Today I have listener Ben on, who is of course much more than simply an ex-Muslim, but having an episode named “Ben” seemed weird. Ben had a great comment on the site about the Affleck/Maher debate, and seeing as how his background is a lot different than mine, I wanted to have him on to get his views in more detail.
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Humans in themselves can be benevolent or malevolent but to convince a community of otherwise decent people to act unethically or to disregard the another persons civil liberties, you need to have an installed system of thinking that convinces the masses that it is necessary to inhibit the freedom’s of others. This may be a political movement, a criminal organization, or a religion. What Reza Aslan wants people to think is that religion (especially Islam) is not a factor in convincing people to do wrong but instead that bad people just so happen to gather together in the same religious group. This is absurd since we know that people can and do have their views manipulated if not completely changed to reflect the ideologies of the group once a person has been accepted into the fold.