Last month, I had a chance encounter with actor Ben Affleck in Los Angeles. My wife spotted him from a distance and, to her horror, I walked straight over. “Hey Ben,†I said.
He looked up, a bit caught off guard — probably expecting a selfie, an autograph request, or maybe a comment about “The Accountant 2.” Instead, I began, “You probably don’t remember, but I wanted to thank you for standing up for Muslims and calling out Islamophobia years ago on …â€
Before I could finish, he smiled and said, “On Bill Maher?â€
I nodded. He didn’t hesitate: “It should be obvious. There’s no place for hate.â€
By then, my wife caught up just in time to record our brief handshake — a fleeting moment of unexpected moral clarity.
That moment took me back to 2014, Harris, a prominent atheist thinker known for his critiques of religion, argued that “liberals have really failed on the topic of theocracy†and that “we have been sold this meme of Islamophobia, where every criticism of the doctrine of Islam gets conflated with bigotry.†He infamously called Islam “the motherlode of bad ideas.â€
Affleck refused to let it stand. “So hold on – are you the person who understands the officially codified doctrine of Islam? You’re the interpreter of that?†he shot back, then added, “It’s gross. It’s racist … It’s like saying, ‘Oh, you shifty Jew!’ â€
Affleck reminded the panel — and millions watching — that “there are more than a billion people who aren’t fanatical, who don’t punish women, who just want to go to school, have some sandwiches.â€
Affleck’s pushback was a needed correction. Harris’s framing lacked nuance and humanity.
Liberalism today is guided more by power than principle. Academic freedom is under attack, dissent silenced and criticism — especially of allies like Israel — suppressed. Harris was right about liberal moral confusion, but his focus on “theocracy†now feels quaint.
The deeper crisis is the abandonment of free speech and universal rights. Worse, Harris and others helped turn valid critique into generalized hate, fuelling the very forces they claimed to oppose. Now, appeals to “civilization†are used to justify censorship and repression for political ends.
Just last week, a peaceful Muslim Day event at the Texas Capitol was violently disrupted when former Republican candidate , seized the mic and shouted vile Islamophobic slurs. Nearby, men held signs calling Muslims “unclean” and hurled abuse at children.
Imagine a Muslim doing this at a Jewish event — the outrage would be swift and justified. Yet when Muslims are the targets, the hate is tolerated or ignored.
Similarly, the proposed EPIC City housing project outside Dallas — a simple plan to create a community where Muslim families could live peacefully — . Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton helped fuel the manufactured hysteria, launching politically motivated investigations with no evidence of wrongdoing.
In both cases, the message is chillingly clear: Muslim visibility itself is now seen by some not as a protected right, but as a threat.
This normalization of hate isn’t limited to the U.S. In Canada, Islamophobia is rising again. On Jan. 29, the country marked the Quebec mosque massacre. Weeks later, a Muslim woman in Ajax was nearly set on fire in a library. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has labelled pro-Palestine protesters “lawless mobs†and promised a crackdown on “terrorist networks.†As scholar Youcef Soufi warns, such rhetoric revives dangerous stereotypes and scapegoats Muslims for distant conflicts.
The crisis isn’t softness on extremism — it’s that liberalism has abandoned its core. In defending “us†from “them,†it now justifies repression and applies human rights selectively.
As Affleck said: “There’s no place for hate.†Our brief exchange reminded me that moral clarity often requires standing alone.
Unless we confront hate not just in words but in systems, liberalism won’t merely fail — it will become a weapon against the very ideals it once claimed to defend.
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