Yesterday, a terrorist attack on a French humor magazine’s office resulted in 12 deaths and captured the attention of a horrified world.
The editors of Charlie Hebdo had been subjected to countless threats and even suffered a firebombing in 2011, yet refused to give in to extremist demands regarding what sort of content they published.
Perhaps it’s surprising that a humor magazine could incite such outrage (though perhaps it shouldn’t be in the wake of North Korea’s response to The Interview), but one American comedian says that such attacks are all too predictable, and that violence has become the norm in the Muslim world:
“I know most Muslim people wouldn’t carry out an attack like this,” Bill Maher said while appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night. “But here’s the important point: Hundreds of millions of them support an attack like this. They applaud an attack like this.”
“What they say is, ‘We don’t approve of violence, but you know what? When you make fun of the Prophet, all bets are off.'”
“This is mainstream in the Muslim world. When you make fun of the Prophet, all bets are off. You get what’s coming to you.”
Maher’s statement that violence is “mainstream in the Muslim world” has already sparked outrage from moderate Muslims and others who refute his claim that such extremism is the rule, rather than the exception.
The comedian’s views on Islam made headlines back in October when Maher and Ben Affleck debated the merits of the world’s second largest religion on Maher’s HBO panel show Real Time.
Following a holiday hiatus, that show returns live this week with Salman Rushdie as one of its guests. Rushdie was famously forced to go into hiding after Muslim groups issued a fatwa against him in response to his novel The Satanic Verses.