Right from the very start, it's a bit suspect Maajid Nawaz says he'd like to come to the USA more "if I'm not banned from the country".
"The people of Harry Potter world are so petrified of this enemy that they are unable to name him and so for the duration of these six books they refer to him as He Who Must Not Be Named. You see where I'm going with this?...I use that Voldemort effect to speak to our inability to name and shame and isolate Islamist extremism from the mainstream muslim community."
"There's a bunch of well-meaning white men sitting in sweet Alabama, the Southern Poverty Law Center, they were created to defend people like me against people like the KKK...They've decided to list me along with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee ex-muslim liberal thinker as anti-muslim extremists...I'm going to take them to court for defamation. [Bill Maher: "And you're crowdfunding it?"] Yeah. ["I'd like to be part of that crowd. And I invite you [audience] to be part of that crowd"]."
Bill Maher: "When did criticism of religion become bigotry?"
Maajid Nawaz: "They're allowed to criticise their own Bible Belt but don't want me to criticise our Quran Belt? This hypocrisy is what I call bigotry of low expectations."
Uh huh.
"The Quran specifies a passage, Fadribuhunne, that talks about husbands beating their wives . We've got to reform our approach to this scripture."
Ok, this is about 4:34 and 38:44. There are multiple meanings of the word used for beat. Some translations say it's to kick them out, as a response to a wife being unfaithful (there already is a punishment for adultery in the Quran for adulterer and adulteress so hitting someone further is kind of overkill) and this is the last resort after advising them, not having sex with them, and then kicking them out or hitting as some scholars say. Now I'm sure there are men who misinterpret this passage to beat their wives carte blanche even though in all the translations that use the Arabic word to mean beat, it's to use a twig (that one Arabic people brush teeth with) and it's never to cause actual harm. When muslim husbands have been beating their wives using these passages as free will, adultery or not, and which causes actual harm and is repetitive, they are obviously wrong and sadly it's probably all too common in certain muslim communities that are more misogynistic.
"You know who else lists heretics who are deemed to be speaking against the accepted customs within muslim communities? The jihadists. We know what happens when you list heretics among muslims. They end up dead."
He compares the South Poverty Law Center to jihadists. Interesting comparison.
Bill: "The Southern Poverty Law Center are being assholes, but they're not going to kill you."
Maajid: "Let's see how successful this lawsuit is and see what happens."
Well, ok then.
Maajid brings up a couple of polls reported in the Guardian of how the majority of british muslims (a sample size of 1000) are against homosexuality. This is actually where I agree with him on, there is a lot of homophobia in the muslim community. Gay muslims, feminist muslims, apostates, all need our help indeed.
Then he gets back into fake news territory.
"The security services said we only have the capacity to monitor 3000 suspected jihadists at any one given time. They said we're at full capacity. Now that would be worrying enough, Bill. Then they went on, however though we're at full capacity at 3000, we really need to be monitoring 23,000. Because that's how many there are out there."
Bill: "23,000 jihadists."
Maajid: "Jihadists. Who are ready to attack. This is according to security services in the United Kingdom."
He claims the security services are saying they need to monitor 23,000 jihadists, but the security services are saying there are 23,000 people that are "subjects of interest". There's no confirmation if they're jihadists.
Security minister Ben Wallace told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme: ”All those people are in the mix and they have to be looked at.
He added: ”All of that is predominately underpinned by intelligence, which as I'm sure you will understand and the courts certainly understand, unfortunately the hardest part is we've got to convert intelligence into evidence if we actually want to deprive people of their liberty or take certain steps."
Maajid: "Imagine how many will be idealogical bedfellows. Islamists."
Bill: "We're talking about people who are not going to attack but when there is an attack, they go [clapping hands]."
Maajid: "Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. The majority of Islamists are not jihadists. So there will be far many more Islamists who are not jihadists.
So let's triple that number. Let's say most of these people aren't violent, they're just idealogically committed to theocracy. And then you got the hardcore violent ones in the middle. That's only out of a population of 4 million muslims in the UK. If these figures don't indicate insurgency levels - and that's just in the UK - and that's 4 attacks in the last 5 months, if we're not in the middle of a global jihadist insurgency, I don't know what is. We are in a serious crisis mode in Europe."
We're tripling that number based on...what? I thought Bill was previously praising Maajid on maths and using evidence. But Maajid just comes out with triple out of nowhere.
"We have to be aware of what I call the Triple Threat:
1. The Left, the Regressive Left is a phrase we use for the cultural relativists who don't call out this bigotry when it comes from brown people.
2. The Right, with the rising populism.
3. The Islamist theocrats."
I don't see leftists holding muslims with kid gloves on what they want to call out, even on this forum. I see more people making that claim for sure, from people who tend to be more conservatively minded. But sure, I can agree with his final statement that muslims should push back against ultra conservatives in our communities. And I see it happening. Sadiq Khan, London's muslim mayor, is openly pro-LGBT, has been to many LGBT events. So are Hasan Minhaj and Reza Aslan. I don't agree with his fearmongering, though.
