HBO host Bill Maher and author Asra Nomani criticized liberals for their position on radical Islam on Friday’s “Real Time.”
Nomani told Maher, “you have honestly taken a position of moral courage. I’m a feminist, liberal Muslim. I know, a lot of contradiction in terms there, head-spinning, but you have dared to challenge liberals to stand by their values.”
Both stated that while it isn’t 100% certain who’s behind the terror attacks in France, it probably was carried out by Islamic terrorists. Nomani continued, “so President Obama says that he’s going to go after the terrorists, and he’s going to go after the terrorist networks, but we don’t mention what kind of terrorist networks.” Maher then said, “It’s crazy. That — I don’t understand that. And I also don’t understand liberals who don’t understand, this man who says the moderates are in jail. How could liberals who stood for black people getting to go to college in the 60’s and then when I was in college they were protesting apartheid in South Africa. How can they not stand up against sharia law, which is the law in so many Muslim countries, which is a law of oppression?”
Nomani added, “I don’t understand it either, but what I have figured out is that they run scared. They’re afraid of the name-calling that you’re — get targeted with, the name-calling that I get targeted with. They don’t want to look bad. They don’t want to act like they are intolerant of a minority community, but at the end day, they are on the side of the aggressive Muslims, the people who believe in sexism and bigotry.”
Later Maher wondered, “How did we get to this place where just describing something is demonizing? And I’m not so sure it’s a very small percentage, maybe a small percentage who carry out terrorist acts, but it’s not a small percentage, right, who believe in some of the illiberal ideas that support terrorists?”
Nomani also criticized the “honor brigade,” which includes groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and people in high places of academia who “smear somebody like you, somebody like me, for being witness to truth, because ultimately, the truth frightens them, the liberals get on board.”
Both also argued that true liberal values should be fought for, and what it means to be a liberal should be questioned. Nomani added that human rights are ultimately validated by Islam, because “while the — many of the principles that are being practiced today are unequal and sexist, the religion came as a progressive faith in the 7th century. We just stayed stuck in the 7th century.”
Nomani concluded, “We have to be honest about the fact that there is an ideology of Islam, that is our war, of our generation, and this is an ideology that we have to address, and we have to address it with moral courage.”
Maher added that both of them would be called bigots and Islamophobes the next day.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett