Author Sam Harris gives actor Ben Affleck an eye roll during a debate on 'Real Time with Bill Maher.' (YouTube screenshot)
by JP O’ Malley
When Sam Harris speaks his mind people tend to listen, regardless of whether they agree with him or not. Take his controversial appearance last October on the prime time HBO television show, “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
Harris began a conversation that night by claiming Western liberals have failed abysmally when it comes to challenging theocracy in the Muslim world.
“Liberals will criticize Christians,” announced Harris to the studio audience. “But when you want to talk about homosexuals and free thinkers in the Muslim world, liberals have failed us. We have been sold this meme of Islamophobia, where every criticism about the doctrine of Islam somehow gets conflated with bigotry of Muslims as people. And intellectually, that is just ridiculous,” concluded Harris that night.
Actor Ben Affleck, also a guest on the program, weighed in. His voice tight with anger, he called Harris’s ideas “gross” and “racist.” The clip now has over 2 million hits on YouTube.
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