Hollywood superstar Ben Affleck recently appeared on HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher, but promotion of his new film Gone Girl quickly dissolved into a heated debate on the "true nature" of Muslims, and the influence of fundamentalism on the wider Muslim community.
Affleck was joined on-air by American journalists Nicholas Kristof, Michael Steele, and author Sam Harris in a fiery analysis of Maher’s provocative comments on Islam from the prior week's show, where the American presenter/comedian seemed unwilling to see a distinction between Islamic extremists and the 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide.
“We have been sold this meme of Islamophobia, where criticism of the religion gets conflated with bigotry towards muslims as people,” Harris began. “It’s intellectually ridiculous.”
Harris, backed up Maher by asserting that “Islam at the moment is the motherlode of bad ideas,” with Maher assuring Affleck that this statement was “just a fact.” Affleck replied that the comment was “an ugly thing to say,” sparking raised voices, accusations and unfinished sentences.
“Your argument is, ‘You know, black people, they shoot each other,’” the Gone Girl star said before arguing that criticizing Islam, as Maher and Harris were doing it, was “gross and racist. It’s like saying, ‘Oh, you shifty Jew!’”
Affleck doesn't shy from important subjects - he supports gay marriage and women's rights. The actor may seem hotheaded, but he stepped up as a lone champion for world's Muslims, the majority of them peaceful.
Unlike Jon Stewart, (another Jewish-American comic-entertainer-posing-as-a-TV-talking-head), Maher is delusional. He's become the political talking head he initially set out to parody, spewing skewed opinions worthy of Fox News.
Pundits like Maher, who perpetuate racism in the guise of comedy, need to be called out by other entertainers. Well done, Affleck.
