Maher: Obama’s Refusal To Name Islamic Terrorism ‘Orwellian’

On HBO’s Real Time Friday, Bill Maher discussing the semantic battle over ISIS’ ideology, said “this idea that we cannot even call it Islamic terrorism seems Orwellian to me.”

Other panelists included Elahe Izadi, Bill Nye and Rob Reiner.

“This idea that we cannot even call it Islamic terrorism seems Orwellian to me,” Maher said. “It seems like we’re paying a very high price for this which is we can’t discuss it even rationally. Can’t we at least say that there are a number of factors that are involved? And the religion is certainly one of that.”

Maher and the panelists also disputed President Obama’s assessment that poverty and education are the main drivers of violent extremism, which is the term the administration chose to use rather than radical Islamic extremism.

“[President Obama] presented this idea that it’s poverty and education. It is poverty and education, also. But why are they impoverished and uneducated? It’s mostly because of the religion. That’s mostly why,” Maher argued. “The U.N. did a study in 2002, they found out that only 300 books had been translated into Arabic that year. In madrassas they only teach one book — I don’t have to tell you which one.”