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This reminds me of my tenure on the Atheism+ forums, back before my redpilling/blackpilling (I don't know what to call it, since I didn't really change my beliefs, I just realized the people I thought were on my side, aren't).
A+, as you know, was woker than woke before "woke" became a thing. And one of my "WTF?" moments when I realized these people are fucking crazy is when they went hard on defending... Muslims. Not against general racism and bigotry, but against criticisms that the "New Atheists" had no problem applying to every other religion.
At one point, the forum got trolled hard by a poster from one of the hater-forums who monitored them, a set of people running an account that adopted the persona of a gay man who proceeded to post long effort-posts about the connection between homophobia and Islamophobia, and how seeing the latter "triggered" him, as a gay man, despite the fact that he was an atheist.
The mods on the A+ forum proceeded to take him very seriously and started modding comments that were too "Islamophobic."
He also declared that the term "homosexual" was homophobic. The mods proceeded to mod anyone who used the word homosexual.
I was one of the few people who pushed back and kept getting in arguments with him, until he eventually DMed me and let me know what the game was. I already suspected something of the sort, because to any sane person his arguments were so transparently nonsensical. But the mods and the other SJWs on the forum ate it up.
As to your broader point, I think liberals like Maher and Harris suffer from a misapprehension that I had myself until recently (my beliefs have changed on this one): that Islam is just another religion and that, like Christianity and Judaism and other bronze-age religions that were once full of barbarism and genocidal ideology, the civilizing effects of modern Western liberalism will eventually secularize them until they are just like the rest of us, and we'll have a big joint Christmas/Hannuka/Ramadan holiday season.
This does happen to an extent. Moderate Muslims in the West are... mostly like the rest of us. I hesitate to say that Islam is fundamentally incapable of undergoing some kind of "Enlightenment." (Leaving aside the arguments from some of our resident Christians that post-Enlightenment Christianity isn't real Christianity at all.) I don't think Islam is some sort of unique Neal Stephenson mind virus that turns its followers into violent p-zombies even if many of Islam's critics do.
But I am pessimistic about Islam, in its current form, being capable of coexisting long-term with other ideologies. I have a lot of other uncharitable and blackpilling thoughts I've been tossing around and trying to decide how much of it is Chinese Cardiology and selection bias.
I do think a blanket "Muslim ban" is stupid (and clearly unconstitutional). But a ban on importing large numbers of people from countries that just happen to be dominated by Muslims of an uncompromising, anti-Western, pro-jihadist bent does not seem irrational or bigoted to me, but it would be hard to frame it in a way that would be acceptable to those who believe Islam is "just another religion."
I say, who cares? I mean yes, maybe in 400 years the barbarians' descendants would be as civilized as we are now, or much more, and their descendants would look with horror on what is being done now and conduct ceremonies to honor the innocent victims of Islamic terror in 20th-21th centuries. Why should I care whether it happens or not? I won't live in 400 years, I am living now and the barbarians are committing their barbaric atrocities now. Screw that 1000-year stare the ivory tower idiots try to sell us because they read a couple of history book and now they think for some reason they are oh so much smarter than the rest. If there are barbarians now, they should be judged now. If some crazy Christian dude would come and try to burn heretics on the central square of my city, I think he should be jailed, and if he resists, shot. I want the same treatment for crazy dudes of all religions. If declaring "it's just another religion" helps that, so be it, I don't care. I don't see why either way would matter here.
The thing we need to realize here is we don't need any special case for Islam. On the contrary, we should stop applying special cases for Islam - and that's what is happening constantly in the wokesphere. Rape? Of course it's horrible, one of the most horrible sins imaginable! Oh, you mean it's done by fanatical Islamists who proclaim to be oppressed? Ah, that's different business, we need a nuanced approach here! Woman oppression? That's bullshit, maaan! Oh, you mean woman oppression in Saudi Arabia? Maaan, you can't apply your morals there! Well, yes, I can. Screw that. That's the root of all evil here. If we ever manage our culture to stop doing that, we'd win 99% of the battle already.
Again, I say I don't care, it's not my problem. I mean, it's not on me to figure out how to make requirements on Quran work in the modern world. What needs to be done is the uniform demand to live by the modern world rules, no ifs, no buts, no coconuts, no discounts and "nuanced approaches". If you can do it and keep the Quran - fine, keep it. I don't mind at all, I don't care what you do to achieve it, whatever works for you. If you can't - you should be either forced to, or be forcibly expelled from the places where civilized people live. That should be the test - whether you can follow the civilized society rules.
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