CAIRO – The surprisingly passionate response of Ben Affleck, an Oscar-winning actor and director, to TV host Bill Maher and author Sam Harris’s depictions of Islam as “gross” and “racist” has made him a target of US conservative groups which satirically gave him the title “imam”.
According to the progressive press watchdog Media Matters for America, the actor has been a target of commentators on conservative US radio and television over the past few days, The Guardian reported on Wednesday, October 8.
Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review magazine, attacked Affleck for an alleged refusal to accept “frank truths about the Muslim world” in an article published on 7 October.
“He kept on insisting it is just a few bad apples who think this way,” wrote Lowry.
“At one point, he tried to wave Maher and Harris off with a condemnation of the Iraq war, positing an implicit moral equivalence between an overly idealistic war of liberation and the stoning of apostates.”
The star was a guest in Friday’s TV show Real Time With Bill Maher to promote his new film, Gone Girl, when the panel discussed current affairs.
He became incensed when the host Bill Maher and author Sam Harris began talking about radical Islamists, feeling they were stereotyping all Muslims.
Affleck, who was promoting his new film, Gone Girl, had told Harris and Maher: “Hold on – are you the person who officially understands the codified doctrine of Islam? It’s gross and racist. It’s like saying, ‘Oh, you shifty Jew!’ Your argument is, ‘You know, black people, they shoot each other.’”
He added: “How about more than a billion people who aren’t fanatical, who don’t punch women, who just want to go to school, have some sandwiches, pray five times a day, and don’t do any of the things you’re saying of all Muslims. It’s stereotyping.”
Though the comments won Affleck praise on Twitter, he was viciously attacked on Fox programs.
On Fox News “Fox & Friends”, guest Dr Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy referred to the actor as “Imam Ben Affleck” and said he was “defending the theocrats, the status quo” against necessary moderate reform.
Contributor David Webb accused Affleck of living in a “unicorn-like world”, claiming that Islam was “an intolerable religion” on the same day’s America’s Newsroom.
Meanwhile, presenter Greg Gutfield of Fox show The Five described Affleck as a “Caliphate crusader”, arguing that “the inability to separate identification of evil from platitudes on tolerance is what enables evil to thrive”.