he holds dear, from marriage equality to equality for minorities, he cast the world’s Muslims as violent and repressive people. What’s more, he did so explicitly under the guise of standing up for liberal values, calling upon his audience to do the same.
He may be the latest incarnation of the white, American ‘liberal’ man to promote his racism under the banner of liberalism, but he’s obviously not the first. Maher has had some good mentors to choose from over the years, none ‘better’ than Alan Dershowitz.
In his 1991 book Chutzpah, Dershowitz in a single paragraph touted himself as a human rights activist before calling the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians a fifth-rate issue, much like urban renewal.
It’s this type of disregard for both the rights and the humanity of Palestinians, as a “human rights activist,” which established a tradition of liberalwashing Maher gleefully continued on Friday evening.
The reason he can do so is because we live in an Islamophobic country which treats Muslims and Arabs as suspicious at best, and sub-human at worst, particularly in the wake of 9/11 and our dirty wars in the Middle East. Indeed, the number of reported Islamophobic incidents in this country over the last two decades, from violent attacks and hate crimes to media bigotry-fests, is just shocking.
The likes of Maher, Harris and Dershowitz, who tout themselves as champions of liberal values and then go on to foment a hatred of Muslims, are responsible for creating an American culture in which Muslim-American communities can be violently attacked, and Muslim-Americans targeted with racism and bigotry, with little mainstream concern.
As a Jew who frequently hears the false howling of anti-Semitism to shield extremists in Israel from critique, it’s tiring to hear white ‘liberals’ freely spew Islamophobic rhetoric with no consequences.
I can only imagine how Muslim- and Arab-Americans feel.
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David Harris-Gershon is author of the memoir What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?, published recently by Oneworld Publications.
Follow him on Twitter @David_EHG.
You miss Professor Dershowitz’a point. I believe he was directing himself to Arab and non-Arab spokespeople like President Abbas who last week said at the United Nations that Israel’s actions in Gaza were a Holocaust. It is not anti-Muslim or hateful to rate Human Rights issues or even to compare supposed violations to their underlying motivation. Do you not remember that in 1948 that Israel was at risk of annilation from huge, fortunately underequipped and undertrained Arab armies?
Always reaching into the past to justify one’s biases proves the point of this article.
I hesitate to make this comment because I don’t want to take the focus away from the point of the article, which is Islamophobic racism.
But I wish that this issue could be publicly aired at a time when two of the principles in the argument are not people who hate religion. Any religion. Maher and Harris hate religion and have no respect for anyone who practices any religion. A brief look at things they write or a quick listen to what they say make this abundantly clear.
The actions of some Muslims, just like the actions of some Christians, are taken by these guys as ammunition to justify what is a broader bigotry.
The author of the article is condescending to Muslims throughout the world and can not recognize the crisis within Islam. Recent polls show more than 85% of Egyptians, Jordanians, Saudis feel people should be executed who dare to leave Islam. Gay men are executed due to Sharia law. Women have no rights in Saudi Arabia due to Islamic law and are confined to subjugation throughout the Islamic world. Regrettably, the extreme left has adopted a position that any criticism of Islam is racist. The position of the author and the extreme left regarding Islam ensures a continuation of violence, genocide against other faiths and minorities, misery and a complete denial of any personal or religious freedoms.