Maher is so confused when it comes to religions.

They don’t talk about Islam until close to the end, but this is a pretty good snapshot of his (years and years) of comparing apples and oranges as if it were apples and apples.

Maher doesn’t get that the Western “values” he cites, the ones he fears Islam would crush if enough Muslims move to Western countries, were developed in opposition to the power of Christian theology, not because of it. He doesn’t get that it’s the Enlightenment/post-Enlightenment rejection of (Christian) religious power, dogma, doctrine, superstition and orthodoxy that gave breathing space for those values to arise.

He’s absolutely wrong to focus on Islam as the boogeyman, or that Christianity is superior to it because we had our “reformation.” In reality, a Christian theocracy here, right now, in 2017, would be every bit as oppressive as any Islamic theocracy elsewhere. As in, there is no fundamental difference between the two that inevitably gets us to “liberal democracy” or “fascism.” It’s the presence of any religion’s domination over society, or its absence, that makes the difference, not the organized religion itself — at least when it comes to the three monotheisms of the Levant.

Any honest, close, clear-eyed look at the actual texts shows us that. Just one look at the Christian telos, for instance, its End of Days prophecies, its actual support for the mother of all genocides, obliterates Maher’s argument. That telos calls for the mass slaughter of every single non-Christian living, along with their eternal damnation as well as those who have already died. How is this a superior foundation for a free and open society, compared with Islamic texts?

It’s not. And that doesn’t even touch upon the madness and barbarity of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, for starters.

Maher is an Islamophobe who thinks he’s just keeping it real. In reality, despite his espousal of atheism, he just doesn’t understand that the West isn’t “superior” on the issues he cites because it’s not Muslim. It’s superior (in theory, not always in practice) because it’s largely secular. If Muslims lived in largely secular societies, they’d easily be able to stand toe to toe with us on those issues.