Islam
Is Islam a Violent Religion? Ben Cohen vs. Michael Luciano
Editor's note: This article was originally published in September of 2014, but remains relevant in light of recent events in Germany. Recently, Daily Banter writer Michael Luciano wrote a piece criticizing President Obama's claim that the Islamic State, or ISIS/ISIL, isn't ...read more
We Can Condemn Anti-Burkini Laws Without Defending Islam and its Religious Misogyny
Before I'm excoriated by incoming visitors who only bothered to read the above headline, I'd like to emphasize a couple of things. First, I don't support laws that outlaw religious garb, be it burqas, burkinis, yamulkas or pope hats, even though I have serious questions about the ...read more
The Best Way to Oppose Repression is to Not be Repressive
You’ve probably seen this photo. It went viral Wednesday. It depicts a female Muslim beachgoer in Nice, France, being forced to take off her clothes at the command of three armed, white policemen. It’s an ugly image that raises your hackles on first glimpse. In addition to being ...read more
Cognitive Dissonance and the American Left's Blindness to the Atrocities of the Muslim World
This article was originally published in Banter M, our weekly long form digital magazine. For whatever reason, my politics are growing closer to Bill Maher's. I don't imagine I'll ever agree with the HBO host and standup comic on everything, and I'm no one's disciple. But there ...read more
Bigotry Against the Mentally Ill Cannot Solve Bigotry Against Muslims
- “Orlando may be strongest example yet showing how mental illness is ignored as factor when mass shooter is non-white” - Glen Greenwald after Orlando shootings. - “Every country has homophobia and mental illness. Not every country has guns." - Gary Younge, Editor-at-large for ...read more
How Would President Obama Respond To a Terrorist Attack on America?
Concerns of a religiously influenced terrorist attack on American citizens in the US and abroad have resurfaced in lieu of the recent events of mass death that have occurred around the world. On November 13th 2015, ISIS carried out an attack on civilians in restaurants and a ...read more
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If You've Lost Bill Maher Over National Registry For Muslims, It Really is a Bad Idea
Responding to Donald Trump's recent proposal that Muslims be registered on a national database, known Islam antagonist Bill Maher posted the following message on his Facebook page: ...read more
NRA Video Going Viral After Paris Attacks is the Dumbest Thing You've Ever Seen
In the wake of the ISIS attacks on Paris, the NRA reposted one of it's promo videos of TV host and Navy SEAL Marcus Lutrell, who apparently "has a message for Islamic extremists" who want to take his freedom. The NRA provided the following description of what can charitably be ...read more
Bernie Sanders Says Countries Who Are 'Opposed to Islam' Need to Step Up
The terrorist attacks in Paris last week have revived a tired conservative narrative that the mainstream media refuses to call out for the dopey bit of dishonesty that it is. I'm referring, of course, to the notion that President Obama, and indeed all Democrats, can't possibly ...read more
John Oliver Calls Paris Attackers "Gigantic F*cking A**holes" in Epic Rant
This was a thing of absolute beauty. Key Quote: So here is where things stand: First, as of now, we know this attack was carried out by gigantic fucking assholes—unconscionable flaming assholes—possibly working with other fucking assholes, definitely working in service of an ...read more
Shocking Video Shows Muslim Obama Wishing Americans a Happy Diwali
Secret Muslim and Communist President Obama finally revealed his true religion when addressing Americans yesterday to wish them a happy Diwali. For those of you doubting this, there is video and written proof that the President is indeed a Muslim, and wants to spread his message ...read more
Everyone is Losing Their Sh*t Over Poor Ahmed the Clock Kid
It's official, everyone has lost their shit over poor Ahmed Mohamed — the 14-year-old child who was arrested after a homemade clock he brought to school was mistaken for a hoax bomb. The prize for the worst reaction to Ahmed's arrest predictably came from the right. Here was ...read more
Khloe Kardashian's Niqab Selfie is Offensive Because it Offends Women, Not Islam
Firstly, I resent having to put Khloe Kardashian's name in the headline for this article. Being famous because your sister was in a sex tape with a minor celebrity does not make you culturally relevant in my book. Nevertheless, we live in an age where stardom is bequeathed to ...read more
Muslim Televangelist Claims Masturbators Will Meet their 'Pregnant Hand' in the Afterlife
(Image: Televangelist Mücahid Cihad Han) If myths about walking on water, God-sent locust plagues and alien “thetans” weren't enough to convince you that organized religion is bonkers, one Turkish man has taken religious idiocy to a whole new level. Welcome to the entirely new ...read more
Liberals, Please Speak up for Free Speech
by Hugh Harris The death of two Islamists who attacked Pamela Geller’s “Jihad Watch Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest” once again shines a light on the limits of free speech. Only days later some 204 writers protested at the decision of the PEN American Center to honor ...read more
MEMBERS ONLY: Dispatches From the Controlled Chaos Of Nigeria
Photo: Wikimedia Commons This week marked the dubious one-year anniversary of the kidnappings of 219 schoolgirls in northeastern Nigeria by Boko Haram -- an Islamist faction that's terrorized the country for six years, almost with impunity. The havoc wrought by these jihadists ...read more
Obama Is Right About Islam and Terrorism, But Not for the Reasons You Think
By Michael J. Parker In his recent address during a summit on terrorism, President Obama refused to equate or even connect Islam with terrorism, or to paint the atrocities by ISIL and Al-Qaida as Islamic. Obama prefers to refer to the atrocities in the Middle East as a sort of ...read more
Fox News Pundit's Unhinged Rant Against Muslims: "We need to kill them. We need to KILL THEM."
On Tuesday, The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill went on CNN and accused the network's terrorism experts of being "frauds." “CNN and MSNBC and Fox are engaging in the terrorism expert industrial complex, where you have people on as paid analysts that are largely frauds who have made a ...read more
Did You Hear The One About The Muslim?
BBC Headline: Gunmen have shot dead 12 people at the Paris office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in an apparent militant Islamist attack. It’s hard. It’s hard not to become Islamaphobic. It’s hard not to descend into hate and fear of the Islamic faith and those who ...read more
Humor Is One of the Most Dangerous Weapons on Earth and the Charlie Hebdo Attack Just Proved It
(Image: Dave Brown/The Independent) When I began writing online in the Spring of 2006, I knew exactly what I wanted to say. I had spent the better portion of my life gleefully pissing down the leg of polite society and mouthing off to anyone I considered an authority figure, ...read more
Cowardly Mainstream Media Won't Show Cartoons Of Muhammad
Once again, the publication of anti-Islamic cartoons has yielded senseless violence perpetrated by extremists who haven't accepted the fact that their personal religious code cannot be foisted upon those who do not share it. Or can it be foisted? If the behavior of the ...read more
The 'I'll Ride With You' Hashtag Is Self-Righteous and Tone-Deaf
As several Australians were being held against their will by an Islamist fanatic in a Sydney chocolate shop not knowing whether they'd survive the ordeal, scores of sanctimonious Twitter users took to the platform to identify the real problem: hypothetical backlash against the ...read more
Quote of the Day: Ben Affleck Doesn't Care If You Like His Opinion on Islam (Even Though You Probably Do)
“I think I’d rather tell the truth and say what I believe in and make people unhappy than sort of pretend to think something else to accommodate them and try to be liked. That’s just the way it goes and I don’t think I’m any great champion of anything, but if they’re going to ...read more
Bill Maher Gets Slapped Back For Bashing Islam Again
After two weeks of simmering, both on the air and off, the Great Islam Bash-Off was revived this weekend when Bill Maher took another shot at the religion on his HBO show, only to be slapped back by his guests' insistence on relating "facts" and "information." As Rep. Barbara ...read more
What Ben Affleck Doesn't Understand About Islam
Imagine that you have been asked to join an organization founded by a man who claimed he was visited by angels sent by god and ascended into heaven on a winged horse before he married a six-year old girl. Not only would you not join this organization, you would be outraged at ...read more
The NFL Now Says It was Wrong To Penalize a Muslim Player for Praying After a Touchdown
Photo: USA Today When Tim Tebow felt compelled to genuflect before the awesome glory of his god six times a game like there was a Skinner Box treat in it for him, nobody gave him crap for it. Well, snotty little heretics like me gave him crap for it, but no one officially gave ...read more
Glenn Beck's Middle East Conspiracy Theory Is About 1,400 Years Late
Liberals, including myself and Daily Banter editor Michael Luciano, were taken slightly aback last month by a temporary moment of clarity in which Glenn Beck admitted he was wrong about the Iraq war. Don't worry, though. Whatever produced that fleeting epiphany has since ...read more
ISIS Denies Ordering Women Sexually Mutilated In Iraq
The Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS), which controls the area in and around Mosul in northern Iraq, is denying it ordered that all females between the ages of 11 and 46 undergo female genital mutilation, contrary to earlier reports. Although FGM predates Islam, Muhammad ...read more
For the Love of Allah, Why Can't Some Liberals Acknowledge Islam's Role in 9/11?
It seems that the National September 11 Memorial Museum has been in the news lately for every reason but the fact that it opened last month. There's the gift shop with questionable souvenirs; the lavish cocktail party thrown for wealthy benefactors; and the reporter who was ...read more
How To Get Away With Bigotry In Just 3 Words: "It's My Faith"
On Wednesday night, the city of Houston, Texas passed an ordinance banning discrimination based on, among other characteristics, sexual orientation, gender identity, race, sex, nationality, age, religion, disability, pregnancy, and military status. Given the sweeping nature of ...read more
A Pregnant Woman Is Sentenced To Die Because Muhammad Said So
Meriam Ibrahim is 27 years old, eight months pregnant, and is to die by hanging for leaving the Islamic religion. This week a judge in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum told her, "We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam. I sentence you to be ...read more
Ridiculous Guardian Column Excusing Anti-Atheist Laws is One For the Ages
It’s one of those columns you have to read a couple of times to make sure your mind isn’t contorting the words into the travesty it appears to be. But after reading Nesrine Malik’s latest piece in The Guardian for the third time, I can say without hesitation that it is one of ...read more
Fox News Reports Obama is Personally Funding a Muslim Museum That Doesn't Exist
Proving once again that Fox News really is the best comedy news channel in America, host Anna Kooiman claimed that President Obama "offered to pay out of his own pocket for the museum of Muslim culture," amidst the government shutdown and closure of the World War II memorial ...read more
Glenn Beck Comment Porn: Insane Muslim Hating Edition!
Welcome to this week's edition of 'Glenn Beck Comment Porn', the weekly Daily Banter feature where we trawl through comments left by fans of Glenn Beck on his website 'The Blaze'. There has been a notable trend of late - every week, the commenters are getting crazier and ...read more
Russell Brand vs Islam Being an Inherently Violent Religion
Daily Banter reader (and friend) Anthony Evans left the following comment in response to Russell Brand's assertion that the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby in London last week had nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with mental illness: 500 direct commandments to murder ...read more
Russell Brand on Lee Rigby Killers
The loquacious Russell Brand tries to put the killing of Lee Rigby into perspective, dismissing the popular narrative that Islam is an inherently violent religion and placing the blame on the mental state of the killers: In spite of his dispassionate intoning the subject is not ...read more
Muslims Solve Conflict With Racists By Offering Them Cups of Tea
Every true Englishman knows that a cup of tea fixes most problems. Rather than hide or fight back, Muslims in the north of England decided that the best way to deal with the fascist English Defense League protesting about the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby outside their mosque, ...read more
Is it Fair to Call the Killers of Drummer Lee Rigby 'Terrorists'?
In the wake of the murder of British soldier Drummer Lee Rigby earlier this week in London, there have been numerous public discussions about the use of the word 'Terrorist' in reference to the killers. Kojo Koram wrote an excellent piece on the Banter, arguing that the term ...read more
Stunning New Footage Shows London Terror Suspects Getting Shot By Police
Stunning new footage obtained by the Daily Mirror shows how, after beheading Lee Rigby, the suspected terrorists ambushed the first police officers to come to his aid: The Mirror describes the unbelievable chain of events that saw Michael Adebolajo and Michael Oluwatobi ...read more
What Does It Take To Behead a Man?
Yesterday on the weekly "Bob and Chez Show" podcast that we do together, Bob Cesca and I discussed the story of the broad-daylight attack on a British soldier in London that had just broken internationally. What was interesting about our conversation is that it was happening ...read more
After London Attacks, We Must Remember that Terrorists Are Not Muslims
The horrific murder of a man in London yesterday afternoon has shocked Britain and much of the world. Two armed men ran over, then decapitated an unarmed soldier near his army barracks in Woolwich, South East London, in broad daylight. An eyewitness described a horrendous ...read more
Bill Maher vs Glenn Greenwald on Danger of Islam
Last Friday, the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald took on Bill Maher over the supposedly 'unique' danger of Islam on Maher's show 'Real Time' on HBO. Maher has long contended that Islam is an inherently violent religion that poses a greater threat than all other religions. ...read more
Glenn Beck Comment Porn: Ann Coulter and Hijab Wearing Terrorists
In our latest edition of 'Glenn Beck Comment Porn' we look at The Blaze reader's reaction to Ann Coulter's comments regarding the widow of Boston Bomber suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Katherine Russel. Coulter believes that Russell "Ought to be in prison for wearing a hijab", ...read more
What is Pat Robertson Smoking?
The Arabic word for God is 'Allah'. In Aramaic (the language Jesus Christ most likely spoke) word for God is 'Allaha'. In Hebrew, the word is 'Eloah' (singular of 'Elohim'). Anyone not dogmatically devoted to a particular religious doctrine should be able to see that the three ...read more
Sam Harris vs. Glenn Greenwald
I'm a fan of Sam Harris. A very big fan, in fact, despite not agreeing with him across the board. His 2004 book, The End of Faith, is just about the seminal guide to refuting faith-based religion through bulletproof fact and near-flawless argumentation. If you're an atheist, ...read more
Who’s the Real ‘Savage’?
By Lawrence Davidson: On Aug. 1, I posted a piece entitled History on a Billboard, reporting on the placement, in the northern suburbs of New York City, of informational billboards with maps of Palestine showing the steady growth of Israeli confiscated territory and the ...read more
Did Anti-Muslim Film Cross Legal Line?
By Lawrence Davidson: When I finish one of my analyses, I usually look forward to a week to 10-day hiatus and sometimes even wonder if I will have to hunt around for the next topic. It rarely works out that way. Usually, within three or four days, something happens which strikes ...read more
Embassies in Middle East remain on alert as Islamic protests simmer
The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From the Reuters: DUBAI (Reuters) - Western embassies across the Muslim world remained on high alert on Sunday and the United States urged vigilance after days of anti-American violence provoked by a video mocking the Prophet Mohammad. The ...read more
What'd You Say About My God?
By Chez Pazienza: If you're one of those people who's always dreamed of going back in time, I've got some terrific travel advice for you today: plan your next vacation to the Middle East; it's still the second century over there in some areas, or at least 1979. Stop me if ...read more