Maher: I Don’t Think Rushdie’s Attacker Was Amish — ‘Islam Is Still a Much More Fundamentalist Religion’ than Others

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher commented on the attack on author Salman Rushdie and said that he doesn’t think the suspected attacker is Amish and “Islam is still a much more fundamentalist religion than any of the other religions in the world, and that means they take what’s in the holy book seriously and that has been dangerous for a long time. It’s still dangerous.”

Maher stated, “We don’t know the motivation yet, but Sal did have some enemies in the past, as I recall. So, I’m guessing [suspect Hadi Matar] is not Amish. Sal…was giving a lecture — how about this for irony — about how the U.S. is a safe haven for exiled writers and other artists under threat of persecution. And making that speech itself is unthinkable in most Muslim countries. Salman Rushdie living in most Muslim countries without getting stabbed every day is unthinkable. So, don’t come at me with Islamophobic. ‘Phobic’ means fear, right? Well, Sal had a good reason to be fearful, and when you say ‘phobic,’ it’s just a way to shut off debate, transphobic, Islamophobic. And we should have a debate about this. Sorry, but these things don’t go away. Islam is still a much more fundamentalist religion than any of the other religions in the world, and that means they take what’s in the holy book seriously and that has been dangerous for a long time. It’s still dangerous.”

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